Web Accessibility for Visually Impaired People: Requirements and Design Issues

Abstract

Access to web content continues to be a challenge for the visually impaired, primarily because the needs of such community are very diverse. The access is further hindered by the fact that web designers continue to build websites non-compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). To better understand the needs of the visually impaired community, we organized three workshops with various stakeholders coming from three different countries. The initial results from the workshops suggest that one-solution-fits-all model is inadequate without considering levels of visual impairment when providing customized web experience. A set of requirements devised from the workshops, guided the process of building a middleware prototype. Using eight adaptation techniques, the prototype provides the required user experience based on users level of visual impairment. Preliminary evaluation of the middleware suggests that several adaptation techniques perform better with non WCAG compliant websites compared to those being compliant.