EVITA
Enabling Visually Impaired Table Accessing
Summary
Tables remain a persistent problem for visually impaired people using screen readers. Tables are complex structures that are widely used for different purposes such as spatial layout or data summarisation. The multi-dimensional nature of tables challenges the linear interaction styles typically supported by screen readers. To read a table, a user needs to maintain coherency of, and interact with more than one dimension. In this project, we first characterise why tables are useful in print, but difficult to read in the audio. We survey the relationship between table structure, intention and the reading styles employed to use the content of tables. This project proposes an approach that supports non-visual interaction with tables. This approach is designed to support the characteristics of tables that make them such a popular and useful means of conveying information. This approach provides a small table browser called EVITA (Enabling Visually Impaired Table Access), whose aim is to enable non-visual table browsing and reading in an analogous manner to the print medium.
Publications
[2] |
Yeliz Yesilada, Robert Stevens, Carole Goble, Shazad Hussein. Rendering Tables in Audio: The Interaction of
Structure and Reading Styles. To Appear in The Sixth International ACM SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies
(ASSETS), Atlanta, USA, 2004. [Bibtex entry]
|
[1] |
Yeliz Yesilada. Browsing Tables when you cannot see them. Master's thesis, The University of Manchester,
2000. [Bibtex entry | .zip
(.doc)]
|
Related Projects and References
The following list includes a number of projects that are related to improving accessibility of tables for visually impaired users:
- Asakawa, C. and Itoh, T., (1998), User Interface of a Home Page Reader, Proceedings of the Assets98 ACM conference on Assistive Technologies, 1998-4. [IBM Home Page Reader]
- Asakawa, C. and Oogane, T., (1998), An Interactive Method for accessing tables in HTML, Proceedings of the third international ACM conference on Assistive techologies, Marina del Rey, CA USA. [IBM Home Page Reader]
- Chisholm, W. and Novak, M., (1999), Increasing the Accessibility of the Web through style sheets, scripts and plug-ins, CSUN99: Proceedings of Technology and Persons with disabilities conference, California State university, Northridge.
- Earl, L. C., Jay, D. L. and Wehberg, K., (1999), A review of IBM Page Reader and pwWebSpeak, AFB: American Foundation for the Blind.
- Fuller, L., (1999), Evaluation of Table and Document Navigation Tools, The Trace Research & Development Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, State of Wisconsin.
- Genesereth, R. M. and Patterson, A., (1997), AHA Audio HTML Access, the sixth International World Wide Web Conference, Santa Clara: CA, IW3C, pp. 129-139.
- Zajicek, M., (2000), Increased accessibility to standard Web browsing software for Visually Impaired users, ICCHP, Karlesruhe.
- Wright, P. and Fox, K., Presenting Information in Tables, Applied Ergonomics, 1(1):234--242, 1970. (Patricia Wright has a number of great relevant papers, you can refer to her publications).
- Pontelli, E., Xiong, W., Gupta, G., and Karshmer, A.I., A Domain Specific Language framework for Non-visual Browsing of Complex HTML Structures, Assets '00: Proceedings of the fourth international ACM conference on Assistive technologies, New York, USA, 2000.
- Marchionini, G., Hert, C., Liddy, L. and Shneiderman, B.Extending Understanding of Federal Statistics in Tables, CUU '00: Proceedings on the 2000 conference on Universal Usability, New York, USA, 2000.
- Ramloll, R., Brewster, S., Yu, Y., and Riedel, B, Using Non-speech Sounds to Improve Access to 2D Tabular Numerical Information for Visually Impaired Users, Proceedings 15th British HCI Group Annual Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (IHMHCI), September 10-14,2001, Lille, France.
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Explore the matrix: Browsing numerical data tables using sound. In Proceedings of ICAD2005 (Limerick, Ireland), July 2005. ICAD, pp300-303.
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Exploratory Strategies and Procedures to Obtain Non-Visual Overviews Using TableVis. In Proceedings of ICDVRAT (Esbjerg, Denmark), pp 223-230.
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Providing a Size-Independent Overview of Non-Visual Tables. In Proceedings of ICAD 2006 (London, UK)
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Exploratory Strategies and Procedures to Obtain Non-Visual Overviews Using TableVis. In Proceedings of ICDVRAT (Esbjerg, Denmark), pp 223-230.
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Exploratory strategies and procedures to obtain non-visual overviews using TableVis. International Journal of Disability and Human development, 5(3), pp 285-294.
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Non-Visual Overviews of Complex Data Sets. In Vol II Proceedings of CHI 2006 (Montreal, Canada), ACM Press, pp 947-952.
- Kildal, J. and Brewster, S.A. Interactive Generation of Overview Information Using Speech. In Vol II Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 (San Jose, CA, USA), ACM Press, pp 2489 - 2494.
There are also a number of projects that investigate different ways of making tables accessible on mobile devices which include:
- Watters, C., Duffy, J., and Duffy, K. Using large tables on small devices. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 58, Issue 1, 2003.
- Watters, C., Zhang, R. and Duffy, J. Comparing Table Views for Small Devices. ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 2005.
- Wang, C., Xie, X., Wang, W. and Ma, Y. Improving Web Browsing on Small Devices Based on Table Classification. 2004 Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM 2004), Nov. 2004, Tokyo Waterfront City, Japan.
Contact
For further information, please contact Yeliz Yesilada.