This grant will make it possible to establish a laboratory for Web accessibility. This computing research infrastructure will enable research on technologies for processing Web content for multiple user populations, including users with visual disabilities, mobile users, and computer science researchers. In particular, the laboratory will be used to perform research on transaction processing and for extensive evaluation activities. Central to this work is a non-visual Web browser called HearSay, targeted at users with visual disabilities.
The broader impacts of the research made possible by this infrastructure include providing greatly improved tools to allow visually impaired people to perform important tasks on the World Wide Web, such as: completing a survey at the social security administration, reserving a book at a university library, online bill paying, and shopping.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE The World Wide Web has become indispensable to people in our society, who use it daily to find information, communicate with others, and perform tasks for work, banking, shopping, and education. However, the graphical nature of most browsing software as well as the diversity and complexity of web content has limited the access to this technology for an entire community of persons with visual disabilities. Existing audio browsers that are based on text-to-speech conversion (e.g. screen readers) are not capable of describing the conceptual organization of a document's content or of letting a user perform Web transactions (e.g. shopping, banking) unassisted. As a result, people with visual disabilities find browsing time-consuming because of information overload, and require assistance to perform commercial and educational transactions over the Web. The primary purpose of this award was to build the Web Accessibility Lab. The lab facilitated several leading-edge projects with the overall goal of advancing the state of the art in accessibility software for helping blind and low vision individuals to access the web. The primary outcome was HearSay – an advanced state-of-the art assistive web browsing system for people with visual disabilities. It Incorporates multimodal features – Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech Conversion, Keyboard Input, Braille Input/Output and Touch. It has advanced algorithms to label web elements in a page such as text boxes in forms, support macros for dealing with repetitive tasks, transaction models to support online transactions, support for user generated metadata annotations and touch-based interaction. It provides remote access to the Web via phones and VoIP (Voice over IP). Other features include support for access to social networks, Accessible Web Automation, Non-Visual Skimming and Distraction-free TTS Narration. The HearSay system has been evaluated by several dozens of blind subjects and has been enthusiatically embarced by them. A technology startup has been formed to make the technology industry-strength.
