Tailored presentation of dynamic web content for audio browsers

Understanding the content of a Web page and navigating within and between pages are crucial tasks for any Web user. To those who are accessing pages through non-visual means, such as screen readers, the challenges offered by these tasks are not easily overcome, even when pages are unchanging documents. The advent of ‘Web 2.0’ and Web applications, however, means that documents often are not static, but update, either automatically or due to user interaction. This development poses a difficult question for screen reader designers: how should users be notified of page changes? In this article we introduce rules for presenting such updates, derived from studies of how sighted users interact with them. An implementation of the rules has been evaluated, showing that users who were blind or visually impaired found updates easier to deal with than the relatively quiet way in which current screen readers often present them.

► We develop rules for presenting dynamic Web content non-visually. ► The rules are developed from a model of sighted user behaviour. ► Different types of content require different methods of presentation. ► Automatically changing the user's focus appears not to be disorienting. ► The rules are validated by evaluation using blind and visually impaired users.