Abstract
The serial nature of speech technology seriously reduces the efficiency of blind individuals accessing web-based documents. Locating and manoeuvring to the required information can often be slow and laborious. This paper describes WebTree, a rather simple, yet highly customisable tree structured interface to web based documents, which provides page summaries based on the tree-like arrangement of the mark-up. The user dynamically controls how much of the document’s tree hierarchy is to be exposed on a (virtual) screen at any given time. Thus, entire element sub-trees may be efficiently traversed with minimal difficulty. Methods for incorporating non-hierarchical elements (such as tables), are also discussed. In addition, an alternative search mechanism, which allows for the restriction of the search to specific mark-up elements, is examined. Finally, this paper includes the initial findings from user evaluation tests and provides some additional recommendations to increase the usability of the interface.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
McMullin, B.: Users with disability need not apply? Web accessibility in Ireland. First Monday 7(12) (2002)
Marincu, C., McMullin, B.: A comparative assessment of web accessibility and technical standards conformance in four EU states. First Monday 9(7) (2004)
UK Cabinet Office: eAccessibility of public sector services in the European Union (2005)
Zajicek, M., Powell, C., Reeves, C.: Orientation of blind users on the world wide web. Contemporary Ergonomics (1998)
Parente, P.: Audio enriched links: web page previews for blind users. In: Assets 2004. Proceedings of the 6th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility, pp. 2–8. ACM Press, New York (2004)
Ramakrishnan, I.V., Stent, A., Yang, G.: Hearsay: enabling audio browsing on hypertext content. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on the World Wide Web, pp. 80–89 (2004)
Raman, T.V.: Audio System For Technical Readings. PhD thesis, Cornell University, Computer Science Department (1994)
Yesilada, Y., Stevens, R., Goble, C.A., Hussein, S.: Rendering tables in audio: the interaction of structure and reading styles. In: The Sixth International ACM SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies (ASSETS), pp. 16–23 (2004)
Walshe, E., McMullin, B.: Accessing web based documents through a tree structural interface. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W., Burger, D. (eds.) ICCHP 2004. LNCS, vol. 3118, Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Brewster, S.A.: Using nonspeech sounds to provide navigation cues. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 5(3), 224–259 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Walshe, E., McMullin, B. (2006). Browsing Web Based Documents Through an Alternative Tree Interface: The WebTree Browser. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4061. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11788713_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11788713_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-36020-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36021-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)