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© Novática Information Technologies for Visually Impaired People from ontoSAW. The user can select an item by using the mouse or his voice. Voice shortcuts panel. Using editSAW, the designer can associate spoken words with the activatable elements on a Web page (buttons, links, urls, etc.). An activatable element is one that can be accessed via its term by using the voice recognition software. 7 Conclusions and Future Work In this paper a System for the Accessibility to the Web (SAW) for visually impaired people has been introduced. The following goals have been achieved: a) the elements and accessibility attributes that can appear on a Web page have been represented in an ontology; b) based on this ontology, we have developed editSAW, an editor able to make semantic annotations in order to associate accessibility attributes to elements of Web pages; c) we have also developed naviSAW, a navigator able to obtain and interpret the semantic annotations of Web pages so as to provide this information in a multimodal manner. The navigator uses a speech synthesizer, voice recognition software and mouseSAW, a special mouse with tactile cells. Other hardware devices such as Braille lines can be easily integrated. The prototype has just been completed and is now being tested. Our current work is focused on migrating this prototype to a mobile environment. The objective is to allow visually impaired users to surf the Web from a PDA or mobile phone, based on the same architecture as that used in SAW. References [1] C. Letourneau. Accessible Web design: a definition. Last updated 26/08/2003. . [2] J. Brewer. W3C Working group internal Draft. How people with disabilities use the Web. 05/05/2005. . [3] S. Studer, R. Benjamins, D. Fensel. Knowledge Engineering: Principles and Methods. Data and Knowledge Engineering, 25, (1998). pp. 161-197. [4] T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, O. Lassila. The Semantic Web. Scientific American, Volume 284, 5th May 2001. Pp. 34-43. [5] O. Lahav, D. Mioduser. Multisensory virtual environment for supporting blind persons acquisition of spatial cognitive mapping – a case study. Cyber Psychology and Behaviour, 2001. [6] . UPGRADE Vol. VIII, No. 2, April 2007 71
Information Technologies for Visually Impaired People Automatic Adaptation to the WAI Standard Juan Manuel Fernández-Ramírez, Vicenç Soler-Ruiz, Jordi Roig de Zárate Today it is hard to find a website that meets World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. These standards are intended to help users access all the information available on the website in a user-friendly manner. It is even harder to find sites that meet the standards for people with disabilities. These standards, published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), improve access to the information in a website for those with disabilities and also for those without. In an attempt to change this situation, we have created the Automatic Conversion Tool for an Accessible Web (ACTAW), a tool which automatically adapts Web pages to WAI standards. Keywords: HTML, WAI, WCAG, Web Accessibility. 1 Introduction As things stand today, the needs of people with disabilities are not taken into account by software and website developers. This makes it really difficult for these people to integrate into the job market and to access all the information available on the Web. The way software and websites are designed today, much of the great potential afforded by the Web as an instrument of integration and standardization is lost. The Automatic Conversion Tool for an Accessible Web (ACTAW) offers a new approach to the problem of Web accessibility and tries to make the largest possible number of Web pages accessible to users with disabilities. A set of standards to ensure the correct development of all the elements involved in Web browsing does exist. These standards have been drawn up by the World Accessibility Initiative (WAI) [2] which forms part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [1]. In this article we will focus on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) [3] which provides guidelines to follow for accessible website design and implementation. This set of standards defines a number of points to which website developers should pay special attention to ensure that their websites’ content is accessible to everyone. The W3C is an organization whose mission is to lead the Web to its full potential. This organization draws up standards for the various technologies used in the Web. In particular, it specifies the grammar of HTML, the most commonly used language on the Web. This grammar is the basic standard for this language, although it is rarely used properly. This makes it even more difficult to achieve Web accessibility, since if Web designers are not capable of following the basic rules of the language they use, they are unlikely to follow recommendations to make their designs accessible. Meanwhile, it is often the case that websites are designed with specific browsers in mind which may not implement HTML grammar properly [5]. This situation means that the presentation of a website may vary greatly depending on the browser used. Authors Juan Manuel Fernández-Ramírez is an IT engineer and has been a lecturer in the Department of Microelectronics and Electronic Systems of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB) since 2006. He forms part of the Biomedical Applications Group of the UAB where he researches in the field of personal autonomy, specializing in e-integration. He is currently heading the ACTAW project. . Vicenç Soler-Ruiz is a Doctor of Computer Engineering and has been a lecturer in the Department of Microelectronics and Electronic Systems of the UAB since 1997. As a researcher he belongs to the Biomedical Applications Group of the UAB where he researches into learning from imbalanced datasets and the development of applications for personal autonomy. He has been involved in a number of different projects at both a national and European level. . Jordi Roig de Zárate is a Doctor of Computer Engineering and has been an associate professor in the Department of Microelectronics and Electronic Systems of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB) since 1986. He is a member of the Biomedical Applications Group of the UAB, within which he heads research into applications for personal autonomy and assistive technologies. He has been involved in various projects at both a national and European level, including the BrailleDesk keyboard and ACTAW projects. . The infrequent use of proper HTML grammar is to a large extent due to this habit of designing websites for a particular browser, since Web pages so created are only checked with that browser and are not checked with the W3C validation system [4]. Add to this the fact that today’s Web editors and browsers add their own tags and attributes and it is easy to see how when we try to include another feature, such as accessibility, proper website development becomes a very complicated proposition. The application presented in this article attempts to solve this problem by analysing and modifying a website’s XHTML/HTML code so that it meets the WAI standard. It also analyses the presentation of the Web page, i.e. the vari- 72 UPGRADE Vol. VIII, No. 2, April 2007 © Novática
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