Exploratory study of web navigation strategies for users with physical disabilities

ABSTRACT

Plenty of research works have been carried out to analyze users' behaviour when navigating on the Web. In this sense, the behaviour of people with disabilities has been one of the most explored issues in order to detect and mend the accessibility barriers they usually encounter. Many accessibility guidelines tend to gather people with similar disabilities in the same cluster and provide similar solutions for all of them. However, the navigation behaviour is affected not only by the type of disabilities but also by other variables such as Assistive Technology (AT) used or the level of expertise and website features. We conducted an exploratory study with 11 users with similar physical disabilities, specifically people with upper-body physical impairments. They performed two tasks on a website using their usual AT. This study shows the heterogeneity of their navigation strategies. In addition, these preliminary results bring to light several website adaptations which could improve their productivity and satisfaction.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Document management and text processing

    • Document preparation

      • Multi / mixed media creation

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

    • Interaction paradigms

      • Hypertext / hypermedia

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing profession

      • Assistive technologies

  • User characteristics

    • People with disabilities