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Designing for auditory web access: accessibility and cellphone users

Published: 26 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Low-end mobile phones are becoming generally available throughout the world and the main window onto the Web. A large constituency for Web access is being created whose experience Web designers are not familiar with, particularly because of the central role of auditory, rather than visual access. This is analogous to problems faced by visually impaired users, where again Web designers have an audience whose experience they rarely share. One might think that proven design practices of working directly with users or intermediaries would be effective, but we argue that in these situations they are difficult to apply, not least because of the distance geographically and culturally from the users. We therefore present alternative ways for developers to gain insight into the experience of auditory access. We also discuss the potential of tools and resources such as simulations of an auditory interaction with the Web and illustrate how these can help --- particularly with early stage design. Successful simulations can reduce the cost and effort needed to design a usable auditory Web experience, and as a bonus, the insights gained often improve a site for many other users as well.

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Cited By

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  • (2019)Find and SeekACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/334228212:3(1-23)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2019
  • (2011)Dynamic adaptive disaster simulationProceedings of the 2011 Workshop on Agent-Directed Simulation10.5555/2048355.2048356(5-12)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2011

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cover image ACM Other conferences
W4A '10: Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
April 2010
223 pages
ISBN:9781450300452
DOI:10.1145/1805986
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 26 April 2010

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Author Tags

  1. accessibility
  2. auditory interaction
  3. developing regions
  4. screen reader
  5. web

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W4A '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 10 of 32 submissions, 31%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2019)Find and SeekACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/334228212:3(1-23)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2019
  • (2011)Dynamic adaptive disaster simulationProceedings of the 2011 Workshop on Agent-Directed Simulation10.5555/2048355.2048356(5-12)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2011

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