Case for Support: A Feasability Study into Visual Attention Models for Exploring Complex Information.

这项提案提出了一项可行性研究，探讨视觉注意模型是否有可能加强视障用户对复杂的结构化信息的使用，如图表结构和网络上的电子内容。视力障碍的人经常使用屏幕阅读器来访问页面内容，这些屏幕阅读器提供语音输出。默认情况下，屏幕阅读器只是从左上角到右下角显示内容。鉴于大多数图表结构和网页的复杂性，这样的默认读数是非常不合适的。屏幕阅读器还允许用户通过使用光标键来指示要阅读的内容，但在没有页面概述的情况下，不清楚如何直观地引导阅读的重点。然而，已停止阅读的读者能够将他们的注意力引导到他们最感兴趣的电子内容领域。这是通过获得通过一瞥呈现的数据的快速概览来实现的。视觉注意模型既可以描述和预测屏幕上哪些区域在感知上最重要。颜色和对比度信息等因素将引起观察者的注意。这一点再加上基于任务的语义知识--忽略什么和考虑什么--为有视力的读者提供了一个快速起点来选择如何探索结构化数据。这种视觉注意力模型已被用于选择性地指导应该以高质量呈现的虚拟环境的部分，并赋予化身看起来像人类的手势行为。我们希望确定这些是否可以被改编用于向视力障碍的读者重新呈现复杂的图形结构和网页的新颖的应用环境中？我们将通过两个具体的案例研究来探索这一假设的可行性。第一个是对3D分子结构的探索，第二个是为内容和媒体网站(如新闻网站)重新呈现一类网页。两个案例研究中的第一个将根据任务完成时间和评估对所提供数据进行非目视探索的有效性的问卷调查的主观结果进行评估。第二项研究将使用两种方法进行评估；第一种是通过与基于曼彻斯特现有语义网研究的重新呈现网页的替代方法进行比较，第二种是通过与布里斯托尔有视力的参与者的眼睛跟踪数据进行比较。如果这些初步实验被证明是成功的，一份关于合作研究项目的完整提案将提交给英国EPSRC，该项目旨在设计和实施一套为复杂信息的非视觉呈现量身定做的模型。

This proposal presents a feasibility study into the potential for models of visual attention to enhance usable access by visually disabled users to complex structured information such as graph structures and electronic content presented on the web. Visually disabled people often use screenreaders that provide spoken output to access a page's content. Screenreaders, by default, simply present content from top-left to bottom-right. Given the complex nature of most graph structures and web pages, such a default reading is highly inappropriate. Screenreaders also allow their users to direct what is to be read by use of the cursor keys, yet without an overview of the page it is unclear how the focus of reading could be intuitively directed.Sighted readers, however, are able to direct their attention to the area of electronic content they are most interested in exploring. This is accomplished by obtaining a quick overview of the data presented through a glance. Models of visual attention can both describe and predict those areas of the screen which are most perceptually important. Factors such as colour and contrast information will draw the attention of observers. This coupled with task-based semantic knowledge of what to ignore and what to consider, provides a sighted reader with a quick starting point to choose how to explore structured data.Such models of visual attention have been used to selectively direct portions of virtual environments that should be rendered in high quality and to endow avatars with seemingly human like gesture behaviour. We wish to determine whether these may be adapted to use in the novel application context of re-presenting complex graph structures and web pages to visually disabled readers? We will explore the feasibility of this hypothesis by carrying out two specific case studies. The first being an exploration of a 3D molecular structure and the second a re-presentation of a class of web pages for content and media web sites (such as news sites). The first of the two case studies will be evaluated in terms of task completion times and subjective results from questionnaires assessing the effectiveness of non-visual exploration of the data presented. The second study will be evaluated using two methods; first through a comparison with an alternative method for re-presentation of web pages based on existing semantic web research at Manchester, and second through a comparison with eye-tracked data from sighted participants at Bristol. If these initial experiments prove successful, a full proposal for a collaborative research project to design an implement a suite of models tailored to non-visual presentation of complex information will be submitted to the UK-EPSRC.