WebTrax: Visualizing non-visual web interactions

Abstract

Web accessibility and usability problems can make evaluation difficult for non-experts who may be unfamiliar with assistive technology. Developers often (i) lack easy access to the diversity of assistive technology employed by users, and (ii) are unaware of the different access patterns and browsing strategies that people familiar with a specific assistive technology tool might use. One way to overcome this problem is to observe a person with a disability using their tools to access content, but this can often be confusing because developers are not familiar with assistive technology and tools are not built supporting this use. In this paper we introduce WebTrax, a tool that we have developed to support developers who engage blind web users as part of their accessibility evaluation or education strategy. WebTrax helps visualize the process that screen reader users employ to access content, helping to make problems more obvious and understandable to developers. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.