Hawking Toolbar

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Hawking Toolbar

• COMP 190 Gary Bishop
• Presentation
• by
• Brett Clippingdale

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What is the Hawking Toolbar?
"My body may be stuck in this wheelchair, but
with the Internet my mind can go to the ends of
the universe."- Stephen Hawking, University of
Cambridge Physicist, 1/6/97

• The Hawking Toolbar is a plug-in for the Firefox
  web browser that frees individuals with severely
  limited motor abilities to explore the internet,
  without limits.

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Why Hawking Toolbar?

• If it were not for technology, Stephen Hawking
  would not be leading such a rich life, and we
  would all lose.
• Stephen Hawking reminds us that physical
  disability has no relation to mental ability.
• With technology, we can free many people from
  what may be a prison of physical limitations.

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The Challenge

• Most of us take for granted the ability to
  navigate the web using a mouse and keyboard.
• What about people whose physical motion is
  limited? Like Stephen Hawking, for example.
• Free switch users by letting them choose
  efficiently from among possibly hundreds of links
  on a web site.

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The Solution

• Hawking Toolbar, a plug in for Firefox.
• Standard Firefox browser automatically cycles
  through the links of a web page, highlighting
  each link for a short period.
• The user selects a link by signaling to the
  browser (with their custom switch) when the
  desired link is highlighted.

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The Solution (cont'd)

• Provide buttons that are cycled through Back,
  Home, Favorites, and Options.
• Whether a user can control two switches or only
  one, the general solution is the same, but the
  use of two switches allows enhanced control and
  efficiency.

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The Solution (cont'd)
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Implementation

• Mozilla .xpi extension file, using Mozilla's XUL
  for user interface. (XUL XML User Language)
• CSS defines button/ widget appearance
• JavaScript controls behavior, interacts with DOM
  representation of web page(DOM Document Object
  Model)

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What's Different about it?

• Unlike expensive commercial products, it is free
  and customizable.
• extensible published under the open-source GPL
  license, it can be enhanced or customized by
  anyone with the appropriate technical skills

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What's Different? (cont'd)

• non-obsolescence works with any new version of
  Firefox. User is not dependent upon a vendor to
  upgrade the plug-in for each new web technology
  or new version of the browser
• standard view the user sees the same web page as
  others. Plug-in enhances a popular browser
  instead of requiring a specialized one.

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What's Next?

• When page is complex or has many links, break it
  into sections

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What's Next? (cont'd)

• Analyze semantics of DOM, look for common
  patterns of content structure.
• Develop and apply heuristics.
• Cycle through regions, highlighting each before
  moving to the next part of page.
• If the user selects a region, then explore it by
  cycling through it, link-by-link.