Re-Presenting Text in a Website for Visually Impaired Users using Braille Line

• Main Author: Mokhtahir, Mahmud Mazuin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2013
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/13541/1/Thesis_13111_Mahmud%20Mazuin%20bt.Mokhtahir.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/13541/

As new web technologies emerging and being adopted in the design of a website, web accessibility has become a major issue especially for people with disabilities .Limitation of assistive technology to render webpage has also been contributing factor for poor web accessibility by the visually impaired users. This issue has caused visually impaired users loss semantic information of webpage besides creating frustration situation of web browsing. In this paper, factors that cause web browsing frustration to the visually impaired users and types of tactile effects that can be implemented in the Braille Line device to render the semantic information of webpage are explored. The main objectives of this project is to build a website reader and program a Braille Line 20 cell device for web browsing focusing on presenting non visual text elements such as font attributes and text hierarchy that can be critical to meaning of the text. Tactile technology have been chosen to be adopted in the Braille Line as the touch is the most active sense of visually-impaired people to acquire knowledge .From the prototype to be build, a sample group of visually impaired users will be taken to test and evaluate the website and the device in terms of technology as well as its effectiveness. The results and recommendations were shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future renditions of the project.