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research-article

WebAnywhere: a screen reader on-the-go

Authors:

Jeffrey P. Bigham,

Craig M. Prince,

Richard E. LadnerAuthors Info & Claims

W4A '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)

Pages 73 - 82

https://doi.org/10.1145/1368044.1368060

Published: 21 April 2008 Publication History

Abstract

People often use computers other than their own to access web content, but blind users are restricted to using only computers equipped with expensive, special-purpose screen reading programs that they use to access the web. Web-Anywhere is a web-based, self-voicing web browser that enables blind web users to access the web from almost any computer that can produce sound without installing new software. The system could serve as a convenient, low-cost solution for blind users on-the-go, for blind users unable to afford a full screen reader and for web developers targeting accessible design. This paper overviews existing solutions for mobile web access for blind users and presents the design of the WebAnywhere system. WebAnywhere generates speech remotely and uses prefetching strategies designed to reduce perceived latency. A user evaluation of the system is presented showing that blind users can use Web-Anywhere to complete tasks representative of what users might want to complete on computers that are not their own. A survey of public computer terminals shows that WebAnywhere can run on most.

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Sharif AKim JXu JWobbrock J(2024)Understanding and Reducing the Challenges Faced by Creators of Accessible Online Data VisualizationsProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675625(1-20)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663548.3675625
Choi GSeo J(2024)Accessibility, Usability, and Universal Design for Learning: Discussion of Three Key LX/UX Elements for Inclusive Learning DesignTechTrends10.1007/s11528-024-00987-668:5(936-945)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
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Index Terms

WebAnywhere: a screen reader on-the-go
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
2. Social and professional topics

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

W4A '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)

April 2008

207 pages

ISBN:9781605581538

DOI:10.1145/1368044

General Chair:
Yeliz Yesilada
University of Manchester, UK.
,
Program Chair:
David Sloan
University of Dundee, UK.

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

The Mozilla Foundation
Google Inc.
Microsoft: Microsoft
Zakon Group
SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 April 2008

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Research-article

Funding Sources

Division of Information and Intelligent Systems

Conference

W4A08

Sponsor:

Microsoft
SIGACCESS

W4A08: International Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility

April 21 - 22, 2008

Beijing, China

Acceptance Rates

W4A '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 12 of 29 submissions, 41%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241261963
Sharif AKim JXu JWobbrock J(2024)Understanding and Reducing the Challenges Faced by Creators of Accessible Online Data VisualizationsProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675625(1-20)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663548.3675625
Choi GSeo J(2024)Accessibility, Usability, and Universal Design for Learning: Discussion of Three Key LX/UX Elements for Inclusive Learning DesignTechTrends10.1007/s11528-024-00987-668:5(936-945)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-024-00987-6
Loveys MButler C(2023)Teachers’ and students’ perspectives on the extent to which assistive technology maximises independenceBritish Journal of Visual Impairment10.1177/02646196231212736Online publication date: 24-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/02646196231212736
Garg DKaur A(2023)Wikipedia for the Blind- a Voice Command Based Screen Reader for Efficient Navigation within Wikipedia2023 14th International Conference on Computing Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT)10.1109/ICCCNT56998.2023.10306726(1-6)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCCNT56998.2023.10306726
Sulong SYusof R(2023)Developing a blind user mental model (BlUMM) for web browsingUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-023-01035-5Online publication date: 29-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-023-01035-5
Qiao LSullivan A(2022)Twine Screen Reader: A Browser Extension for Improving the Accessibility of Twine Stories for People with Visual ImpairmentsInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-031-22298-6_37(577-589)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22298-6_37
مصطفى الخليفة محاج الحسن ع(2021)قياس تجربة المستخدم لمتصفح ويب: مقترح قائم على الإدراك السمعي لذوي الإعاقات البصريةArabian Journal of Scientific Research-المجلة العربية للبحث العلمي10.5339/ajsr.2021.52 (2021):1Online publication date: 10-Jun-2021
https://doi.org/10.5339/ajsr.2021.5
Senjam SManna SBascaran C(2021)Smartphones-Based Assistive Technology: Accessibility Features and Apps for People with Visual Impairment, and its Usage, Challenges, and Usability TestingClinical Optometry10.2147/OPTO.S336361Volume 13(311-322)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.2147/OPTO.S336361
Storer KSampath HMerrick MKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)”It’s Just Everything Outside of the IDE that’s the Problem”:Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445090(1-12)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445090
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