Addressing Challenges in Web Accessibility for the Blind and Visually Impaired

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Guercio ◽  
Kathleen A. Stirbens ◽  
Joseph Williams ◽  
Charles Haiber
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Preliminary Test ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Blind Persons ◽  
The Waves

Searching for relevant information on the web is an important aspect of distance learning. This activity is a challenge for visually impaired distance learners. While sighted people have the ability to filter information in a fast and non sequential way, blind persons rely on tools that process the information in a sequential way. Learning is slowed by screen readers which do not interact well with web pages. This paper introduces WAVES, a tool for the fast retrieval of information in a web page for blind and visually impaired people. The paper describes the WAVES prototype, a system that performs a page restructuring of webpages. The system analyzes webpages, identifies elements of interests from a webpage, evaluates their importance by using semantic information and visual cues, sorts them by importance and uses them to restructure the webpage so that data from the original webpage are presented to the reader in a concise format. A preliminary evaluation test of the prototype system has been performed with a sample set of users. The results of the preliminary test show an increase in speed and accuracy when the WAVES system has been used.

Addressing Challenges in Web Accessibility for the Blind and Visually Impaired

2014 ◽  
pp. 249-260
Author(s):  
Angela Guercio ◽  
Kathleen A. Stirbens ◽  
Joseph Williams ◽  
Charles Haiber
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Preliminary Test ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Blind Persons ◽  
The Waves

Searching for relevant information on the web is an important aspect of distance learning. This activity is a challenge for visually impaired distance learners. While sighted people have the ability to filter information in a fast and non sequential way, blind persons rely on tools that process the information in a sequential way. Learning is slowed by screen readers which do not interact well with web pages. This paper introduces WAVES, a tool for the fast retrieval of information in a web page for blind and visually impaired people. The paper describes the WAVES prototype, a system that performs a page restructuring of webpages. The system analyzes webpages, identifies elements of interests from a webpage, evaluates their importance by using semantic information and visual cues, sorts them by importance and uses them to restructure the webpage so that data from the original webpage are presented to the reader in a concise format. A preliminary evaluation test of the prototype system has been performed with a sample set of users. The results of the preliminary test show an increase in speed and accuracy when the WAVES system has been used.

The Use of Fax Technology to Address the Reading Needs of Blind and Visually Impaired Persons

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (10) ◽  
pp. 509-513
Author(s):  
W. Gerrey ◽  
J. Brabyn ◽  
W. Crandall
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Office Workers ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Blind Persons ◽  
Visually Impaired Persons

Although fax communications pose a problem of accessibility for blind and visually impaired office workers, with centralized readers’ services they could be used to address the wider reading needs of blind and visually impaired people. With this technology, blind persons with fax machines could send unknown print to readers at a centralized readers’ service, who would read facsimiles of the documents over voice phones. This article discusses the specifications for appropriate equipment and protocols and presents the preliminary results of a study of such a system.

scholarly journals Accessibility of Tables in PDF Documents

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nosheen Fayyaz ◽  
Shah Khusro ◽  
Shakir Ullah
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Digital Libraries ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Assistive Technologies ◽  
Original Material ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The Web

People access and share information over the web and in other digital environments, including digital libraries, in the form of documents such as books, articles, technical reports, etc. These documents are in a variety of formats, of which the Portable Document Format (PDF) is most widely used because of its emphasis on preserving the layout of the original material. The retrieval of relevant material from these derivative documents is challenging for information retrieval (IR) because the rich semantic structure of these documents is lost. The retrieval of important units such as images, figures, algorithms, mathematical formulas, and tables becomes a challenge. Among these elements, tables are particularly important because they can add value to the resource description, discovery, and accessibility of documents not only on the web but also in libraries if they are made retrievable and presentable to readers. Sighted users comprehend tables for sensemaking using visual cues, but blind and visually impaired users must rely on assistive technologies, including text-to-speech and screen readers, to comprehend tables. However, these technologies do not pay sufficient attention to tables in order to effectively present tables to visually impaired individuals. Therefore, ways must be found to make tables in PDF documents not only retrievable but also comprehensible. Before developing such solutions, it is necessary to review the available assistive technologies, tools, and frameworks for their capabilities, strengths, and limitations from the comprehension perspective of blind and visually impaired people, along with suitable environments like digital libraries. We found no such review article that critically and analytically presents and evaluates these technologies. To fill this gap in the literature, this review paper reports on the current state of the accessibility of PDF documents, digital libraries, assistive technologies, tools, and frameworks that make PDF tables comprehensible and accessible to blind and visually impaired people. The study findings have implications for libraries, information sciences, and information retrieval.

Information for and by Blind Persons in Rural Asia

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (6) ◽  
pp. 262-265
Author(s):  
M. Miles
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Blind Persons

Blind and visually impaired people in rural Asia are largely unreached by modern rehabilitative information, nor are their indigenous skills and experience adequately formulated and shared. The use of many media in communication strategies has led to the reconceptualization of rehabilitation in information terms which offers better prospects of self-help for several million blind people.

Design and implementation of a smart reader for blind and visually impaired people

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Punith ◽  
G. Manish ◽  
M. Sai Sumanth ◽  
A. Vinay ◽  
R. Karthik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People
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