Navigation in multimedia documents for print disabled readers

The availability and use of multimedia documents is rapidly growing. They hold great potential for print disabled readers, but if not appropriately constructed will pose yet another information barrier to these reader groups. The MultiReader Project is exploring how to efficiently construct multimedia documents that are both accessible and navigable by both mainstream and print disabled readers (blind, partially sighted, dyslexic and deaf readers) using an iterative user-centred design methodology. The results of two iterations of design and evaluation are discussed, along with some of the issues that have emerged.

The availability and use of multimedia documents is rapidly growing. Increased storage capacity on computers and bandwidth for transmission of information both on the Internet and the mobile telephony network means that it is now possible to use complex images, videos and animations as well as text in documents. This increased spread of multimedia has both advantages and disadvantages for people with print disabilities, that is people with visual and hearing disabilities, dyslexia and physical disabilities which make handling print documents difficult. On the advantages side, the ability to convert text to speech, to replace text with graphics, to manipulate text easily and many other features available in electronic information, means that if is possible to make multimedia documents accessible to print disabled readers. On the disadvantages side, if multimedia documents are not constructed in ways which do make them accessible, they will pose yet another information barrier to print disabled people.

Although the fundamentals of how to make information accessible to print disabled people is now well understood, there still remain many more complex issues, such as how print disabled people navigate through multimedia and hypermedia documents. The EU-funded MultiReader Project is exploring how to produce multimedia documents in an efficient manner that meet the needs of a wide range of needs of print disabled people, particularly their navigational needs. One method to achieve this might be the development of guidelines, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 produced by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium to promote the production of accessible Web sites. However, we contend that the navigational requirements for print disabled people are not yet sufficiently understood to develop guidelines at the present time. In addition, how to produce multimedia documents that meet the needs of heterogeneous user groups is still unclear. For that reason the MultiReader Project is usingan iterative user-centred design process with heterogeneous user groups to develop a series of multimedia documents and explore these issues.

Figure 1: Initial iterative user-centred design lifecycle for heterogeneous user group

However, one of the problems of trying to undertake a “design for all” iterative user-centred lifecycle with numerous, heterogeneous user groups is how to deal with the design lifecycle for all the different groups.As can be seen from Figure 1, below, this involves running numerous parallel user needs, design and evaluation processes. This was the model initially adopted within the MultiReader Project, although certain problems with it quickly became apparent: how to avoid creating parallel systems which produced conflicting requirements, how to manage the different versions required. The next sections will describe two iterations of the design lifecycle undertaken in the MultiReader Project and how some of the complexity of the lifecycle was reduced. These multimedia documents should be examples of “design for all”, appealing to both mainstream (those with no particular reading difficulties) and print disabled readers, so the needs of mainstream readers also need to be taken into consideration.

2 The reading needs of mainstream and print disabled readers

The MultiReader Project is addressing the needs of five user groups: mainstream readers and four groups of print disabled readers: blind readers, partially sighted readers, dyslexic readers and deaf readers. Although it is self-evident that the first three print disabled groups have problems in reading, few people realize that prelingually deaf people (people who were born deaf or who became deaf early in life) often have serious reading problems. Prelingually deaf people may have a sign language as their native language, so reading in a print language is reading in a second language for them. Research into the reading ages of deaf children has found that they are usually substantially behind their hearing peers (Furth, 1966).

In order to develop a navigable reading system for both mainstream readers and those with print disabilities, the MultiReader Project sought to understand the current navigation and reading strategies of mainstream and print disabled readers in both physical and electronic environments. Although there has been considerable work on the navigational strategies of mainstream users of hypermedia systems (see Vora and Helander, 1997 for a review), there has been little work on the strategies of print disabled users of such systems. In order to gather information about how people interact with and navigate through a variety of different types of reading material, a number of methods for user needs elicitation were used: focus groups, questionnaires and interviews with users and experts in the field. 

2.1 Focus groups

A focus group of seven mainstream readers (three female, four male, average age 25 years, all students) discussed their interaction with a range of different types of reading materials including newspapers, magazines, novels, textbooks, and other academic materials. The context of reading (e.g. whether for leisure, work or study) was an important determinant of the navigational strategies used. Participants reported that their leisure reading of materials such as newspapers and magazines tends to be guided by eye-catching headlines and that they skim or browse the document and dip into different pieces. Participants rarely use the tables of contents (ToCs) and indices in these materials, as they find these aids are generally not comprehensive enough to support their navigation.Participants reported that reading novels is a very different activity, as novels have only basic ToCs and are generally read straight through from cover to cover. Participants reported that work/study related reading is conducted in a much more thorough manner and is generally undertaken with a specific goal in mind. Whilst skimming and browsing does take place in textbooks and other work/study materials, it is usually with the goal of finding specific information rather than reading for pleasure. ToCs and indices are used extensively for searching and navigation. Also, electronic documents tend to be used more in work/study situations, although many participants preferred to print important documents in order to annotate them with their own notes.

A focus group of seven blind readers (three female and four male) discussed their interaction with Braille, tape and electronic reading formats. Participants wanted to get an overview of the material they are reading. They achieve this mainly by using the ToC. Some formatting strategies in Braille allow the reader to find headings and the start and end of paragraphs quite quickly which helps navigate through the document. However, audio tapes do not provide the overview of the text which sometimes makes gaining a concept of how the book is constructed difficult.

A focus group of four partially sighted readers (two female and two male) discussed their interaction with standard print, large print, tape and electronic reading systems. Participants who read print reported using a low vision aid to do so or that they scan in material and then read it electronically. Partially sighted participants also like to develop an overview of the material they are reading whatever the format and type of material. Generally they do this via the ToC but occasionally by flicking through the document to view the headings, and pictures, rather than, or in addition to using the ToC. They find that reading line by line when using a screen reader helps to preserve layout information about a document. Participants reported that being able to navigate easily through a document is of great importance. They also reported that finding particular sections of a document is difficult with taped material, but the cue and review facility provided on tapes and the ability to speed up the speech is useful.

2.2 Interviews with readers and experts on print disabilities 

The interviews investigated the reading habits and strategies of four user groups (mainstream, blind, partially sighted and dyslexic readers). Both users and experts in the fields of visual impairment and dyslexia were interviewed. The blind and partially sighted participants reported that their main problem is accessing the various forms of text using a screen reader. Once they could open the text they could use screen readers, magnification or talking books with relative ease. Dyslexic readers reported that their problems lie in the text content and finding information easily. Several of the participants reported visual disturbances associated with their dyslexia whereby the print appears to move around or the white sections of a page seem to dribble down the page. These visual disturbances often make reading a laborious and tiring endeavour. They reported that it is not unusual to have to read sections of text three or four times before the meaning of the words is understood. Participants who are studying reported that after 30 minutes of reading they are generally too tired to continue.

From these various sources of information, an initial set of user needs was established for the MultiReader Project (see Table 1, Langer, 2003). However, as had been anticipated, both readers and experts, found it difficult to articulate navigational needs, and many of the needs were for simply for basic accessibility. This reinforced the view that an iterative user-centred design lifecycle was needed to explore issues of navigational support for both mainstream and print disabled readers. 

3 The first MultiReader multimedia document

The first multimedia document developed was a tourist guide to Wernigerode, a town of historical interest in the Harz region of Germany. A tourist guide was chosen as an example of a factual document but not an explicitly educational document. This was thought to be a good compromise between the different reading formats that had been studied initially, in that it requires good navigational support, but is of interest to a general audience, unlike a textbook that is only of specialist interest to students and teachers. It should be emphasised that there are many categories of factual documents that are of interest to general audiences, including books for all kinds of pastimes such as gardening and home repairs, cookery books, and health manuals. The Wernigerode Tourist Guide (WTG) included text, images, videos (with captions), narration, background sounds, animations, and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) maps. 

3.1 First iteration through the design lifecycle

An evaluation of the WTG was undertaken with 19 users: 7 dyslexic, 5 blind, 3 partially sighted, 2 mainstream (as the sign language version was not complete at this point, deaf readers were not included in this evaluation). Participants were ask to conduct a series of information-seeking tasks with the document. The tasks were constructed such that participants would have to traverse several pages to find the information, to ensure that substantial navigation of the document took place.

The evaluation showed the navigation aids provided were not sufficient for participants to orient themselves and navigate. The wording of navigation items was found to be confusing. This appeared to be due to the system using a hierarchical document architecture and also including “tours” of the area but not indicating whether the system was in tour or hierarchical mode. The navigation toolbar used very similar terms for both modes. Participants did not like the use of a hierarchical structure as they became lost in the document very easily. A search facility was not incorporated into the system at this stage of the design as it was considered important to explore the use of indices and ToCs. The indexing was not sufficiently clear.

3.2 Second iteration through the design lifecycle

The interface and the document architecture for the multimedia document was re-designed on the basis of the results of the first evaluation. Further materials were developed for a second multimedia document, so a tourist guide to parts of London was added to the original tour guide to Wernigerode. The second document included a greater range of features which had been specified by the user requirements studies e.g. speech output, highlighting and animated navigation icons for dyslexic readers, sign language videos, text highlighting and sign language icons for deaf readers. Particular attention was paid to the navigation toolbar. To avoid the confusions found with the first document, it was decided to change some of the navigational terms and to make them consistent with WWW browsers with which most users are already familiar.

An evaluation of the second document was conducted with 12 participants: 2 mainstream, 4 dyslexic and 6 deaf readers. Participants found that the changes in the navigation toolbar were an improvement in terms of the semantics, size and positioning of the icons. Deaf participants found the sign language translations of the text very useful. However, dyslexic and deaf participants did not find these versions of animated and signed navigation icons particularly useful.

3.3 Third iteration through the design lifecycle

A third version of the multimedia document has now been developed and will be evaluated with all target user groups. It incorporates the full range of features specified in the user requirements and improvements based upon the previous two iterations of evaluations. A method of providing personal profiles for each reader (Weimann, 2003) has been incorporated. Readers will now be able to set their own personal profiles while using the system: changing speed of speech output, background and text colours, magnification of text and images, highlighting and video presentation. Further materials have been added with more multimedia enrichments e.g. text captions for videos, audio description of images, text description of audio elements. It is at this point that the parallel design lifecycles for the heterogeneous user groups have been brought together by creating one document design that will be evaluated by the various user groups. It may be that as our knowledge of designing for heterogeneous user groups, the integrated design and evaluation of systems for different user groups can be integrated into a more coherent design lifecycle to avoid the complexities found in the current project.

4 Conclusions

A document architecture and interface has been created which appears to meet the needs of a variety of print disabled reader groups and mainstream readers, although evaluation will be required to justify this claim. It has been found that both the content and the interface needs to be adapted to meet the varying needs of all target readers. The profiling system has been found to be an effect mechanism for controlling all the adjustable aspects of the system. The problems of the iterative design lifecycle for heterogeneous user groups should not be underestimated, and an integrated approach adopted at as early a stage as possible.

5 Acknowledgements

The MultiReader Project is funded under the IST Programme by the Commission of the European Union (Project IST-2000-27513).

6 References

Furth, H. G. (1966) A comparison of reading test norms of deaf and hearing children. American Annals of the Deaf, 111, 461-2.

Langer, I. (2003).  Adaptation of multimedia eBooks.  This volume.

Petrie, H., Fisher, W., Weber, G., Langer, I., Gladstone, K., Rundle, C., Pyfers, L. (2002). Universal Interfaces to Multimedia Documents. Proceedings of 4^th IEEE International Conference on Multimodal User Interfaces , 319-324.

Vora, P.R. and Helander, M.G. (1997).  Hypertext and its implications for the Internet.  In M. Helander, T.K. Landauer and P. Prabhu (Eds.), Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (2^nd edition). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Weimann, K. (2003).  Modelling users with special reading needs.  This volume.