Tailored presentation of dynamic content

Abstract

The advent of 'Web 2.0' and Web applications means that documents often are not static, but update, either automatically or as a result of user interaction. This development poses a difficult question for screen reader designers: how should users be notified of page changes? The SASWAT Web browser is a self-voicing screen reading extension to the Firefox Web browser, based upon Fire Vox. It uses a set of rules, derived from studies of how sighted users interact with such content, that allow the presentation of updates to be tailored according to the way in which they were initiated, the effect they have on the page, and their content. These should allow users to deal with page changes in a more natural and more efficient manner. © 2010 ACM.