Using User Preference to Enhance Web Accessibility

1
Using User Preference to Enhance Web
Accessibility for People with Cognitive Disability

• Acknowledgements
• Clayton Lewis
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training
  (SMART)

• Acknowledgements
• Acknowledgements more.
• Acknowledgements more.
• Acknowledgements more.

William Shellington SMART 07
Future Work Using CSS has its drawbacks, without
knowledge of the websites HTML file creating
general rules will be useless if not worse. Web
designers design pages with unique ids specific
to the site. On eBay for instance, if a user
would want to take away advertisement
distractions, then they might create a rule
defining that the image tag to not display
anything. This presents a problem for other
images on the page like the actual product image
which wont be displayed. To solve this problem,
this project will use the concept of social
computing. Social computing is the idea of
computational systems simulating social behavior.
With this in mind, a web site could be created
which will have volunteers and people with a
cognitive disability as users. The volunteers
could provide page-specific style sheets in which
people with a cognitive disability could search
and add to their profile. Once added they could
browse the site that the page was created for
freely. The web site would also offer a forum
where users could review and share their ideas on
uploaded style sheets, this could allow for
modification of style sheets accordingly.
Abstract Web Accessibility continues to be an
issue originating from the mid 90s. To this day
this problem persist because web sites dont
follow guidelines built by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for accessibility. There are
different strategies to tackle this problem, one
is to change the layout and display of a page.
Doing this will allow only the important content
of the page to be displayed. Using a concept of
user preference, a user can express how they want
a page displayed. This takes away from inaccurate
assumptions about the disability and paves the
way for users to control content.
User Preference User preference is a concept
which will allow users to control how they want
the content of a web page displayed. This type of
idea will mostly be used in an e-learning
environment (i.e. Blackboard) where a user will
have to register by giving their preferences.
These preferences will be applied to the content
viewed on the web site. Since e-learning
environments are closed sources, it will be
easier to control the different content compared
to controlling the content of an open source
(i.e. Google)
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) CSS is used mainly in
designing the style and layout of a web page. CSS
works by defining rules to HTML tags. Using CSS
will allow the webpage to be formatted to only
display certain parts of the page that the user
will think is important.
Introduction Web Accessibility has been a growing
issue since the mid 90s. With the web
technologically advancing every day, it is
getting harder for accessibility standards to
keep up. Making the web accessible for people
with a cognitive disability is especially
difficult due to the fact that diagnosis is so
broad. There are two ways to diagnose a cognitive
disability, medically and functionally.
Functional diagnosis is mainly used for solutions
in the technical field while medical diagnosis is
used for the medical field. Problems with using
these diagnosis is that web developers are
usually given too broad of a task. For example, a
developer might be ask to create or modify a
website for people with ADD, this can present a
problem since a person with ADD can have problems
with memory, attention, and visual comprehension.
Services has been created and looked into to
ensure the web can be made accessible for
everybody.
Yahoo Search Result Page (w/o CSS modification)
CSS file
Using broad rules to make a page accessible can
cause a page to become less accessible then what
it was
Yahoo Search Result Page (with CSS modification)

• Profile Editor
• The profile editor is a way users can control the
  display of webpage. By providing examples of
  different controls, the user will have a
  illustrated example of choice they pick.
• They can control the display of certain content
  which include
• Font ( family, size weight)
• Background Color
• Image Control
• Text Style
• Using the profile editor will allow for more
  accurate information from the user. The creator
  wont have to rely on assumptions about the
  disability to make the content accessible,
  instead accessibility is user dependent.

How to Express User Preference?
2
Using User Preference to Enhance Web
Accessibility for People with Cognitive Disability

• Acknowledgements
• Clayton Lewis
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training
  (SMART)

• Acknowledgements
• NSF Broadening Participation in Computing program
  HBCU Research Partnerships

William Shellington SMART 07
User Preference User preference is a concept
which will allow users to control how they want
the content of a web page displayed. This type of
idea will mostly be used in an e-learning
environment (i.e. Blackboard) where a user will
have to register by giving their preferences. The
preferences will be applied to the content viewed
on the web site. Since e-learning environments
are closed sources, it will be easier to control
the different content compared to controlling the
content of an open source (i.e. Google)
Abstract Web Accessibility continues to be an
issue originating from the mid 90s. To this day
this problem persist because web sites dont
follow guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for accessibility. There are
different strategies to tackle this problem one
is to change the layout and display of a page.
With this in mind the important content of the
page will be displayed. Using a concept of user
preference, a user can express how they want a
page displayed. This takes away from inaccurate
assumptions about the disability and paves the
way for users to control content.
Using broad rules to make a page accessible can
cause a page to become less accessible then what
it was
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) CSS is used mainly in
designing the style and layout of a web page. CSS
works by defining rules to HTML tags. Using CSS
will allow the webpage to be formatted to only
display certain parts of the page that the user
will think is important.
Introduction Web Accessibility has been a growing
issue since the mid 90s. With the web
technologically advancing every day, it is
getting harder for accessibility standards to
keep up. Making the web accessible for people
with a cognitive disability is especially
difficult due to the fact that diagnosis is so
broad. There are two ways to diagnose a cognitive
disability, medically and functionally.
Functional diagnosis is mainly used for solutions
in the technical field while medical diagnosis is
used for the medical field. Problems with using
these diagnoses is that web developers are
usually given too broad of a task. For example, a
developer might be ask to create or modify a
website for people with ADD, this can present a
problem since a person with ADD can have problems
with memory, attention, and visual comprehension.
Services has been created and looked into to
ensure the web can be made accessible for
everybody.
Future Work Using CSS has its drawbacks, without
knowledge of the websites HTML file creating
general rules will be useless if not worse. Web
designers design pages with unique ids specific
to the site. On eBay for instance, if a user
would want to take away advertisement
distractions, then they might create a rule
defining that the image tag to not display
anything. This presents a problem for other
images on the page like the actual product image
which wont be displayed. To solve this problem,
this project will use the concept of social
computing. Social computing is the idea of
computational systems simulating social behavior.
With this in mind, a web site could be created
which will have volunteers and people with a
cognitive disability as users. The volunteers
could provide page-specific style sheets in which
people with a cognitive disability could search
and add to their profile. Once added they could
browse the site that the page was created for
freely. The web site would also offer a forum
where users could review and share their ideas on
uploaded style sheets, this could allow for
modification of style sheets accordingly.
Yahoo Search Result Page (w/o CSS modification)
CSS file
Yahoo Search Result Page (with CSS modification)

• Profile Editor
• The profile editor is a way users can control the
  display of webpage. By providing examples of
  different controls, the user will have an
  illustrated example of choice they pick.
• They can control the display of certain content
  which include
• Font ( family, size weight)
• Background Color
• Image Control
• Text Style
• Using the profile editor will allow for more
  accurate information from the user. The creator
  wont have to rely on assumptions about the
  disability to make the content accessible,
  instead accessibility is user dependent.

How to Express User Preference?
3
Using User Preference to Enhance Web
Accessibility for People with Cognitive Disability

• Acknowledgements
• Clayton Lewis
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training
  (SMART)

• Acknowledgements
• NSF Broadening Participation in Computing program
  HBCU Research Partnerships

William Shellington SMART 07
User Preference User preference is a concept
which will allow users to control how they want
the content of a web page displayed. This type of
idea will mostly be used in an e-learning
environment (i.e. Blackboard) where a user will
have to register by giving their preferences. The
preferences will be applied to the content viewed
on the web site. Since e-learning environments
are closed sources, it will be easier to control
the different content compared to controlling the
content of an open source (i.e. Google)
Abstract Web Accessibility continues to be an
issue originating from the mid 90s. To this day
this problem persist because web sites dont
follow guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for accessibility. There are
different strategies to tackle this problem one
is to change the layout and display of a page.
With this in mind the important content of the
page will be displayed. Using a concept of user
preference, a user can express how they want a
page displayed. This takes away from inaccurate
assumptions about the disability and paves the
way for users to control content.
Using broad rules to make a page accessible can
cause a page to become less accessible then what
it was
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) CSS is used mainly in
designing the style and layout of a web page. CSS
works by defining rules to HTML tags. Using CSS
will allow the webpage to be formatted to only
display certain parts of the page that the user
will think is important.
Introduction Web Accessibility has been a growing
issue since the mid 90s. With the web
technologically advancing every day, it is
getting harder for accessibility standards to
keep up. Making the web accessible for people
with a cognitive disability is especially
difficult due to the fact that diagnosis is so
broad. There are two ways to diagnose a cognitive
disability, medically and functionally.
Functional diagnosis is mainly used for solutions
in the technical field while medical diagnosis is
used for the medical field. Problems with using
these diagnoses is that web developers are
usually given too broad of a task. For example, a
developer might be ask to create or modify a
website for people with ADD, this can present a
problem since a person with ADD can have problems
with memory, attention, and visual comprehension.
Services has been created and looked into to
ensure the web can be made accessible for
everybody.
Future Work Using CSS has its drawbacks, without
knowledge of the websites HTML file creating
general rules will be useless if not worse. Web
designers design pages with unique ids specific
to the site. On eBay for instance, if a user
would want to take away advertisement
distractions, then they might create a rule
defining that the image tag to not display
anything. This presents a problem for other
images on the page like the actual product image
which wont be displayed. To solve this problem,
this project will use the concept of social
computing. Social computing is the idea of
computational systems simulating social behavior.
With this in mind, a web site could be created
which will have volunteers and people with a
cognitive disability as users. The volunteers
could provide page-specific style sheets in which
people with a cognitive disability could search
and add to their profile. Once added they could
browse the site that the page was created for
freely. The web site would also offer a forum
where users could review and share their ideas on
uploaded style sheets, this could allow for
modification of style sheets accordingly.
Yahoo Search Result Page (w/o CSS modification)
CSS file
Yahoo Search Result Page (with CSS modification)

• Profile Editor
• The profile editor is a way users can control the
  display of webpage. By providing examples of
  different controls, the user will have an
  illustrated example of choice they pick.
• They can control the display of certain content
  which include
• Font ( family, size weight)
• Background Color
• Image Control
• Text Style
• Using the profile editor will allow for more
  accurate information from the user. The creator
  wont have to rely on assumptions about the
  disability to make the content accessible,
  instead accessibility is user dependent.