| Abstract |
In the context of Information Society, the computer is transformed from a machine used mainly by specialists into an information appliance for every citizen. In this new era, it is very important to develop high quality user interfaces, accessible and usable by a diverse user population with different abilities, skills, requirements and preferences. "User interfaces for all" deal with these challenges and offer a new perspective into Human-Computer Interaction, facilitating Universal Access to applications and services. User categories addressed include blind people or people "visually impaired" due to preoccupation of their visual channel with other tasks. This dissertation presents work dealing with the development of a tool supporting non-visual interaction. Most of the user interfaces, nowadays, are graphical and the only way, for a blind user to access them is through systems (screen readers), which reproduce the lexical structure of user interfaces into a non-visual form. Although, until today, this approach has contributed to the issue of access by blind users to graphical user interfaces, there are inherent weaknesses, mainly due the low quality dialogue, which is a consequence of the fact that the reproduction of the non-visual dialogue is based on the design of the visual interface. This dissertation describes the HAWK programming tool, which encompasses a set of programming libraries and a runtime environment. It allows the development of high quality non-visual interfaces and provides basic interaction elements for the construction of various alternative representational metaphors. HAWK provides seven fundamental dialogue elements, which may fully substitute the functionality of a visual interface in a non-visual interface, and at the same time represent alternative presentation metaphors. The user is enabled to navigate effectively and efficiently along the various elements of the dialogue, while the input / output is supported via alternative peripherals, such as the joystick, the Braille device and the touch tablet.
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Σχεδίαση και Υλοποίηση ενός Εργαλείου για την Ανάπτυξη
