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WebinSitu: a comparative analysis of blind and sighted browsing behavior

Published: 15 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Web browsing is inefficient for blind web users because of persistent accessibility problems, but the extent of these problems and their practical effects from the perspective of the user has not been sufficiently examined. We conducted a study in situ to investigate the accessibility of the web as experienced by web users. This remote study used an advanced web proxy that leverages AJAX technology to record both the pages viewed and the actions taken by users on the web pages that they visited. Our study was conducted remotely over the period of one week, and our participants used the assistive technology and software to which they were already accustomed and had already configured according to preference. These advantages allowed us to aggregate observations of many users and to explore the practical effects on and coping strategies employed by our blind participants. Our study reflects web accessibility from the perspective of web users and describes quantitative differences in the browsing behavior of blind and sighted web users.

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cover image ACM Conferences
Assets '07: Proceedings of the 9th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
October 2007
282 pages
ISBN:9781595935731
DOI:10.1145/1296843
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]

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Publication History

Published: 15 October 2007

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Author Tags

  1. blind users
  2. web accessibility
  3. web studies

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

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Cited By

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  • (2024)The Promise and Pitfalls of Web Accessibility Overlays for Blind and Low Vision UsersProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675650(1-12)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Breaking the News Barrier: Towards Understanding News Consumption Practices among BVI Individuals in IndiaProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675608(1-11)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Voicing barriers: accessibility for visually impaired voiceover users on audio chat platformsUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-024-01096-0Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
  • (2023)Speaking with My Screen Reader: Using Audio Fictions to Explore Conversational Access to InterfacesProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608404(1-18)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Evaluating Search Results Overviews and Previews with Visually Impaired UsersProceedings of the 16th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments10.1145/3594806.3596523(680-685)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Understanding and Improving Drilled-Down Information Extraction from Online Data Visualizations for Screen-Reader UsersProceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference10.1145/3587281.3587284(18-31)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
  • (2023)AutoDesc: Facilitating Convenient Perusal of Web Data Items for Blind UsersProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3581641.3584049(32-45)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2023
  • (2023)The Accessibility of Data Visualizations on the Web for Screen Reader Users: Practices and Experiences During COVID-19ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/355789916:1(1-29)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2023
  • (2023)Hacking, Switching, Combining: Understanding and Supporting DIY Assistive Technology Design by Blind PeopleProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581249(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Beyond Alternative Text and tables: Comparative Analysis of Visualization Tools and Accessibility MethodsComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1483342:3(323-335)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2023
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