Abstract
People with vision impairments typically use screen readers to browse the Web. To facilitate nonvisual browsing, web sites must be made accessible to screen readers, i.e., all the visible elements in the web site must be readable by the screen reader. But even if web sites are accessible screen reader users may not find them easy to use and/or easy to navigate. For example, locating the desired information may require a tedious linear search of the webpage that involves listening to a lot of irrelevant content. These issues go beyond web accessibility and directly impact web usability. Several techniques have been reported in the accessibility literature for making Web usable for screen reading. This chapter is a review of these techniques.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)
AFB (2017) Facts and figures on American adults with vision loss. http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=15&TopicID=413&DocumentID=4900. 2015
Ahmadi H, Kong J (2008) Efficient web browsing on small screens. https://doi.org/10.1145/1385569.1385576
Ahmed F, Borodin Y, Soviak A, Islam M, Ramakrishnan IV, Hedgpeth T (2012) Accessible skimming: faster screen reading of web pages. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 25th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Álvarez M, Pan A, Raposo J, Bellas F, Cacheda F (2010) Finding and extracting data records from web pages. J Signal Process Syst 59:123–137
Amitay E, Paris C (2000) Automatically summarising web sites: is there a way around it? In: Paper presented at the CIKM ’00: proceedings of the ninth international conference on Information and knowledge management
Apple NSAccessibility. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Protocols/NSAccessibility_Protocol/index.html-//apple_ref/doc/constant_group/Focus_change_notifications
Ashok V, Borodin Y, Stoyanchev S, Ramakrishnan IV (2014) Dialogue act modeling for non-visual web access. In: Paper presented at the in the 15th annual SIGdial meeting on discourse and dialogue, SIGDIAL, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Ashok V, Borodin Y, Puzis Y, Ramakrishnan IV (2015) Capti-speak: a speech-enabled web screen reader. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 12th web for all conference, Florence, Italy
Ashok V, Puzis Y, Yevgen B, Ramakrishnan IV (2017) Web screen reading automation assistance using semantic abstraction. In: Paper presented at the 22nd ACM international conference on intelligent user interfaces
Bar-Yossef Z, Rajagopalan S (2002) Template detection via data mining and its applications. https://doi.org/10.1145/511446.511522
Bigham JP, Lau T, Nichols J (2009) Trailblazer: enabling blind users to blaze trails through the web. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 13th international conference on intelligent user interfaces, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
Billah SM, Ashok V, Porter DE, Ramakrishnan IV (2017a) Speed-Dial: a surrogate mouse for non-visual web browsing. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 19th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Billah SM, Ashok V, Porter DE, Ramakrishnan IV (2017b) Ubiquitous accessibility for people with visual impairments: are we there yet? In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Denver, Colorado, USA
Billah SM, Ashok V, Porter DE, Ramakrishnan I (2018) SteeringWheel: a locality-preserving magnification interface for low vision web browsing. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, 2018. ACM, p 20
Borodin Y, Bigham JP, Dausch G, Ramakrishnan IV (2010) More than meets the eye: a survey of screen-reader browsing strategies. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 2010 international cross disciplinary conference on web accessibility (W4A), Raleigh, North Carolina
Cai D, Yu S, Wen J-R, Ma W-Y (2004) VIPS: a vision based page segmentation algorithm. Microsoft technical report
Chakrabarti D, Kumar R, Punera K (2008) A graph-theoretic approach to webpage segmentation. In: Paper presented at the WWW, Beijing, China
Christen M, Abegg M (2017) The effect of magnification and contrast on reading performance in different types of simulated low vision. J Eye Mov Res JEMR 10
Chung J-W, Lee H-J, Park JC (2011) Improving accessibility to web documents for the aurally challenged with sign language animation. In: Proceedings of the international conference on web intelligence, mining and semantics. ACM, p 33
de Avelar LO, Rezende GC, Freire AP (2015) WebHelpDyslexia: a browser extension to adapt web content for people with dyslexia. Procedia Comput Sci 67:150–159
de Santana VF, de Oliveira R, Almeida LDA, Baranauskas MCC (2012) Web accessibility and people with dyslexia: a survey on techniques and guidelines. In: Proceedings of the international cross-disciplinary conference on web accessibility. ACM, p 35
de Santana VF, de Oliveira R, Almeida LDA, Ito M (2013) Firefixia: an accessibility web browser customization toolbar for people with dyslexia. In: Proceedings of the 10th international cross-disciplinary conference on web accessibility. ACM, p 16
Debevc M, Kosec P, Rotovnik M, Holzinger A (2009) Accessible multimodal web pages with sign language translations for deaf and hard of hearing users. In: 20th international workshop on database and expert systems application. DEXA’09. IEEE, pp 279–283
Debevc M, Kosec P, Holzinger A (2011) Improving multimodal web accessibility for deaf people: sign language interpreter module. Multimed Tools Appl 54:181–199
Debnath S, Mitra P, Lee Giles C (2005) Automatic extraction of informative blocks from webpages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1066677.1067065
Delort JY, Bouchon-Meunier B, Rifqi M (2003) Enhanced web document summarization using hyperlinks. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 14th ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia, Nottingham, UK
Dolphin SuperNova Screen Reader. http://www.yourdolphin.com/productdetail.asp?id=1
Eldirdiery HF, Ahmed AH (2015) Web document segmentation for better extraction of information: a review, vol 110. https://doi.org/10.5120/19297-0734
Fajardo I, Cañas JJ, Salmerón L, Abascal J (2009) Information structure and practice as facilitators of deaf users’ navigation in textual websites. Behav Inf Technol 28:87–97
Freire AP, Petrie H (2011) Power CD empirical results from an evaluation of the accessibility of websites by dyslexic users. In: Proceedings of the workshop on accessible design in the digital world. York, pp 41–53
Friedman MG, Bryen DN (2007) Web accessibility design recommendations for people with cognitive disabilities. Technol Disabil 19:205–212
Guo H, Mahmud J, Borodin Y, Stent A, Ramakrishnan I (2007) A general approach for partitioning web page content based on geometric and style information. In: Paper presented at the in proceedings of the international conference on document analysis and recognition
Hallett EC, Dick W, Jewett T, Vu K-PL (2017) How screen magnification with and without word-wrapping affects the user experience of adults with low vision. In: International conference on applied human factors and ergonomics. Springer, pp 665–674
Han S, Jung G, Ryu M, Choi B-U, Cha J (2014) A voice-controlled web browser to navigate hierarchical hidden menus of web pages in a smart-tv environment. In: Proceedings of the companion publication of the 23rd international conference on World Wide Web companion. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, pp 587–590
Harper S, Patel N (2005) Gist summaries for visually impaired surfers. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility, Baltimore, MD, USA
Harper S, Goble C, Stevens R, Yesilada Y (2004) Middleware to expand context and preview in hypertext. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 6th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility, Atlanta, GA, USA
Hearst MA (1994) Multi-paragraph segmentation of expository text
INTRODUCTION TO THE ADA
Islam MA, Ahmed F, Borodin Y, Ramakrishnan IV (2011) Tightly coupling visual and linguistic features for enriching audio-based web browsing experience. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 20th ACM international conference on information and knowledge management, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
JAWS (2013) Screen reader from Freedom Scientific. http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-page.asp. 2015
Kang J, Yang J, Choi J (2010) Repetition-based web page segmentation by detecting tag patterns for small-screen devices, vol 56. https://doi.org/10.1109/tce.2010.5506029
Kohlschütter C, Nejdl W (2008) A densitometric approach to web page segmentation. https://doi.org/10.1145/1458082.1458237
Kołcz A, Yih W-t (2007) Site-independent template-block detection. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74976-9_17
Kovacevic M, Diligenti M, Gori M, Milutinovic V (2002) Recognition of common areas in a web page using visual information: a possible application in a page classification. In: 2002 IEEE international conference on data mining, 2002. ICDM 2003. Proceedings. IEEE, pp 250–257
Lau T, Cerruti J, Manzato G, Bengualid M, Bigham JP, Nichols J (2010) A conversational interface to web automation. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, New York, New York, USA
Lazar J, Allen A, Kleinman J, Malarkey C (2007) What frustrates screen reader users on the web: a study of 100 blind users. Int J Hum-Comput Interact 22:247–269
Leshed G, Haber EM, Matthews T, Lau T (2008) CoScripter: automating & sharing how-to knowledge in the enterprise. In: Paper presented at the proceeding of the 26th annual SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Florence, Italy
Li I, Nichols J, Lau T, Drews C, Cypher A (2010) Here’s what I did: sharing and reusing web activity with ActionShot. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, pp 723–732
Mahmud JU, Borodin Y, Ramakrishnan IV (2007) CSurf: a context-driven non-visual web-browser. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web, Banff, Alberta, Canada
Manning CD, Raghavan P, Schütze H (2008) Introduction to information retrieval. Cambridge University Press
Microsoft (2014) Common commands in speech recognition. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/common-speech-recognition-commands-1TC=windows-7. 2015
Micro G Window-Eyes. http://www.gwmicro.com/Window-Eyes/
Microsoft microsoft active accessibility: architecture. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd373592(v=vs.85).aspx
Microsoft UI automation overview. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms747327.aspx
MiniwattsMarketingGroup (2016) Internet usage statistics: the Internet Big Picture world Internet users and population stats. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Nuance (2014) Dragon naturally speaking rich Internet application. http://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6940/~/information-on-rich-internet-application-support. 2014
NVAccess NV access: home of the free NVDA screen reader. http://www.nvaccess.org/
NVDA (2013) nonvisual desktop access. http://www.nvda-project.org/. 2015
Parmanto B, Ferrydiansyah R, Saptono A, Song L, Sugiantara IW, Hackett S (2005) AcceSS: accessibility through simplification & summarization. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 2005 international cross-disciplinary workshop on web accessibility (W4A), Chiba, Japan
Pascual A, Ribera M, Granollers T (2015) Impact of web accessibility barriers on users with a hearing impairment. Dyna 82:233–240
Public Voice Lab S (2002) PublicVoiceXML
Puzis Y, Borodin Y, Puzis R, Ramakrishnan IV (2013) Predictive web automation assistant for people with vision impairments. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 22th international conference on world wide web, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Radev DR, Hovy E, McKeown K (2002) Introduction to the special issue on summarization. Comput Linguist 28:399–408. https://doi.org/10.1162/089120102762671927
Rajkumar K, Kalaivani V (2012) Dynamic web page segmentation based on detecting reappearance and layout of tag patterns for small screen devices. https://doi.org/10.1109/icrtit.2012.6206790
Readability. https://www.readability.com/
Rello L, Kanvinde G, Baeza-Yates R (2012) Layout guidelines for web text and a web service to improve accessibility for dyslexics. In: Proceedings of the international cross-disciplinary conference on web accessibility. ACM, p 36
Rocha T, Gonçalves M, Godinho F, Magalhães L, Bessa M (2009) Accessibility and usability in the Internet for people with intellectual disabilities. In: Proceedings of 2nd international conference on software development for enhancing accessibility and fighting info-exclusion-DSAI, pp 25–29
Sadet A, Conrad S (2011) Page segmentation by web content clustering. https://doi.org/10.1145/1988688.1988717
Safi W, Maurel F, Routoure J-M, Beust P, Dias G (2015) A hybrid segmentation of web pages for vibro-tactile access on touch-screen devices. https://doi.org/10.3115/v1/w14-5414
Sanoja A, Gançarski S (2014) Block-o-Matic: a web page segmentation framework. In: 2014 international conference on multimedia computing and systems (ICMCS), 14–16 April 2014, pp 595–600. https://doi.org/10.1109/icmcs.2014.6911249
Schnelle (2013) JVoiceXML. http://webdesign.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=webdesign&cdn=compute&tm=171&f=00&tt=14&bt=3&bts=31&zu=http%3A//jvoicexml.sourceforge.net/. 2015
Scientific F JAWS screen reader. http://sales.freedomscientific.com/Category/11_1/JAWS%C2%AE_Screen_Reader.aspx
Song R, Liu H, Wen J-R, Ma W-Y (2004) Learning block importance models for web pages. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web, New York, NY, USA
Soviak A, Borodin A, Ashok V, Borodin Y, Puzis Y, Ramakrishnan I (2016) Tactile accessibility: does anyone need a haptic glove? In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 18th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility
Sun Z, Mahmud J, Ramakrishnan IV, Mukherjee S (2007) Model-directed Web transactions under constrained modalities. ACM Trans Web (TWEB) 1:12. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1281480.1281482
SuperNova (2013) Screen reader from Dolphin. http://www.yourdolphin.com/productdetail.asp?id=1. 2015
Szpiro SFA, Hashash S, Zhao Y, Azenkot S (2016) How people with low vision access computing devices: understanding challenges and opportunities. In: Proceedings of the 18th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility. ACM, pp 171–180
The Web: Access and inclusion for disabled people; a formal investigation (2004). The Stationery Office
Theofanos MF, Redish JG (2005) Helping low-vision and other users with web sites that meet their needs: is one site for all feasible? Tech Commun 52:9–20
Vineel G (2010) Web page DOM node characterization and its application to page segmentation. https://doi.org/10.1109/imsaa.2009.5439444
VoiceOver (2015) Screen reader from Apple, vol 2011
VoiceXML (2009) W3C—voice extensible markup language. http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml20. 2015
WAI (1997) W3C web accessibility initiative. http://www.w3.org/WAI/. 2010
Wang J, Liu Z (2009) A novel method for the web page segmentation and identification, vol 1. https://doi.org/10.1109/iccet.2009.149
Wang Y, Fang B, Cheng X, Guo L, Xu H (2008) Incremental web page template detection. https://doi.org/10.1145/1367497.1367749
WCAG (2009) W3C web content accessibility guidelines. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/. 2010
WHO (2014) Visual impairment and blindness. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/. 2015
WHO-disability-data (2011). http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/report/en/
Window-Eyes (2010) Screen reader GW Micro, vol 2010
Xiao X, Luo Q, Hong D, Fu H (2005) Slicing*-tree based web page transformation for small displays. https://doi.org/10.1145/1099554.1099638
Xiao Y, Tao Y, Li Q (2008) Web page adaptation for mobile device. https://doi.org/10.1109/wicom.2008.1182
Yan H, Miao M (2009) Research and implementation on multi-cues based page segmentation algorithm. https://doi.org/10.1109/cise.2009.5363822
Yi L, Liu B (2003) Eliminating noisy information in web pages for data mining. In: Paper presented at the in proceedings of the ACM conference on knowledge discovery and data mining
Yin X, Lee WS (2004) Using link analysis to improve layout on mobile devices. In: Paper presented at the in proceedings of the international World Wide Web conference (WWW)
Yu S, Cai D, Wen J-R, Ma W-Y (2003) Improving pseudo-relevance feedback in web information retrieval using web page segmentation. In: Paper presented at the in proceedings of the international World Wide Web conference (WWW)
Zajicek M, Powell C, Reeves C (1999) Web search and orientation with BrookesTalk. In: Paper presented at the technology and persons with disabilities conference (CSUN)
Zhai Y, Liu B (2005) Web data extraction based on partial tree alignment. In: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web. ACM, pp 76–85
Zhang A, Jing J, Kang L, Zhang L (2010) Precise web page segmentation based on semantic block headers detection
Zhong Y, Raman TV, Burkhardt C, Biadsy F, Bigham JP (2014) JustSpeak: enabling universal voice control on Android. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 11th web for all conference, Seoul, Korea
Zhu J, Nie Z, Wen J-R, Zhang B, Ma W-Y (2006) Simultaneous record detection and attribute labeling in web data extraction. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining. ACM, pp 494–503
Acknowledgments
We thank Hae-Na Lee for reviewing the manuscript and the research literature. The preparation of this chapter has been supported by NIH Award: R01EY026621, NIDILRR award: 90IF0117-01-00 and NSF awards: 1805076.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ramakrishnan, I.V., Ashok, V., Billah, S.M. (2019). Alternative Nonvisual Web Browsing Techniques. In: Yesilada, Y., Harper, S. (eds) Web Accessibility. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7440-0_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7440-0_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-7439-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-7440-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)