1. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL One-Thousand Words Peter Parente Enabling Technology Spring 2003 Final Presentation Enriching Digital Images to Improve Information Accessibility

2. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Information Accessibility The accessibility of information is a measure of how well a person can investigate and comprehend new knowledge from a given source, despite his or her method of access.

3. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Assistive Tech Redefined An assistive technology is any tool, system, or service that either improves a person’s functional capabilities or improves access to aspects of modern society.

4. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Visual Information Growing number of images, movies, etc. on the Internet Very inaccessible ♦ ALT attributes left blank ♦ Images used for page layout ♦ Often overlooked by screen readers We can do better, but most websites don’t

5. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Related Work Three areas of focus ♦ Convert images to text ♦ Convert images to sound ♦ Convert images to touch

6. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Images to Text Image ALT attributes Webpage transcoding (Asakawa, Huang, Takagi, et al. 2000-2002)

7. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Images to Sound WebSound (Petrucci, et al., 2000) AB-Web (Roth, 1998) The vOICe (Meijer, 1996)

8. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Images to touch Ifeelpixel (2002) Pin grid arrays Braille printed images (Ina, 1996)

9. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Two Improvements I argue that all of the work in this area can be improved in two ways

10. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL The Single Method Problem There is no replacement for vision No single alternative is as rich as vision

11. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL A Solution Combining techniques helps compensate for weaknesses Pretty obvious, but not often implemented

12. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL The Single Author Problem Content authors are not omniscient One person or organization can only know and do so much Results in content that meets the needs of the authors and their intended audience

13. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Another Solution Content amateurs Let anyone with a vested interested in accessibility enrich any existing image, regardless of ownership

14. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Hypothesis The accessibility and quality of digital information, especially that on the Internet, can be improved by a community of knowledgeable users who work together to enrich existing content—including content which they do not own—with new facts and features important to members of that community. In such a system, passive web browsing is replaced by the active process of web augmentation in which new information is shared, viewed, edited, and further enriched by other members of the community. Blah blah blah…

15. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL The Short Version Communities of users Working together to improve web accessibility and quality Ability to add, remove, change any content on any webpage

16. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Enrichments Packets of new information and features added to an image ♦ Text ♦ Graphics ♦ Sounds ♦ Speech ♦ Touch

17. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Software Three programs ♦ Editor helps users create enrichments ♦ Repository stores enrichments for later editing and viewing ♦ Viewer augments images in a web browser with enrichments

18. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Use Case Prototype enrichments only support speech and sound Demo

19. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL “Evaluation” Editor used briefly by one teacher, one O&M specialist Viewer needs more work before testing

20. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Future Work Enrichments for other types of information ♦ Entire websites? Programs? Operating systems? Online enrichment communities ♦ How to build, moderate, maintain?

21. The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL Thanks Gary Bishop ♦ For not giving up on getting the awful Microsoft Accessibility library working Diane Brauner ♦ For her helpful pointers and conversations