Universal Access to Multimedia Documents

Petrie, Helen; Weber, Gerhard; Völkel, Thorsten

doi:10.1201/9781420064995-c46

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…This is particularly important and useful for people who are not able to access the print version, such as the visually-impaired, including for educational purposes [10]. Unfortunately, currently available eBooks don't allow the blind users to properly and satisfactorily read the content via screen reader [11]. The content is usually not well designed, because: (i) the images are not equipped with alternative descriptions; (ii) the table of contents is not available or well-structured; (iii) the organization of the eBook in chapters, sections and sub-sections is not well-designed for effective interaction via screen reader, especially on touchscreen devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Enriched ePub eBook for Screen Reader Users

Bartalesi

Leporini

2015

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Abstract. Our study aims at obtaining ePub accessibility for all, including screen reader users. Since an ePub document is made up of several (X)HTML files, we analysed and worked with those (X)HTML tags that affect the blind user's experience in the reading. As a case study we developed an "enriched" ePub book which applies technical solutions (i.e. tags and attributes) with the purpose to overcome the accessibility and usability issues observed when interacting via screen reader. In this work we present the results collected through an online survey conducted with 25 users to evaluate the "enriched" ePub compared with the original PDF format in terms of accessibility and usability. Positive responses about the proposed solutions emerged from the survey: the easy access to the table of content, to the images, to the text and also the ease of navigation. In short, 88 % of the users preferred the ePub format instead of the PDF. This confirms that quite simple technical solutions can really improve the reading experience for not only visually impaired people. The results from the survey also showed accessibility issues and limitations of the screen readers and eBook reader software which still exist.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%