Few web developers have been explicitly trained to create accessible web pages, and are unlikely to recognize subtle accessibility and usability concerns that disabled people face. Evaluating web pages with assistive technology can reveal problems, but this software takes time to install and its complexity can be overwhelming. To address these problems, we introduce a new approach for accessibility evaluation called Accessibility by Demonstration (ABD). ABD lets assistive technology users retroactively record accessibility problems at the time they experience them as human-readable macros and easily send those recordings and the software necessary to replay them to others. This paper describes an implementation of ABD as an extension to the WebAnywhere screen reader, and presents an evaluation with 15 web developers not experienced with accessibility showing that interacting with these recordings helped them understand and fix some subtle accessibility problems better than existing tools.

We introduce TwinSpace, a flexible software infrastructure for combining interactive workspaces and collaborative virtual worlds. Its design is grounded in the need to support deep connectivity and flexible mappings between virtual and real spaces to effectively support collaboration. This is achieved through a robust connectivity layer linking heterogeneous collections of physical and virtual devices and services, and a centralized service to manage and control mappings between physical and virtual. In this paper we motivate and present the architecture of TwinSpace, discuss our experiences and lessons learned in building a generic framework for collaborative cross-reality, and illustrate the architecture using two implemented examples that highlight its flexibility and range, and its support for rapid prototyping.

Proper use of headings in web pages can make navigation more efficient for blind web users by indicating semantic divisions in the page. Unfortunately, many web pages do not use proper HTML markup (h1-h6 tags) to indicate headings, instead using visual styling to create headings, thus making the distinction between headings and other page text indistinguishable to blind users. In a user study in which sighted participants labeled headings on a set of web pages, participants did not often agree on which elements on the page should be labeled as headings, suggesting why headings are not used properly on the web today. To address this problem, we have created a system called HeadingHunter that predicts whether web page text semantically functions as a heading by examining visual features of the text as rendered in a web browser. Its performance in labeling headings compares favorably with both a manually-classified set of heading examples and the combined results of the sighted labelers in our study. The resulting system illustrates a general methodology of creating simple scripts operating over visual features that can be directly included in existing tools.

Blind students are an underrepresented group in computer science. In this paper, we describe our experience preparing and leading the computer science track at the National Federation of the Blind Youth Slam. As part of this workshop, fifteen blind high school students created and personalized instant messaging chatbots, a project designed to be completely accessible to blind students. Chatbots enable students to infuse their own personalities into a socially-oriented program that incorporates ideas from artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and web services. We first outline the chatbots project and curriculum, which has wide appeal for all students, and then offer general design principles used to create it that can help ensure the accessibility of future projects. Students created their chatbots using a real programming language and were guided by both blind and sighted mentors. By programming from the start in a supportive environment, our students will gain the confidence to persevere in computer science in the future.

Web browsing is inefficient for blind web users because of persistent accessibility problems, but the extent of these problems and their practical effects from the perspective of the user has not been sufficiently examined. We conducted a study in situ to investigate the accessibility of the web as experienced by web users. This remote study used an advanced web proxy that leverages AJAX technology to record both the pages viewed and the actions taken by users on the web pages that they visited. Our study was conducted remotely over the period of one week, and our participants used the assistive technology and software to which they were already accustomed and had already configured according to preference. These advantages allowed us to aggregate observations of many users and to explore the practical effects on and coping strategies employed by our blind participants. Our study reflects web accessibility from the perspective of web users and describes quantitative differences in the browsing behavior of blind and sighted web users.