HCC: Small: Navigating the Aural Web

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

The PI's goal in this project is to establish advanced design strategies for the aural navigation of complex Web information architectures, where users exclusively or primarily listen to, rather than look at, content and navigational prompts. Conventional on-screen visual displays may not work well, if at all, in many situations. The most obvious instances occur when persons who are blind or visually impaired need to use technologies designed for sighted users. A much more common situation, however, occurs with users of mobile devices. These users are often engaged in another activity (e.g., walking around a city or driving a car) where it is inconvenient, distracting or even dangerous to continuously look at the screen. On the one hand, Web accessibility guidelines have focused on ensuring that websites are readable by assistive technologies (screen readers). On the other hand, recent aural browsers enable a more intelligent visual-to-aural transformation of specific features of Web pages. These advances, however, do not fully address the larger issue of aurally navigating complex information architectures. Previous work by the PI has shown that an effective aural experience requires the elaboration of new navigation patterns in order to overcome the limits imposed by the linearity of the aural medium. The PI will build on these preliminary results in the current project, in order to provide an advanced level of usability for audio-based web interactions. He will explore conceptual design patterns for aural navigation, by iteratively creating and refining aural design strategies inspired by the structural paradigms of human dialogues for back and history navigation, and browsing in large collections. A series of evaluation studies involving both visually impaired participants using screen readers and sighted participants using mobile devices will assess the potential and limits of the aural navigation paradigms to enhance the effectiveness of Web navigation. . Broader Impacts: This project will directly involve blind users in the design and evaluation of new aural design strategies, in collaboration with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI). Project outcomes will yield a better understanding of the design issues and solutions for aural navigation, which will provide a solid long-term intellectual basis for the creation of better applications for visually-impaired users and for audio-only navigation contexts. In addition, the PI will work proactively to expand student participation in the research enterprise on his campus, by establishing user experience undergraduate labs.