Content-Driven Techniques for Non-Visual Web Access

非可视化 Web 访问的内容驱动技术

• 批准号: 0534419
• 负责人: IV Ramakrishnan
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: SUNY at Stony Brook
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-12-01 至 2010-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0534419&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Content; Driven; Techniques; Non; Visual

The World Wide Web has evolved into an indispensable medium for dissemination of information, entertainment, commerce and education. However, the graphical nature of most browsing software, coupled with the diversity and complexity of web content, have limited access to this technology for an entire community of people with visual disabilities. Existing audio browsers that are based on text-to-speech conversion (e.g., screen readers) are not capable of describing the conceptual organization of a document's content or of letting a user select parts of a document to listen to. As a result, people with visual disabilities can find it difficult to perform common tasks, such as distinguishing topics or correlating similar items, which are key to understanding the organization of documents, and so waste considerable time and attention listening to irrelevant information. In this project the PI and his team will develop, test and disseminate the HearSay web browser, which will bring the browsing experience of people with visual disabilities closer to that of sighted people. HearSay is based on automated techniques for structuring the content of web documents into labeled partitions consisting of logically related items. By enabling interactive speech-driven guided exploration in which the system presents the document's labeled content and the user selects which parts of the content to listen to and when to navigate to a new page, HearSay will make non-visual browsing far less cumbersome. Furthermore, for repetitive browsing tasks, HearSay will let users create and retrieve personalized content in different ways, ranging from content-based voice-marking of selected partitions in a page to powerful personal information assistants that gather and present user-defined information at the user's command. To assure that the HearSay system is really useful "as advertised" to the intended community, the PIs have established a collaboration with Helen Keller Services for the Blind in Hempstead, NY, which trains people with visual disabilities, and will consult on the design and evaluation of HearSay. Broader Impacts: This research will result in new algorithms and powerful technologies enabling end users to navigate web content using audio. This capability will be especially valuable to people who are visually impaired in that it will enable them to browse and customize web content by themselves, but it will also be useful for mobile users of small-form devices, reducing their dependence on specialized content providers. The PIs will develop a special version of HearSay for use with the Blackboard educational system, which will be advertised and disseminated to educational institutions so as to improve access to educational materials for students with visual disabilities. In coordination with this project, two workshops on technology for accessibility will be organized, one focusing on accessibility technology in general and the second on accessibility technology for postgraduate and adult education. These workshops will serve to raise awareness of the issues faced by those with visual disabilities and the potential for content-based techniques to improve information access for users who are mobile and/or have disabilities.

万维网已经发展成为传播信息、娱乐、商业和教育不可或缺的媒介。然而，大多数浏览软件的图形化性质，加上网络内容的多样性和复杂性，限制了整个视障人士社区对这项技术的使用。基于文本到语音转换的现有音频浏览器(例如，屏幕阅读器)不能描述文档内容的概念组织或允许用户选择要收听的文档部分。因此，视力残疾的人可能会发现很难执行常见的任务，例如区分主题或将相似的项目关联起来，这是理解文档组织的关键，因此浪费了相当多的时间和注意力来倾听无关的信息。在这个项目中，PI和他的团队将开发、测试和传播传闻网络浏览器，它将使视力障碍者的浏览体验更接近视力正常的人。传闻是基于自动技术，将网络文档的内容组织成由逻辑上相关的项组成的标签分区。通过启用交互式语音驱动的引导式浏览，系统显示文档的标记内容，用户选择收听内容的哪些部分以及何时导航到新页面，earsay将使非视觉浏览变得轻松得多。此外，对于重复的浏览任务，earsay将允许用户以不同的方式创建和检索个性化内容，从对页面中选定的分区进行基于内容的语音标记，到根据用户的命令收集和呈现用户定义的信息的强大个人信息助手。为了确保传闻证据系统真的像广告中所说的那样对目标社区有用，私人投资者已经与纽约州亨普斯特德的海伦·凯勒盲人服务机构建立了合作关系，该机构培训视力残疾人士，并将就传闻证据的设计和评估提供咨询。更广泛的影响：这项研究将产生新的算法和强大的技术，使最终用户能够使用音频导航网络内容。这一功能对视障人士特别有价值，因为它将使他们能够自己浏览和定制网络内容，但它也将对小型设备的移动用户有用，减少他们对专业内容提供商的依赖。视障人士将为黑板教育系统制作一套特别版的《传闻》，并会向教育机构宣传及分发，以改善视障学生获取教材的机会。为配合这一项目，将举办两期关于无障碍技术的讲习班，一期侧重于一般无障碍技术，另一期侧重于研究生和成人教育的无障碍技术。这些讲习班将有助于提高人们对视力残疾人面临的问题的认识，以及利用基于内容的技术改善流动用户和/或残疾用户获取信息的可能性。