TableView: Enabling Efficient Access to Web Data Records for Screen-Magnifier Users

Abstract

People with visual impairments typically rely on screen-magnifier assistive technology to interact with webpages. As screen-magnifier users can only view a portion of the webpage content in an enlarged form at any given time, they have to endure an inconvenient and arduous process of repeatedly moving the magnifier focus back-and-forth over different portions of the webpage in order to make comparisons between data records, e.g., comparing the available flights in a travel website based on their prices, durations, etc. To address this issue, we designed and developed TableView, a browser extension that leverages a state-of-the art information extraction method to automatically identify and extract data records and their attributes in a webpage, and subsequently presents them to a user in a compactly arranged tabular format that needs significantly less screen space compared to that currently occupied by these items in the page. This way, TableView is able to pack more items within the magnifier focus, thereby reducing the overall content area for panning, and hence making it easy for screen-magnifier users to compare different items before making their selections. A user study with 16 low vision participants showed that with TableView, the time spent on panning the data records in webpages was significantly reduced by 72.9% (avg.) compared to that with just a screen magnifier, and 66.5% compared to that with a screen magnifier using a space compaction method.