Can search result summaries enhance the web search efficiency and experiences of the visually impaired users?

Abstract

There are limited studies that are addressing the challenges of visually impaired (VI) users when viewing search results on a search engine interface by using a screen reader. This study investigates the effect of providing an overview of search results to VI users. We present a novel interactive search engine interface called InteractSE to support VI users during the results exploration stage in order to improve their interactive experience and web search efficiency. An overview of the search results is generated using an unsupervised machine learning approach to present the discovered concepts via a formal concept analysis that is domain-independent. These concepts are arranged in a multi-level tree following a hierarchical order and covering all retrieved documents that share maximal features. The InteractSE interface was evaluated by 16 legally blind users and compared with the Google search engine interface for complex search tasks. The evaluation results were obtained based on both quantitative (as task completion time) and qualitative (as participants’ feedback) measures. These results are promising and indicate that InteractSE enhances the search efficiency and consequently advances user experience. Our observations and analysis of the user interactions and feedback yielded design suggestions to support VI users when exploring and interacting with search results.

Comparison of accessibility and usability of digital libraries in mobile platforms: blind and visually impaired users’ assessment

“…Satisfaction is one of the top usability variables for evaluating users' overall perception of information retrieval systems (Sbaffi and Zhao, 2020;Xie et al, 2018;Xu and Du, 2018). In the desktop environment, Aqle et al (2020) created a search interface for blind and visually impaired users with enhanced accessibility and usability functions and compared it with the Google interface. The result demonstrated that this interface reduced search time and increased user satisfaction over Google.…”

ICT accessibility Research Capacity building in the State of Qatar

“…This search engine uses Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to generate an overview of search results. InteractSE was evaluated with 16 users [23] and five HCI experts [24], showing a significant improvement in search efficiency and individual user experience for VI web users. The team continues to work on research projects related to accessibility and looking for aspiring scientists to join this journey.…”

Digital accessibility: A systematic Literature Review

“…The authors [22,23] focused on the search engine as an essential component for searching information and proposed in their studies interactive tools to improve the interactive experience with the search engine. The authors [23] described a prototype search engine that provides a re-ranked set of search results.…”