Combating information overload in non-visual web access using context

Web sites are designed for graphical mode of interaction. Sighted users can visually segment Web pages and quickly identify relevant information. In contrast, visually-disabled individuals have to use screen readers to browse the Web. Screen readers process pages sequentially and read through everything, making Web browsing time-consuming and strenuous. The use of shortcut keys and searching offers some improvements, but the problem still remains. In this paper, we address this problem using the notion of context. When a user follows a link, we capture the context of the link, and use it to identify relevant information on the next page. The content of this page is rearranged, so that the relevant information is read out first. We conducted a series experiments to compare the performance of our prototype system with the state-of-the-art JAWS screen reader. Our results show that the use of context can potentially save browsing time as well as improve browsing experience of visually disabled individuals.