research-article

Speed-Dial: A Surrogate Mouse for Non-Visual Web Browsing

Authors:

Syed Masum Billah,

Donald E. Porter,

IV RamakrishnanAuthors Info & Claims

ASSETS '17: Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Pages 110 - 119

https://doi.org/10.1145/3132525.3132531

Published: 19 October 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Sighted people can browse the Web almost exclusively using a mouse. This is because web browsing mostly entails pointing and clicking on some element in the web page, and these two operations can be done almost instantaneously with a computer mouse. Unfortunately, people with vision impairments cannot use a mouse as it only provides visual feedback through a cursor. Instead, they are forced to go through a slow and tedious process of building a mental map of the web page, relying primarily on a screen reader's keyboard shortcuts and its serial audio readout of the textual content of the page, including metadata. This can often cause content and cognitive overload.

This paper describes our Speed-Dial system which uses an off-the-shelf physical Dial as a surrogate for the mouse for non-visual web browsing. Speed-Dial interfaces the physical Dial with the semantic model of a web page, and provides an intuitive and rapid access to the entities and their content in the model, thereby bringing blind people's browsing experience closer to how sighted people perceive and interact with the Web. A user study with blind participants suggests that with Speed-Dial they can quickly move around the web page to select content of interest, akin to pointing and clicking with a mouse.

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Cited By

Venkatraman NAiyer APrakash YAshok V(2024)You Shall Know a Forum by the Words they Keep: Analyzing Language Use in Accessibility Forums for Blind UsersProceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3648188.3675151(230-238)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648188.3675151
Sunkara MPrakash YLee HJayarathna SAshok V(2023)Enabling Customization of Discussion Forums for Blind UsersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35932287:EICS(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
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Momotaz FEhtesham-Ul-Haque MBillah S(2023)Understanding the Usages, Lifecycle, and Opportunities of Screen Readers’ PluginsACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/358269716:2(1-35)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2023
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Index Terms

Speed-Dial: A Surrogate Mouse for Non-Visual Web Browsing
1. Hardware
  1. Communication hardware, interfaces and storage
    1. Tactile and hand-based interfaces
      1. Haptic devices
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Accessibility
    1. Accessibility technologies

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASSETS '17: Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 2017

450 pages

ISBN:9781450349260

DOI:10.1145/3132525

General Chair:
Amy Hurst
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Leah Findlater
University of Washington, USA
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research, USA

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

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SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 19 October 2017

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ASSETS '17

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SIGACCESS

ASSETS '17: The 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 20 - November 1, 2017

Maryland, Baltimore, USA

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ASSETS '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 126 submissions, 22%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648188.3675151
Sunkara MPrakash YLee HJayarathna SAshok V(2023)Enabling Customization of Discussion Forums for Blind UsersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35932287:EICS(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593228
Momotaz FEhtesham-Ul-Haque MBillah S(2023)Understanding the Usages, Lifecycle, and Opportunities of Screen Readers’ PluginsACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/358269716:2(1-35)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582697
Ferdous JLee HJayarathna SAshok V(2023)Enabling Efficient Web Data-Record Interaction for People with Visual Impairments via Proxy InterfacesACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/357936413:3(1-27)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579364
Ehtesham-Ul-Haque MMonsur SBillah S(2022)Grid-Coding: An Accessible, Efficient, and Structured Coding Paradigm for Blind and Low-Vision ProgrammersProceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3526113.3545620(1-21)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2022
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Colley MKränzle TRukzio E(2022)Accessibility-Related Publication Distribution in HCI Based on a Meta-AnalysisExtended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491101.3519701(1-28)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022
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Ferdous JLee HJayarathna SAshok V(2022)InSupport: Proxy Interface for Enabling Efficient Non-Visual Interaction with Web Data RecordsProceedings of the 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3490099.3511126(49-62)Online publication date: 22-Mar-2022
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Momotaz FIslam MEhtesham-Ul-Haque MBillah S(2021)Understanding Screen Readers’ PluginsProceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3441852.3471205(1-10)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2021
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Ferdous JUddin SAshok VHung CHong JBechini ASong E(2021)Semantic table-of-contents for efficient web screen readingProceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/3412841.3442066(1941-1949)Online publication date: 22-Mar-2021
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