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Improving the Web surfing experience for blind and partially sighted users

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From: Abby Dacres
Date: Apr 6, 2004 6:07AM

Hi
I am a student at Bradford University studying internet computing. I had an
idea for a HCI project that involves designing a user interface to help
improve the web-user experience for partially sighted or blind users. It is
a purely conceptual idea, but I need to be able to explain how it could be
done. I rather thought that something would already exist, if only a
research project, that I could review for the purposes of my report. However
I am struggling to find anything...I was wondering if there was anyone out
there that could point me in the right direction or give me your thoughts on
its limitations...

The Surf Pad
I wanted to develop a portable pad, that would act in much the same way as a
mouse, ie it would emulate a cursor on the screen. This pad will have
raised icons or braille for say internet explorer, search buttons and zoom
buttons(these could be configured to automatically load up the user's choice
of search engine and zoom scale. The main area of the pad will act as a
touch screen with a raised cursor that can be moved around. My first thought
was something akin to a marble inside a gel-like layer that when pressed in
would serve in the same way as a click of a mouse led cursor. This would
allow the user to feel where they last were on the screen. So in effect it
would act like a touch screen but with a tool that could be detected by
touch and moved around. My feeling was that its position both on the screen
and the pad could be easily detected during periods of periodic use. It
would be used in conjunction with a screen reader but it would remove the
need for tabbing through endless links. It would enable the user to scan
and surf the web page in much the same way as a sighted user can.
What do you think of the concept? Do you think the idea is usable? Or do you
think it is a crazy idea?
Thank you for your valuable time
Abby dacres

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