Alex Qiang Chen
I am a PhD Student in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. My research group is the Information Management Group where I am a member of the Web Ergonomics Lab. Currently, I am being supervised by Dr. Simon Harper where I am researching how we can make the Web more accessible for people with disabilities, and identify the evolutionary trends of the Web.
My main research area lies in the field of Web Accessibility Evolution. Currently, my research focused on providing solutions for the Web community so that it can be made easily accessible to all people regardless of ability. This includes people with disability. Another area that I am actively investigating concerns how the Web evolve and how this evolution affects the Web community.
Projects Index
Widget Identification and Modification for Web 2.0 Access Technologies (WIMWAT)
The WIMWAT project attempts to comprehend Web page's source code, so that Web widgets that produce inaccessible content can be identified, in order to modify them into an accessible form during development. Applying this project during development, Web developers not only can verify the accessibility of the content produced by these widget, but also assist them when inserting appropriate information; such as Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) tags. Hence, these modified widgets can be better interpreted by screen readers; making them more accessible. At the moment, my PhD research focus mainly on this area, you can read the publications of this project at my publications page.
You can find out more about WIMWAT at http://wel.cs.manchester.ac.uk/research/wimwat/
Web Evolution
The World Wide Web (Web) is a heterogeneous environment that is in constant evolutionary change. This includes technological changes, the management of data structures used to present the Web content, and guidelines. A lag is noticed between the time these standards and recommendations were introduced to when they were adopted by the developers. This causes a disconnection between the actual user experience, and what was expected by the technology stake-holders. This project investigates the relationship that surrounds these issues, especially those involving the Web user interface. It is a continuation of my Masters project so that Web technologies and accessibility issues can be identified.
To read the publications on Web Evolution visit http://hcw-eprints.cs.man.ac.uk/view/subjects/web-evolution.html
