Najd Al-Mouh and Hend S. Al-Khalifa
Millions of visually impaired people (VIP) in the world still face difficulties browsing the Web and accessing information. This paper aims to present a proxy service that takes…
Abstract
Purpose
Millions of visually impaired people (VIP) in the world still face difficulties browsing the Web and accessing information. This paper aims to present a proxy service that takes advantage of the concept of context-aware to help contextualizing web pages for visually impaired users.
Design/methodology/approach
The VIP-aware proxy combines five components to utilize the user preferences, adapts the requested web page and reorganizes its content to best match the preferences set by the user. This new scenario will assist VIP in browsing the Web more effectively.
Findings
A preliminary evaluation of the system resulted in general user satisfaction.
Practical implications
The VIP-aware proxy will provide users with a clean, accessible web page, save them time when screen readers examine content related to their preferences and save them money when unnecessary content is not downloaded.
Originality/value
The VIP-aware proxy presented in this paper is the first of its kind targeting VIP.
Details
Keywords
Najd Al-Mouh and Hend S. Al-Khalifa
– This paper aims to investigate accessibility and usage of mobile smartphones by Arabic-speaking visually impaired people in Saudi Arabia.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate accessibility and usage of mobile smartphones by Arabic-speaking visually impaired people in Saudi Arabia.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 104 participants with visual impairments were interviewed about their use of mobile phones with the following questions: What is the most commonly used mobile phone? What is the popular domain for which they use mobile phones? What are their favorite applications? What accessibility challenges do they usually face while using mobile phones? How often do they use the Internet via mobile phones and what are the reasons behind that?
Findings
This research is the first study with such magnitude to investigate smartphone usage by Arabic-speaking visually impaired people. The survey has revealed that Arabic-speaking visually impaired people utilize mobile phones in different ways and strategies. Getting assistance in performing daily tasks and navigating independently are two of the most common uses for mobile phones.
Originality/value
Based on the findings, the authors are going to propose some guidelines to developers to improve smartphone accessibility, application design and Internet usage to improve accessibility for visually impaired people.