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A novel multimodal interface for improving visually impaired people's web accessibility

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 00:43 authored by Wai Yu, Ravi Kuber, Emma Murphy, Philip Strain, Graham McAllister
This paper introduces a novel interface designed to help blind and visually impaired people to explore and navigate on the Web. In contrast to traditionally used assistive tools, such as screen readers and magnifiers, the new interface employs a combination of both audio and haptic features to provide spatial and navigational information to users. The haptic features are presented via a low-cost force feedback mouse allowing blind people to interact with the Web, in a similar fashion to their sighted counterparts. The audio provides navigational and textual information through the use of non-speech sounds and synthesised speech. Interacting with the multimodal interface offers a novel experience to target users, especially to those with total blindness. A series of experiments have been conducted to ascertain the usability of the interface and compare its performance to that of a traditional screen reader. Results have shown the advantages that the new multimodal interface offers blind and visually impaired people. This includes the enhanced perception of the spatial layout of Web pages, and navigation towards elements on a page. Certain issues regarding the design of the haptic and audio features raised in the evaluation are discussed and presented in terms of recommendations for future work.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Virtual Reality

ISSN

1359-4338

Issue

2-3

Volume

9

Page range

133-148

Pages

16.0

Department affiliated with

  • Informatics Publications

Notes

Originality: Presents a novel multimodal interface allowing blind and visually impaired people to construct a mental model of spatial layout of webpages. Rigour: Results are reinforced using a triangulation approach consisting of; think aloud protocol, questionnaires and visual feedback. Significance/Impact: This is the first technique which allows people who are blind to use a mouse to browse webpages. This offers the possibility of blind and sighted users to collaborate when browsing a webpage, as they can share the same mental model.

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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