Web automation has the potential to bridge the accessibility divide between the ways blind and sighted people access the Web; it can enable blind people to accomplish web browsing tasks that were previously slow, hard, or even impossible to achieve. In this paper, we propose and evaluate an intuitive and accessible web automation interface.

1. A Usable User Interface
for
Accessible Web Automation
Yury Puzis
Yevgen Borodin
Faisal Ahmed
I.V. Ramakrishnan
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, USA
2012

2. Introduction
• Non-visual browsing is hard
• Not enough and too much information
• Not enough and too much control
• Browsing can be made easier
• We will try
• Interface > algorithms
• Our contribution
• Accessible and usable web automation interface 2
• Validation of the interface with a user study

3. Making a Purchase on Amazon.com
Minimum of 6 – 8 steps just to complete a transaction
Amazon is one of the most usable and one of the
most popular shopping websites with visually impaired 3
Can this be automated?

4. Web Automation for Sighted People
• Approaches:
• Handcrafting scripts
• Programming-by-example
• Tools:
• Form-filling in browsers
• CoScripter
• CoCo
• Creo
• Robofox
• SmartBookmarks
• …
• Not designed for blind people 6

5. Web Automation for Blind People
• Screen-readers
• Handcrafting: impractically hard
• Hearsay
• Scientific prototype
• programming-by-example (record / replay)
• Trailblazer
• Adaptation of CoScripter to JAWS
• No deep integration with JAWS user interface 7

6. Usable and Accessible
Web Automation Interface
Very few actions are applicable in a given browsing state /
context, and even fewer can lead to a meaningful and
desirable result.
A very simple automation interface
8

7. Usable and Accessible
Web Automation Interface
A very simple automation interface:
1. Ask for a suggestion of a single action
2. Confirm execution, skip, or ignore
… and continue browsing …
Atari’s Star Trek video game instructions:
1. Insert coins
2. Avoid Klingons 9

8. Advantages
• Focus on what’s important
• No information overload
• No need to manage macros
• Automation without taking away control
• The user knows what’s going on at all times
• The user can deviate away from the scenario
• The user can steer into a scenario
10

9. User Study
• 17 participants
• Comfortable / very comfortable with computers
• JAWS is the primary screen-reader
• 2 scenarios
• Buying a book (audiobooks.com)
• Reserving a hotel room (hilton.com)
• 3 trials for each scenario
• 2 without automation, 1 with
• No computational model
• Model’s deficiencies may affect the UI evaluation 11

10. Task Completion Time
600 Manual (trial 1)
Manual (trial 2)
500
Average time (seconds)
Automated Assistant
400
300
200
100
0
Scenario 1 Scenario 2
Average completion time 12
(1) buying a book (2) reserving a hotel room

11. Perceived Task Difficulty
5.00 Manual (trial 1)
4.50
(1=very easy, 5=very hard)
Manual (trial 2)
4.00 Automated Assistant
Average Difficulty
3.50
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
Scenario 1 Scenario 2
Average difficulty
13
(1) buying a book (2) reserving a hotel room

12. Questionnaire
I wish I could do online transactions faster than I can 3.88 (1.11)
with a regular screen reader
I often experience difficulties while doing online 2.62 (1.02)
transactions with a screen reader
Doing the same online transaction for the second time 4.59 (0.71)
was easier than the first time
Doing a transaction with the Automated Assistant was 4.12 (1.27)
the easiest
I want to use Automated Assistant in the future 4.29 (1.10)
14
Average 5-Point Likert scale values (St. Dev.)
Scale 1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree

13. Conclusion
• Web automation can help make the web more
accessible
• Automation is good in moderation
• Encouraging user study results
Testimonials
• “Assistant mode is really, really good”
• “Automated Assistant makes the site easier to use”
• “Looks like Automated Assistant can save a lot of
15
time, especially if it works with AJAX”

14. What Is Missing?
• Computational model
• Submitted to UIST 2012
• Deployment!
• Crowd sourcing / Social Accessibility
• User feedback on a large scale
16

15. Thank You!
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation - Awards: IIS-0808678 and CNS-0751083