HELP:Listen to a website Discovering new design solutions for Web accessibility Paolo Paolini, Nicoletta Di Blas, Politecnico di Milano (Italy) Marco Speroni Università della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland)

2 The WEB is essentially VISUAL Large amount of information in one page Kind of content recognizable by colour, position, size

3 They navigate content through a screen-reader Web pages content is too complex The graphics semantics is lost Lists of items are unusable The command back means… having the whole page read again! Implications for Visually impaired people When Web pages are read:

4 W3C guidelines Priority 1: provide a text equivalent for every non-text element

5 W3C Standard 1/2 CONTENT GUIDELINES –Quite satisfactory LABELS/INTERFACE –Details satisfactory –Overall organization revising OVERALL ORGANISATION & NAVIGATION –Lacking! (but for generic recommendation)

6 W3C Standard 2/2 It is a must It is not the final answer at all! Applications following the standard not necessarily are accessible (in most cases they are not)

7 Our approach: WED (WEb as Dialogue) Human-computer interaction interpreted as a dialogue I am interested in Munch I can tell you about his life, his prints, his… Tell me about the prints A joint initiative of the Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and the University of Lugano (Switzerland)

8 WED Approach Focus on information intensive web sites (e.g. cultural heritage) Compare similar human-human dialogues Bring linguistic models in ORAL COMMUNICATION IS DIFFERENT FROM VISUAL SUPPORTED COMMUNICATION

9 WED Preliminary results NAVIGATION DESIGN PRINCIPLES PAGE ORGANISATION READING STRATEGY LABELS

10 Munch web site 1/3

11 For the exhibition of Munchs prints in Berlin (Staatliche Museen) in Spring 2003 Within the HELP project partially funded by the European Commission Optimised for visually impaired users Munch web site 2/3

12 The page schema (regularly repeated in the whole site) Munch web site 3/3 An example of advanced feature

13 The first impression of the site is very positive. The pages are clearly structured. All the links have detailed titles which allow an informative and nice internet session. With JAWS I needed about 1,5 minutes to get a general overview for all further action. This seems to me an acceptable time. First feedbacks

14 Development of systematic/empirical evaluation methodologies, in order to assess more precisely the acceptability of application for blind users. Definition of guidelines for difficult problems, such as dealing with long lists of items or dealing with text referring to visual experiences. Future work/1

15 Improving the effectiveness of navigational patterns for blind users, who can never look at the screen, therefore must rely only upon oral communication. Development of semi-oral navigational patterns, for those users who in a given context (e.g. walking in an archeological park or a museum) would rather listen to the application, but may occasionally look at a (small) screen. Future work/2

16 Would you like to know more? Would you like to help us in our research? Contacts