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While the current WebInSight
System involves only a client interface, our goal is to attack
inaccessibility with a dual approach:
tools for users that help them alter their environment to increase web
accessibility and tools for content producers that help them create more
accessible content. Our belief is that
many of the techniques for users can be adapted to help producers.
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While we’ve been consulted
from the beginning with users of screen readers, we’re currently designing
user studies that will attempt to measure what users want out of a system
like ours, understand how we can provide it, and how all of this can be
consistent with the expected user experience.
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At the same time, we’re
always trying to improve our system with better labeling modules. We’re currently working on a version of our
system that is implemented as a Firefox extension to allow users increased
privacy and security. Finally, we’re
exploring ways to move beyond images to content restructuring and handling
dynamic content.
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We believe that at the
producing side of content accessibility the primary concern remains
understanding the user. What forces
create inaccessibility and how can we use information about the motivation of
web designers to create tools that will help them make more accessible
content. For the foreseeable future
people will be better at creating accessible content than our automatic
methods but they need tools that better support this. This is an incredibly important time for
developing information accessibility tools.
Even as the Internet settles into its vital role in society, we’re
still dealing with the old struggles of images without alternative text and
content that is structured inconveniently for accessibility tools. The web is currently undergoing another
revolution that will bring dynamic content and new web applications, both of
which pose even harder problems for accessibility. I hope we will be there to meet the
challenge.
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I encourage you to visit our
website at http://webinsight.cs.washington.edu/ for more information about
this and other WebInSight projects.
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Thank you.
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