Adapting the Web for People With Upper Body Motor Impairments Using Touch Screen Tablets

Abstract

People with disabilities frequently use the Internet to perform a variety of common activities; however, they may often encounter aggravated accessibility barriers when using mobile devices to access the Web. In order to alleviate the problems faced by this group when using mobile devices, we have extended a previously developed transcoding-based system that adapts nonaccessible web pages to the needs of specific users in order to enhance their accessibility. In this version, we included new adaptation techniques gathered from the literature in order to apply transcoding techniques to mobile devices. The enhanced system was evaluated with eight users with reduced mobility using tablets. The exploratory study suggests that alternative interaction methods such as the ones named 'end tap' and 'steady tap' are beneficial for some participants with reduced mobility, dexterity or strength in the upper limbs. Other results show that six of the eight users preferred the adapted version with enlarged interaction elements which required less physical effort, even if this adaptation increases the size of the page with the disadvantages associated with such a change. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS• Introduction and evaluation of a web transcoding system that adapts web pages for people with motor impairments who use touch screen devices.• Tagging the target websites with an extension of the WAI-ARIA mark-up language enabling web transcoding.• From the evaluation, transcoded pages were revealed to be the preferred option for most of the participants, as they require less physical effort.• Participants were classified in function of the type and size of finger movement for target selection on touch screen devices, in order to evaluate the performance of diverse alternative interaction methods or gestures.• Alternative interaction methods were tested by motor impaired users: 'end tap' and 'steady tap' proved to be helpful for people with less finger movement control.

Empirical Insights of Individual Website Adjustments for People with Dyslexia

“…The most consistent selection was parameter “font type” (Arial, 67%), while the other two parameters (”font size” and “contrast between background and font”) were within the recommendations for people with dyslexia [20,29,38], even though the selections diverged between participants. Therefore, the results do support existing findings that there is no universal dyslexic web user [8] and that one universal design of a website is not suitable for people with dyslexia [15], because their needs and preferences are too diverse.…”

“…A customised website could lead to an increase in web accessibility as well as in web usability for people with disabilities [18,22,23], including for people with dyslexia [9,24]. The existing literature shows that a universal design is not appropriate for everyone with dyslexia due to the individual profiles of people with different needs, demands and preferences [15]. Based on this, our study investigated how people with dyslexia react to a customised website that is in accordance with their individual needs and preferences in terms of their usability and suitability and compared their results with the usability and suitability of the default version of a website.…”

“…Furthermore, there is also no universal dyslexic web user [8]. Therefore, recommendations for designing universal websites can be challenging because a single design may not work for everyone due to the different needs and preferences of individuals with dyslexia [15]. Therefore, some authors recommend using a customisable web environment [9,16] with the possibility of website transformation [17,18] in accordance with users’ individual needs and preferences.…”

Longitudinal Study of Two Virtual Cursors for People With Motor Impairments: A Performance and Satisfaction Analysis on Web Navigation

“…Accordingly, Keates et al [6] detected that users with MIs had to make an additional effort to plan and control physical movements resulting in them being 50% slower than their counterparts without motor disabilities. Other authors also found pointing and clicking actions to be less precise and more time consuming for people with MIs [7]- [17].…”