mirri w4a2011

Silvia MirriPaola Salomoni

Catia Prandi

Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of Bologna

Augment Browsing And Standard Profiling For Enhancing Web

Accessibility

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

Summary

2

�Introduction

�Design Issues

�Our Prototypes

�Case study

�Conclusion


Introduction

3

AJAX and Web 2.0 applications

• Affect Web accessibility and navigation through Assistive Technologies

• Provide technological barriers


Our main goal

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

One Web content for everyone

The best Web content for each one

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


Profiling users

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• 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

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• 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

The Preferences Panel:


Content transcoding

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• 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

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Case Study: Facebook

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• 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

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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


No Headings!



No Headings!

H6

H1

H6

H6



Adapting Facebook for users with low vision

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Final users’ evaluations

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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• ….

W4A 2011 - March 28 th&29th, 2009 - Hyderabad, India 25

Contacts

� Thank you for your attention!

� For further information:� [email protected]

mirri w4a2011

Technology