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Evaluation of a non-visual molecule browser

Published: 01 September 2003 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the evaluation of software, software designed to allow visually impaired users to explore the structures of chemical molecules using a speech based presentation. Molecular structures are typically presented as two dimensional schematics, and are an important example of a widely used form of diagram -- the graph. software is designed for exploring this specific class of graph. Among its features is the ability to recognise and make explicit features of the graph that would otherwise need to be inferred. The evaluation compared software with a simpler version without this facility, and found that participants were able to explore molecular structures more easily. We discuss the software, evaluation and results, particularly comparing them with theoretical considerations about how sighted readers use diagrams. Finally, we extract the important issues for non-visual graph presentation: making implicit features explicit; enabling hierarchical and connection-based browsing; allowing annotation; and helping users keep their orientation.

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  • (2024)Speech-based Mark for Data SonificationProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3688514(1-5)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2024)TADA: Making Node-link Diagrams Accessible to Blind and Low-Vision PeopleProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642222(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2022)Accessible Circuit Diagrams2022 33rd Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC)10.1109/ISSC55427.2022.9826152(1-6)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2022
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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
Assets '04: Proceedings of the 6th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
October 2004
202 pages
ISBN:158113911X
DOI:10.1145/1028630
  • cover image ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing
    ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing Just Accepted
    Sept. 2003 - Jan. 2004
    192 pages
    EISSN:1558-1187
    DOI:10.1145/1029014
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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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Publication History

Published: 01 September 2003

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Author Tags

  1. browsing
  2. connection browsing
  3. graphs
  4. hierarchical browsing
  5. molecules
  6. non-visual
  7. synthetic speech

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Assets '04 Paper Acceptance Rate 25 of 47 submissions, 53%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Speech-based Mark for Data SonificationProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3688514(1-5)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2024)TADA: Making Node-link Diagrams Accessible to Blind and Low-Vision PeopleProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642222(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2022)Accessible Circuit Diagrams2022 33rd Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC)10.1109/ISSC55427.2022.9826152(1-6)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2022
  • (2020)An Auditory Interface to Workspace Awareness Elements Accessible for the Blind in Diagrams’ Collaborative Modeling2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9274179(1-7)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2020
  • (2020)Approaches for diagrams accessibility for blind people: a systematic review2019 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE43999.2019.9028522(1-7)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2020
  • (2014)Including blind people in computing through access to graphsProceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility10.1145/2661334.2661364(91-98)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2014
  • (2013)GSKProceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2445196.2445266(221-226)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2013
  • (2012)Projeto D4ALLProceedings of the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.5555/2393536.2393541(33-36)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2012
  • (2012)Supporting cross-modal collaboration in the workplaceProceedings of the 26th Annual BCS Interaction Specialist Group Conference on People and Computers10.5555/2377916.2377929(109-118)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2012
  • (2011)Interactive hierarchy-based auditory displays for accessing and manipulating relational diagramsJournal on Multimodal User Interfaces10.1007/s12193-011-0067-35:3-4(111-122)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2011
  • Show More Cited By

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