André Pimenta Freire

Accessibility Evaluation of E-Government Mobile Applications in Brazil☆

Abstract The provision of e-government services using mobile applications (known as m-government) has had a significant growth in recent years. However, it is very important that such applications be accessible to people with disabilities in order to ensure inclusive access. Using appropriate accessibility auditing methods is very important to help identify accessibility problems in interactive systems during their development. However, there has been little support in terms of formal standard accessibility guidelines to help develop and evaluate mobile applications. In this paper, we present a case study with the evaluation of four e-government mobile applications in Brazil using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. The paper discusses the methodological adaptations of WCAG 2.0 for the context of mobile applications and its current limitations. The results of the evaluations performed in the four applications in the case study showed that many elementary accessibility problems widely known by HCI researchers were encountered extensively in the applications evaluated. This highlights the importance of furthering research in accessibility design and evaluation of mobile applications, in order to provide more inclusive access to essential applications used by all citizens, such as e-government services.

WebHelpDyslexia: A Browser Extension to Adapt Web Content for People with Dyslexia

Abstract The Web is an essential resource widely used by many organizations, affecting the lives of countless people. Thus, it is essential to ensure that Websites are accessible in order for people with disabilities to enjoy all its benefits. Many studies have been dedicated to investigate Web accessibility issues for users with visual or motor disabilities. However, comparatively fewer studies have addressed accessibility for users with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. Furthermore, few tools provide support for dyslexic users during reading and browsing in Web content. The present study involved the design and implementation of a prototype extension for a Web browser that offers customization features of Web pages, based on requirements from problems encountered by users with dyslexia in related studies in the literature. The research involved the design, implementation and a preliminary user evaluation involving users with dyslexia in two iterative cycles. The implemented prototype included features to adjust layout characteristics of text and other features identified by means of feedback from users to aid concentration and dealing with difficult words, such as a “reading ruler”. The results obtained from this study highlighted the importance of providing further support in user agents to help dyslexic users and provide tools to help with linguistic issues.

Native or Web-Hybrid Apps?: An Analysis of the Adequacy for Accessibility of Android Interface Components Used with Screen Readers

Creating accessible mobile applications involves several important design decisions in order to accommodate the needs of disabled users, especially people with visual disabilities who use screen readers. The goal of the study presented in this paper was to analyze the adequacy of interface components to implement mobile applications, in order to identify the main accessibility problems that could be encountered by developers when using them, and the main strategies to overcome those issues. We performed an accessibility evaluation of a sample of 30 Android interface components present in 3 prototypes of mobile applications, employing the development techniques of native applications with and withoug Web components and hybrid development using the Apache Cordova framework. The results showed that the prototypes developed using web components were more compatible with accessibility criteria in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and with the screen reader Talkback. The most frequent accessibility problems in such components occurred in tables, headings and multimedia elements. Based on the current challenges for accessibility in mobile applications, we highlight the limitations of some interface components and emphasize that more studies need to be carried out to consolidate accessibility guidelines and good practices for mobile devices.

Automatically Generated Summaries as In-Page Web Navigation Accelerators for Blind Users

Blind users often experience a high information overload when browsing through textual content on long Web pages. This occurs mainly because these users browse the Web using screen reader software that reads line by line text content sequentially, causing the user to listen to much of the content until finding what is relevant, especially when there are scant structural elements (such as headings) to help them. In order to reduce the information overload of blind users on the Web, the aim of this work was to develop and evaluate an application that provides these users with an automatic summary with the main information of the page, allowing a direct navigation between the summary and the text through anchors to enable faster navigation. The paper explored three different summarization approaches for Brazilian Portuguese. To evaluate navigation aspects and the most appropriate types of summaries, user tests were performed with three blind users and four normal-vision users. The results showed good acceptance of the prototype, with indication of the preferred summarization approaches and implications for design to help users better use those resources in tasks where skimming long texts is necessary.

Accessibility and usability problems encountered on websites and applications in mobile devices by blind and normal-vision users

This paper aimed to investigate the accessibility problems encountered by visually disabled and mainstream users on websites and native applications using mobile devices. A total of 10 participants, consisting of 6 blind users and 4 mainstream users took part in this study. A sample of 4 websites and their respective 4 native applications from commercial and governmental organizations were selected and evaluated by means of usability tests. The evaluation resulted in a total of 514 problems encountered, being 409 by blind users and 105 by normal-vision users. The most frequent and most severe problems encountered by blind users on the mobile applications and websites are detailed and compared to the impact they had on mainstream users. The results show initial evidence of critical problems that need to be addressed in the development of mobile applications and websites. Further, they point out to the need of performing more in-depth investigation of accessibility problems encountered by users with visual disabilities to establish effective recommendations to designers. The paper also showed that blind users were more severely impacted by problems in such devices than normal-vision users.

How Much Effort is Necessary for Blind Users to Read Web-based Mathematical Formulae?: A comparison using task models with different screen readers

Providing access to mathematical content on websites for blind users who use screen readers has been an important challenge for accessibility in Human-Computer Interaction. Further to limitations in reading content in languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, there are many issues related to the effort demanded from blind users to navigate within mathematical formulae when solving problems to reach for specific information. In this paper, we performed estimations of the effort required by blind users to navigate within mathematical formulae using task models with GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules) and KLM (Keystroke-Level Model). We analyzed task models for different mathematical formulae using available navigation resources in the screen readers JAWS (Job Access With Speech), ChromeVox and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access), considering the optimal paths that could be used by experienced blind users. The results showed that JAWS currently provides more detailed navigation resources that allow for faster and more precise navigation than ChromeVox and NVDA. However, we observed that there are important issues regarding the complexity of the interactions required to use those navigation resources. This could be very challenging for blind users when performing mathematical problem solving tasks, which are cognitively-demanding themselves. The investigation of new enhanced interaction approaches for within-formulae navigation in screen readers is very important to make mathematical learning and problem solving on the Web easier for blind users.

Usability Evaluation of a Web System for Spatially Oriented Audio Descriptions of Images Addressed to Visually Impaired People

This paper describes a web system designed to provide spatially oriented audio descriptions of an image for visually impaired users. The system uses a hardware-independent platform of the technique of multimodal presentation of images. Visually impaired users interact with an image displayed on the screen while moving the cursor – with a mouse or a tablet (pen or finger touch) – and listening to the audio description of previously marked areas within the image. The paper also describes the usability evaluation performed with five participants and its main results. Generally, the five participants accomplished the usability test tasks and could better understand the image displayed. The paper also describes the main findings and discusses some implications for design, suggesting some improvements.