A user evaluation of the SADIe transcoder

Abstract

The World Wide Web (Web) is a visually complex, dynamic, multimedia system that can be inaccessible to people with visual impairments. SADIe addresses this problem by using Semantic Web technologies to explicate implicit visual structures through a combination of an upper and lower ontology. This is then used to apply transcoding to a range of Websites. This paper describes a user evaluation that was performed using the SADIe system. Four users were presented with a series of Web pages, some having been adapted using SADIe's transcoding functionality and others retaining in their original state. The results of the evaluation showed that providing answers to a fact based question could be achieved more quickly when the information on the page was exposed via SADIe's transcoding. The data obtained during the experiment was analysed and shown to be statistically significant. This suggests that the transcoding techniques offered by SADIe can assist visually impaired users accessing content on the Web. Copyright 2008 ACM.