Design and Improvement on Accessible Website — Co-Life System as a Case

Abstract

With the development of network technology, it is necessary for people living in modern life to access as well as to share information through the Internet. The current communication software can support image and voice transmission, allowing users to join online meeting or distance learning. The purpose of this research is to modify the current web-based Co-Life system to be accessible for the visually impaired people. such that they could use this platform to pursue distant learning, which could enhance their core ability in facing the information explosive. Visually impaired people and sighted people are invited to participate in the research to form a task force to discuss problems by using the event – trigger method. We adopted the revised version of co-life online conference system for the visually impaired. Then, an experiment was conducted with eight blind subjects to test the web accessibility comparing the original and revised systems. The test data were analyzed using GOMS model and statistical methods. The results of average, paired sample t-test and nonparametric analysis indicated that the revised version was better compared to the original version in terms of task-completion time, number of errors, search steps, and NASA-TLX score. The subjective evaluation revealed that the revised version was more user friendly compared to the original version. In addition, the result of GOMS method showed that the revised version was better compared to the original version in terms of operation efficiency. Finally, this design conformed to web accessibility development guideline of Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan, and got the marker A+.