mmu | cerlim

Nova
Non-Visual Access to the Digital Library: the use of Digital Library Interfaces by Blind and Visually-Impaired People

A project funded by Resource: the Council for Museums Archives and Libraries

Project Description

One of the hallmarks of a civilised society is its commitment to ensuring that all of its citizens can play a full part in its life, and that none are excluded by reason of birth, belief, aptitude or circumstance. Exclusion takes many forms and must be countered in many different ways. The Nova project is concerned with countering the exclusion from access to information which can all too easily occur when individuals do not have so-called 'normal' vision. Our domain in this project is digital library services, and our concern is that all such services should, in their entirety, be as accessible to blind and visually impaired people as to anyone else.

The rapid development of networked information and communications technologies provides opportunities for radical changes in the services which can be delivered to all information users, including those who need to use 'accessible' formats and systems in order to overcome visual or other disability. During experiments carried out as part of the REVIEL project in which blind people accessed a variety of online resources, it became apparent that navigation is a major problem within digital library systems. A good example is the use of frames in a web environment to enable the user to perform complex selections across categories. A sighted person navigates between frames in a complex, non-linear manner which displays strong parallelism. A non-sighted person has to navigate linearly within one frame at a time, and may need to backtrack a long way (again in a linear manner) in order to reach the desired point (and then maybe track forward again).

Although much work is continuing to make interfaces accessible (witness, for example, the work of the World Wide Web's Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C WAI), there is little current work on how blind and visually impaired people navigate interfaces, and in particular on how the serial paradigm of a blind person's search maps onto the parallelism displayed by interfaces. Work on accessibility concentrates on transcribing text (or replacing images etc. with text) when the problem may in fact be much deeper. Work on information seeking behaviour and the use of interfaces assumes visual capabilities which blind and visually-impaired people may not possess.

The overall objective of the Project was to develop understanding of serial searching in non-serial digital library environments, with particular reference to retrieval of information by blind and visually-impaired people.

The aims of the Project were:

• to develop an experimental framework for exploration of serial searching and retrieval in non-serial environments
• to undertake a series of experiments with serial searching and retrieval, and subsequent use of digital content
• to map serial/non-serial approaches so as to develop understanding of how serial searching, retrieval etc. can be optimised in non-serial environments
• to report on findings and to make recommendations for digital library system design.

Summary

A sample of twenty sighted and twenty blind and visually impaired people was used. The term 'visually impaired' was defined as people who needed to use assistive technology, or had to be very close to the screen to be able to 'read' it. Tasks were set using four web-based resources. Each resource displayed elements of parallelism in their design and the tasks were consistently set so that comparative analysis could take place between the sighted and visually impaired users.

Each step of the search process (i.e. keystrokes or mouse clicks) was logged together with a verbal dialog in order to provide a more qualitative approach to transaction logging and in an attempt to ascertain not only what the user had done, but also why and how they felt about it.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to provide data on emotion, feelings and experience. These comprised general questions, such as how to tell a page is loading, initial comments about the interfaces and the type of information provided; and usability questions, such as their experience in finding resources required, correcting errors, knowing where to input information, online help facility.

Overall, visually impaired users took more steps per task compared to sighted users. Although times varied depending on the design of the site, visually impaired users took longer to complete the tasks. This shows that a visually impaired user may have to spend more time navigating around each page, especially if, for example, the page contains a lot of information or has many links.

Increasingly, web pages are designed to be searched in a non-serial or parallel way (i.e. using frames or randomly placed links). This makes the navigation process considerably longer for people using screen readers as the technology often forces them to search in a linear or serial way. Those using screen reading technology therefore tended to find searching the web much harder than those who had some sight and could use screen magnification or read a screen at close proximity.

Observations revealed that although people using the latest versions of assistive technology were offered navigational shortcuts to speed up the search and browsing process, not everyone had access to the latest technologies - designers need to be made aware of this. Those with more experience with the assistive technology they were using were often more successful with the task, therefore a greater emphasis needs to be placed on training in the use of assistive technologies.

Although awareness of web accessibility is increasing, results show that visually impaired users are still faced with usability problems when trying to navigate around web sites. Careful consideration must therefore be given to the layout and navigation of a site and to the performance of different assistive technologies. Success in navigation can also depend on experience with the assistive technology, which raises training issues both for users and trainers.

Throughout the duration of the NoVA project, CERLIM staff continued their liaison with experts in the field of access to information by visually impaired people in the UK, Europe and North America. These contacts include the RNIB, NLB, TechDIS, UK academic researchers, Force Foundation (Netherlands).

The Final Report of the NoVA Project has been published as:

CRAVEN, J. and BROPHY, P., 2003. Non-visual access to the digital library: the use of digital library interfaces by blind and visually impaired people. Library and Information Commission Research Report 145, Manchester: Centre for Research in Library and Information Management. ISBN: 09535343 24

Other relevant publications include:

CRAVEN, J., 2002. Accessible design. Library and Information Briefings, Issue 111, June. ISSN 0954 1829.

CRAVEN, J. and GRIFFITHS, J., 2002. 30,000 different users, 30.000 different needs? The design and delivery of distributed resources to your user community. In: P. BROPHY, S. Fisher, and Z. Clarke, eds., Libraries without walls: the delivery of library services to distant users: proceedings of the 4th Libraries Without Walls Conference, 14-18 September 2001. London: Facet Publishing.

CRAVEN, J., 2001. Making use of the Internet: simple techniques to consider. In: Digital libraries for the blind and the culture of learning in the information age: proceedings of the IFLA SLB pre-conference, 13 - 15 August 2001.

CRAVEN, J., 2000. Good design principles for the library website: a study of accessibility issues in UK university libraries. New Review of Information and Library Research, 6. pp.25-51. ISSN 1361 455X.

BROPHY, P. and CRAVEN, J., 2000. Accessible library websites: design for all. In: L. HOPKINS, ed., Library services for visually impaired people: a manual of best practice. Library and Information Commission Research Report 76. London: Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries. ISSN: 1466 2949, STV/LIC Report 10, ISSN: 1470 9007.

For further details about this project, or if you have problems in accessing any of the downloadable documents please contact:

Jenny Craven, Research Associate
CERLIM
The Manchester Metropolitan University
Department of Information and Communications
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Off Oxford Road
Manchester M15 6LL

Tel: 0161 247 6142
Email: j.craven@mmu.ac.uk