| Abstract |
In recent years the World Wide Web (Web) has evolved into an important source of information and the number of users who have access to it is increasing rapidly. This increase in the user population is accompanied by an increase of the population's diversity, with new accessibility and interaction requirements surfacing every day. The above necessitate the availability of Web navigation systems, which are capable of addressing the special abilities, requirements, skills and preferences of each individual user. In fact, such systems are a vital prerequisite for meeting the accessibility and interaction requirements of people with special needs, and especially of blind users, who represent a significant proportion of the potential user population. The existing Web navigation systems (or Web browsers, as they are commonly referred to) exhibit important shortcomings with respect to addressing the interaction needs of blind users. This, in turn, renders access to the Web by blind people a task that ranges from problematic to impossible. This thesis presents the non-visual Nautilus Web browser, which has been specifically developed to address the accessibility and interaction requirements of blind users on the Web. The non-visual Nautilus browser aims to cover accessibility gaps present in existing browsers, as well as to provide new interaction facilities, that will facilitate and enhance the interaction of blind users with Web content. Specifically, the non-visual Nautilus browser supports a multitude of input and output devices, and supports new software technologies in order to ensure access to all the interaction and presentation elements supported by the HTML 4.01 specification. Some of the advantages of the non-visual Nautilus browser in comparison to other Web browsers for blind people, are: its non-visual user interface, designed specifically for use by blind people; the provision of alternative views of an HTML document (e.g. separate presentation of document links, text-only presentation). Finally, the non-visual Nautilus browser supports a mode of operation indented for use at Public Information Kiosks. In this operation mode, the browser supports the basic navigation and interaction tasks of blind users over locally stored hypertexts, while the user interface is substantially simplified to facilitate ease of learning and usability, even for occasional users.
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Μη Οπτικός Πλοηγός Ναυτίλος: Σύστημα Πλοήγησης στον Παγκόσμιο Ιστό για Τυφλούς Χρήστες
