1) Researchers at IBM Brazil and the Federal University of ABC developed Firefixia, a Mozilla Firefox extension to help people with dyslexia customize web pages. 2) Firefixia allows adjusting font size, type, alignment, line spacing, and other text and color options based on guidelines for dyslexia accessibility. 3) A preliminary user study with 4 dyslexic participants found that text size, alignment, and link color customizations were most useful, and feedback on Firefixia was positive.

1. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia: An Acessibility Web Browser
Customization Toolbar for People with Dyslexia
Santana, V. F.; Oliveira, R.; Almeida, L. D. A.; Ito, M.
IBM Research Brazil
Federal University of ABC
Federal University of Technology - Paraná

2. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Introduction
 “Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate,
and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web” (Web Accessibility
Initiative)
 Approximately 15% of the world's population have some form of disability (World Health
Organization)
 15-20% of the population have some of the symptoms of dyslexia (IDA):
– slow or inaccurate reading;
– poor spelling;
– poor writing;
– mixing up similar words.
 At least 0.28% of the Web pages contain misspellings performed by people with dyslexia
(Baeza-Yates and Rello)
 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 mentions dyslexia in only one success
criterion (i.e., 3.1.5 Reading Level)
– This might impact the way that WCAG readers consider dyslexia

3. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Introduction
 Rello et al. verified the effectiveness of guidelines for people with dyslexia.
– DysWebxia which changes the way that articles are displayed in order to provide an
improved version for people with dyslexia.
 Dickinson et al. developed SeeWord, a software that provides customization capabilities to
improve Microsoft Word®.
 Penfriend XL is an application that support users with dyslexia on predicting the next word
people want to type.
 ScreenRuler is a software that provides an overlay rule to support reading tasks.
 Theme Font & Size Changer is a Firefox extension that allows users to customize font and
text size of the Firefox UI.
 Santanta et al. contributed with a survey on accessibility guidelines and a meta review on
works dealing with dyslexia.
– Guidelines are organized in 9 groups: navigation, colors, text presentation, writing,
layout, image/charts, end-user customization, markup, and video/audio.

4. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Font size

5. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Font type

6. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Align the text

7. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Line spacing

8. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Letter spacing

9. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Background color

10. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Text color

11. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Link color

12. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Visited Link color

13. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Line length

14. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Display borders

15. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Convert italic to bold

16. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Firefixia
 To develop Firefixia we first analyzed the set of 40 guidelines presented in Santanta et al.
and then verified which could be offered as a browser toolbar.
 Firefixia was designed to bridge the gap between the possibilities of customizing Web
pages and the needs of people with dyslexia.
 Mozilla Firefox extension especially designed to apply predefined fixes, supporting people
with dyslexia on customizing Web pages according to dyslexia people preferences.
Undo everything

17. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Experiment Design
 Evaluation of the Firefixia
– Adults diagnosed from Brazilian Association of Dyslexia
– 2 or 3 test facilitators
– Pre-test questionnaire
• Age
• Education
• Work
• Use of internet
• Time since the dyslexia was diagnosed
• The use of any assistive technology
– List of 4 tasks to be performed by the participants in the Brazilian Federal Revenue
page
– Post-test questionnaire
• User’s opinion regarding the studied website
• Analyze Firefixia’s characteristics.

18. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Results
 13 candidates (18 to 45 years old) – 6 agreed to participate by phone – 4 attended the test
 Characteristics of the 4 people that attended the test:
– Male
– Diagnose: less than 1 year to more than 10 years
– Did not do any kind of treatment
Participant Age Scholar Level Difficulties
A 18 High School Exchange word in reading when tired
Exchanging letters “p” and “b”
Difficulty in writing
B 24 Graduate Difficult to interpret numbers
C 62 Graduate Hard to read after the 3rd
phrase
D 39 Undergraduate Difficulty in reading, interpreting numbers, read
continuously and to know what is the line being
read

19. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Results
 Participants C and D found difficult to use the evaluated website
 Participants A and B did not point any critical issue, except by participant A that indicated
that the text legibility was not bad
 Participant A suggested the inclusion of a feature to indicate the line being read
 Participant C said that missed a text search and orthographic correction
 Participant D was a Chrome user and asked us to develop Firefixia for his favorite Web
browser
 Participants A and B mentioned that they want a copy of the toolbar to use it at home
– In these cases, we informed that this is an ongoing study and that, as soon as we
deploy Firefixia, we would get in touch with all of them
 Customization features that all participants mentioned as useful (i.e., the intersection of all
opinions) are the following: text size, text alignment, and link color.
 In relation to the opinions regarding the Firefixa, the answers ranged from good to really
good

20. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Conclusion
 This work presented a qualitative study on how an end-user customization toolbar for a
Web browser can help people with dyslexia.
 The toolbar reached its goals by pointing an interesting direction on allowing end-user
customization of websites.
 Text size, text alignment, and color represent interesting customizable features websites
should offer
 As stated in the accessibility literature, the development of technologies for improving
accessibility helps people with and without disabilities.

21. IBM Research in Brazil
© 2013 IBM Corporation
Future Works
 Qualitative and quantitative studies about the preferences of people with dyslexia on using
the Web.
 Analyze, if any, different profiles of people with dyslexia and most significant accessibility
barriers for them.
We thank all participants and the Associação Brasileira de Dislexia for
being an indispensable partner in this project. This work was partially
supported by the FINEP.