Mirri w4a2011

Augment Browsing And Standard
Profiling For Enhancing Web
Accessibility
Silvia Mirri
Paola Salomoni
Catia Prandi

Department of Computer Science
University of Bologna

Summary

Introduction
Design Issues
Our Prototypes
Case study
Conclusion

W4A 2011 - March 28th&29th, 2009 - Hyderabad, India 2

Introduction

AJAX and Web 2.0 applications

• Affect Web accessibility and navigation through
Assistive Technologies
• Provide technological barriers


Our main goal

Using scripts at client-side to provide an augment
browsing system which adapts Web pages

• User Profiling System
• Content transcoding System
• Default scripts and ad-hoc scripts for specific Web applications
• GreaseMonkey-based

One Web content for everyone

The best Web content for each one


Profiling users
• User’s profile should describe
• special needs of users with disability
• characteristics and settings of assistive tools
• In terms of
• Display info (i.e. fonts, colors, cursors, speech rate, pitch,
volume, visual alters instead of aural ones, etc)
• Control info (i.e. keyboard usage, onscreen or alternative
keyboard, mouse emulation, alternative pointing mechanism,
voice recognition, etc)
• Content info (i.e. alternative or equivalent content, personal
style sheets, etc)

IMS ACCessibility for Learner
Information Package

Profiling users
• The Preferences Panel: The Preferences Panel:
• has been created
by using XUL (XML
User Interface
Language), with
tailored user
interface widgets
• organizes all the
characteristics into
the sets:
• Text
• Color
• Audio
• Visual
• General


Content transcoding

• Transcoding activities are performed on the client-side:
• The same Web page is delivered to any user
• GAP4APE adapts it by transcoding
• Web content
• CSS rules
• HTML DOM
• Web pages scripts

• Different sets of scripts are provided:
• specific sets of scripts devoted to given Web applications
when they are available
• a default set of scripts (when ad hoc scripts are not available)


Architecture


Case Study: Facebook

• Analyzing Facebook characteristics which affect
accessibility and identifying main problems users with
disabilities encounter (a group of 16 users with visual
impairments has been involved)

• Applying solutions by developing a set of ad hoc
scripts for our extension GAP4APE

• Testing developed scripts
• The first group of users and a second group (10 users with
visual disabilities) have been engaged to test the system


Preliminary users’ evaluations

Main Facebook accessibility failures:
• Headings are not well-organized and their hierarchy is not clear
• Some links provide a cyclic navigation
• Some features and parts of the content are difficult to be reached
• Useless information and images make the navigation difficult
• Some text links are ambiguous
• Some links and some information are redundant
• Some useful features are read as simple text instead of button
titles, links or labels (e.g. the “Comment” feature)
• Difficulties in finding friends when coincidences of names happen
• Links should be more visible
• …


Adapting Facebook for blind users

W4A 2011 - March 28th&29th, 2009 - Hyderabad, India


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H6

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Adapting Facebook for users with low vision


Final users’ evaluations
• Some tasks have been defined
• to comment a specifi post,
• to edit the user profile,
• to remove a post from the personal page,
• …
• Two groups of users have been invited to complete
these tasks
• Users have answered to a questionnaire
• First group: 94% of users have declared Facebook
accessibility has been improved by using GAP4APE (Dec
2010 – Jan 2011)
• Secondo group: only 60% of users have declared Facebook
accessibility has been improved by using GAP4APE (Feb
2011 – Mar 2011)

Final users’ evaluations

• What’s happen?
• In the meanwhile Facebook development team has
improved several interface and navigation issues …
• Facebook (as well as many other Web 2.0 social
networks) is rapidly changing day by day


Conclusion

• GAP4APE, an augment browsing system
• Profiling users’ preference and needs (based on IMS
ACCLIP standard)
• Transcoding Web pages
• by using
• a specific set of scripts (when available) devoted to a
given Web application
• a default set of scripts (otherwise)
• transcoding activities are performed on the client side
• HTML DOM
• CSS rules
• Web page scripts


Conclusion

• Benefits in making also social networks and Web 2.0
applications more accessible
• Social networks and Web 2.0 applications are
improving very rapidly

• Mobile version Accessible version ?


Future Work

• Integration of our system into a wider set of browsers
• Definition of Web services, devoted to provide
automatic content transcoding, involving multimedia
ones (in order to overcome JavaScript limits in
providing complex content transformation)
• Specific scripts will be designed and developed in
order to improve other Social Network applications
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• Slideshare
• ….


Contacts

Thank you for your attention!

For further information:
silvia.mirri@unibo.it


Mirri w4a2011

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