User Interface for Low Vision Access to Structured Documents

描述（由申请人提供）：此申请旨在支持探索性研究，以开发专门为中度至重度弱视设计的用户界面（UI），这将允许改进对结构化文档的访问，例如用超文本标记语言（HTML）或可扩展标记语言（XML）编写的文档。该用户界面将包括智能的、被广泛接受的原理，以及来自视觉和康复科学的经验知识，并将首先体现在低视力的网络浏览器中。为了强调简单性和易用性，UI的可配置特性将被限制在那些对易读性和阅读性能影响最大的特性上，并且将被设计成一旦配置，就不需要进行任何调整，无论用户正在查看什么文档。UI将允许用户同时访问作者所希望的web文档的全局功能，以及根据用户需求量身定制的放大文本；这将允许访问所有的网页，而不需要网站有特殊的标记或创作。该设计将受到现有的基于健康科学的弱视心理物理研究的启发，并将利用最近的软件工程进展，包括基于xml的用户界面语言（XUL）和可扩展应用标记语言（XAML），可扩展样式表语言（XSL）和XSL- transform，文档对象模型（DOM），以及电子文档中内容和结构分离的一般趋势。在这个项目中开发的技术和研究预计将导致低视力的通用用户界面，可能被纳入操作系统设计，以及电子书和网络文档。该项目的更广泛影响是，它可以帮助数百万在获取信息方面处于相对劣势的中度和重度视力丧失用户缩小数字鸿沟。此外，如果广泛采用该技术，可以减轻大多数结构化文档作者在遵循编写可访问内容的最佳实践方面的失败，因为视觉可访问性降低的文档页面现在可以更容易地理解。这个项目的目的是增强网络和文档的可访问性，以帮助越来越多的视觉受损的老年人，他们不愿意学习使用大型的、功能丰富的软件。由于这项技术可以很容易地扩展到任何语言，假设有计算机、电子文档和网络访问，这样的解决方案可以改善全球数千万用户的生活。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application seeks support for exploratory research to develop a user interface (UI) specifically designed for moderate to severe low vision, that will allow improved access to structured documents such as those written in hypertext markup language (HTML) or extensible markup language (XML). The UI will incorporate intelligent, well-accepted principles and empirical knowledge from vision and rehabilitation sciences, and will be initially embodied in a web browser for low vision. With an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use, the configurable features of the UI will be limited to those that have the highest impact on legibility and reading performance, and will be designed so that once configured, no adjustments will be needed, regardless of what document the user is viewing. The UI will allow users simultaneous access to both the global features of web documents as the author intended, along with enlarged text tailored to the user's needs; this will allow access to all web pages without requiring that sites have special markup or authoring. The design will be motivated by the corpus of existing of health sciences based psychophysical research in low vision, and will utilize recent software engineering advances including XML-based User Interface Language (XUL) and eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML), eXstensible Style Sheet Language (XSL) and XSL-Transform, the Document Object Model (DOM), and the general trend toward separation of content and structure in electronic documents. The technology and research developed in this project is expected to lead to general user interfaces for low vision that might be incorporated into operating system design, as well as electronic books and web documents. The broader impact of this project is that it can help close the digital divide for millions of users with moderate and severe vision loss who are at a relative disadvantage in access to information. In addition, the technology can, if widely adopted, alleviate the failure of most authors of structured documents to comply with best practices for authoring accessible content, because document pages with reduced visual accessibility can now be more easily appreciated. This project is intended to enhance web and document accessibility to the growing number of older visually impaired people who are reluctant to learn to use large, feature-laden software. Since the technology can be easily extended to any language, such solutions can, assuming computers, electronic documents and web access are available, enhance the lives of tens of millions of users worldwide.