TableView: Enabling Efficient Access to Web Data Records for Screen-Magnifier Users

Customizable Tabular Access to Web Data Records for Convenient Low-vision Screen Magnifier Interaction

“…In sum, this work is an extension of our prior work that was published in ASSETS 2020 [30]. Our main contributions in this paper are as follows:…”

“…The aforementioned studies focused only on generic aspects of low-vision interaction with computing devices, and not speciic aspects associated with browsing the web, especially interacting with data records. To the best of our knowledge, our prior work [30] is the irst efort aimed at understanding the interaction challenges faced by low-vision screen magniier users when they interact with web data records. In that work, we conducted an interview study with 16 low-vision screen magniier users and subsequently uncovered many pain points related to interaction with web data records, most notably: (i) excessive panning necessitated by multiple revisits to the individual data records while making comparisons; (ii) undesired horizontal panning due to the spatially scattered arrangement of data record attributes (e.g., price, ratings, shipping details) with a lot of empty space between them; (iii) inability to distinguish between visited and unvisited data records; and (iv) inability to cover many data records due to fatigue and frustration.…”

“…Also, the space-eicient magniication methods in both [7] and [8] are mostly suitable for reducing the horizontal panning area of data records; these methods are less efective towards reducing the vertical panning area in data records and enabling easy comparisons, as there is generally less whitespace between the contents vertically (e.g., see Figure 1a). To facilitate easy comparisons between web data records, we previously designed TableView [30] that automatically extracted information in data records and then presented it as a compactly arranged table which was more amenable for screen magniier interaction. In this work, we extend our prior TableView prototype by enabling screen magniier users to customize the interface; TableView+ automatically saves these customizations and then subsequently applies them to the interface the next time the users visit the same website or even other similar websites (e.g., those in the same domains such as shopping, travel, and job search).…”

“…However, web tasks that involve navigating and comparing data records (i.e., search result items such as shopping products, available lights, and job listings), cannot be easily performed with just panning; the users also need to remember the details of the records as they pan the list of records, as only a small portion of this list is visible on screen at any time (see Figure 1a) when viewed under the magniier lens. This additional cognitive burden often makes for an arduous and tedious interaction experience, especially when lists are long and the required enlargement (zoom level) is high [30]. While previous approaches [7,8] can alleviate the panning (a) Screen magniier (b) Screen magniier with TableView+ Fig.…”

“…As illustrated in Figure 1b, this compact tabular presentation of data is tailored for enabling easier and faster comparisons between data records, as more information can not only be packed within a smaller screen region, but also be shown close to each other within the magniier viewport. TableView+ extends our prior TableView prototype [30] by supporting customization features that enable users to alter the appearance and organization of the data table (see Figure 1b) in real time depending on their individual needs. Speciically, the users can (i) adjust the column widths of individual attributes; (ii) ilter the attributes to view only the data for preferred attributes; (iii) sort the data table records based on a preferred attribute; and (iv) increase and decrease the font size for more comfortable viewing of data.…”