<p>Currently, the world is facing challenges in accessing information on the web. Each second, millions of bytes of data are generated. Easy internet access has shifted users’ tendency towards online information retrieval systems. Notably, web search engines can retrieve relevant information from immense piles of available data. However, accessing web content can be a challenging task for blind users. Blind Web Users (BWUs) interact with web search engines via assistive technologies to retrieve web documents to satisfy their information needs. The assistive technologies, including screen readers, voice-overs, Braille, etc., aid BWUs in information exploration. The assistive technologies exploit list-based structures to access web search documents. In addition, web search engines can only partially employ assistive technologies to explore and navigate the search documents linearly. The web search documents presented in ranked linear lists could be inconvenient to reach, particularly for BWUs. In this research, we propose a nonlinear exploration approach and multimodal design that allow BWUs to explore and navigate non-linearly the search documents. The proposed nonlinear representation comprises interactive tree-based document categories and follows cognition rules to enable web search results exploration and navigation. We also provide an interactive interface design via the Search Results Exploration Tool for BWUs (SERB) targeting multimodal (textual and acoustic) queries and interactions. The approach is instantiated on an actual data set of Wikipedia web documents. Furthermore, the proposed exploration approach and multimodal interface design are evaluated via diverse standard usability tests to ensure usability and effectiveness.</p>

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SERB: an interactive exploration mechanism for blind web users to explore web search content

  • Snober Naseer,
  • Umer Rashid,
  • Maha Saddal,
  • Abdur Rehman Khan

摘要

Currently, the world is facing challenges in accessing information on the web. Each second, millions of bytes of data are generated. Easy internet access has shifted users’ tendency towards online information retrieval systems. Notably, web search engines can retrieve relevant information from immense piles of available data. However, accessing web content can be a challenging task for blind users. Blind Web Users (BWUs) interact with web search engines via assistive technologies to retrieve web documents to satisfy their information needs. The assistive technologies, including screen readers, voice-overs, Braille, etc., aid BWUs in information exploration. The assistive technologies exploit list-based structures to access web search documents. In addition, web search engines can only partially employ assistive technologies to explore and navigate the search documents linearly. The web search documents presented in ranked linear lists could be inconvenient to reach, particularly for BWUs. In this research, we propose a nonlinear exploration approach and multimodal design that allow BWUs to explore and navigate non-linearly the search documents. The proposed nonlinear representation comprises interactive tree-based document categories and follows cognition rules to enable web search results exploration and navigation. We also provide an interactive interface design via the Search Results Exploration Tool for BWUs (SERB) targeting multimodal (textual and acoustic) queries and interactions. The approach is instantiated on an actual data set of Wikipedia web documents. Furthermore, the proposed exploration approach and multimodal interface design are evaluated via diverse standard usability tests to ensure usability and effectiveness.