Exploring blind users’ experience on website to highlight the importance of user’s mental model

Abstract

As website layout is often designed with sighted users in mind, a number of difficulties can be experienced by blind user. The evolution of a website from static page to dynamic page makes the website even more inaccessible to the blind user due to the different feedback they received from the system compare to the previous website. This paper serves as a preliminary study which explores blind users’ experience interacting with websites with the aid of a screen reader. Semi-structured interviews and observation were carried out to find out these usability issues encountered by the blind users. The study indicates that blind user mental model plays an important role in improving the user’s web usability experience. Associating with the user existing experience on the website with familiar and unfamiliar information of the website, enhances the user learning process. The study findings also highlight that understanding the mental model of blind users contributes to improving the web usability guidelines.