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Rendering tables in audio: the interaction of structure and reading styles

Published: 01 September 2003 Publication History

Abstract

Tables remain a persistent problem for visually impaired people using screen readers. Tables are complex structures that are widely used for different purposes such as spatial layout or data summarisation. The multi-dimensional nature of tables challenges the linear interaction styles typically supported by screen readers. To read a table, a user needs to maintain coherency of, and interact with more than one dimension. In this paper, we first characterise why tables are useful in print, but difficult to read in the audio. We present a survey of the relationship between table structure, intention and the reading styles employed to use the content of tables. We then present two different approaches for interacting with tables non-visually. These approaches are designed to support the characteristics of tables that make them such a popular and useful means of conveying information. The first approach provides a small table browser called EVITA (Enabling Visually Impaired Table Access), whose aim is to enable non-visual table browsing and reading in an analogous manner to the print medium. The second approach provides a table lineariser to transform tables into a form such that they can be easily read by screen readers.

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cover image ACM Conferences
Assets '04: Proceedings of the 6th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
October 2004
202 pages
ISBN:158113911X
DOI:10.1145/1028630
  • cover image ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing
    ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing Just Accepted
    Sept. 2003 - Jan. 2004
    192 pages
    EISSN:1558-1187
    DOI:10.1145/1029014
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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Published: 01 September 2003

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Author Tags

  1. audio interaction
  2. browsing
  3. table
  4. visual impairment

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Assets '04 Paper Acceptance Rate 25 of 47 submissions, 53%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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