ETD 2008 – Spreading the Light

1. ETD 2008 – Spreading the Light Making ETDs Accessible to the Visually Impaired and the Blind: a project under way

2. ETD 2008 – Spreading the Light Ana Pavani Laboratório de Automação de Museus, Bibliotecas Digitais e Arquivos Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro Brazil apavani@lambda.ele.puc-rio.br http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.puc-rio.br/

3. How did this project start?

4. PUC-Rio and UNESCO sponsor Cátedra UNESCO de Leitura PUC-Rio The Cátedra’s mission is to stimulate reading (leitura) under all circumstances

5. PUC-Rio has the MaxwellSystem – an institutional repository that makes available, among many other digital contents, almost 4 thousand ETDs in pdf format

6. A Cátedra faculty member got in touch with the Maxwell team to suggest that conditions be created so that the visuallyimpaired and the blind could access ETDs the same way as persons with normal vision

7. The answer was: sim! [pt] sim = [en] yes

8. James Clerk Maxwell(1831-1879) was a Scottish scientist who developed the Maxwell’s Equations of the Electromagnetic Field – our system(1995-) honors this great scientist

9. What did we do next?

10. A proposal for funding was submitted to FAPERJ – Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Apoio à Pesquisa no Estado do Rio de Janeiro. It addressed 2 objectives: • Accessibility of the system (‘navigating’ the system) • Accessibility of the contents (‘reading’ the contents of ETDs) • The proposal was accepted by FAPERJ and work began in Jan.2007

11. The learning process of the Maxwell team

12. Subnormal vision is defined in the OMD – Online Medical Dicitionary published by the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne as: Vision considered to be inferior to normal vision as represented by accepted standards of acuity(clarity or clearness), field of vision, or motility(ability to move spontaneously). http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?vision,+subnormal May 3, 2008

13. There are two different problems: • Blindness • Visual impairment or subnormal vision • The solutions to fulfill both objectives (‘navigation’ and reading) are different for the two problems • Blind persons use TTS– Text-To-Speech SW products

14. Visual impairment is very diverse: • Progressive or stationary • Different degrees • Different types of loss (areas of the vision field for example) • Variable according to the environment conditions • Variable according to the physical conditions of the person

15. Visually impaired persons prefer not to use TTS solutions if alternatives are available because TTS solutions are: • Slower than individual (‘lonely’) reading • More limited because the solutions perform linear reading (a problem with math expressions for example) • More tiring because they are repetitive

16. The identication of the problems and of the steps to solve them

17. Accessibility solutions for visually impaired persons: • ‘Navigation’(NV) • ‘Reading’ Contents (CV) • Accessibility solutions for blind persons: • ‘Navigation’(NB) • ‘Reading’ Contents (CB)

18. Examine W3C – World Wide Web Consortium specifications to make sure TTS products could read all pages (NB) • Find and examine TTS SW solutions for both MS Windows and the Linux family, and how they ‘navigate’ systems (NB) • Work with visually impaired and blind persons to learn their needs, follow their recommendations and examine the examples they present; get their help and feedback in analyzing and testing systems(NB) & (NV)

19. Find and examine TTS SW solutions for reading of files (specially pdf), and examine how well they read contents (CB) • Examine the accessibility tools of the Adobe Reader specially concerning visual adaptations and the Read Out Loud feature (CV) • Examine accessibility of ETD systems in terms of: (1) Institutional portals; (2) DL systems; and (3) Contents; for both blind and visually impaired persons (NB) & (NV)(under way)

20. Partial solutions

21. To the visually impaired: ‘navigation’ & ‘reading’ contents

22. (1) Allow increase of font size (2) Allow change of contrast (3) Do NOT use underlines (4) Do NOT use fonts with serifs

26. There is still work to do concerning: (1) increasing the sizes of images (icons) (2) dealing with combo boxes

29. Two comments: (1) Increasing font size introduces horizontal scroll – it is a fact! (2) PUC-Rio requires Times New Roman for text T&Ds

30. There are tools that come with the OSs and/or the web browsers, and can be combined with the system tools

31. Shift+Alt+PrtSc

32. Magnifier

33. Zoom

34. To the blind: ‘navigation’ & ‘reading’ contents Require TTS products

35. The first step was to find and examine TTS solutions: (1) suitable to MS Windows and Linux; (2) to ‘navigate’ and to ‘read’ contents; and (3) that ‘read’ pdf or could be combined with other solutions

36. DOSVOX developed by Núcleo de Computação Eletrônica of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil • JAWS – Job Accessibility with Speech developed by Freedom Scientific in the USA • LINVOX developed by Núcleo de Computação Eletrônica of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil

37. ORCA development led by the Accessibility Program Office of Sun Microsystems Inc. in the USA with contributions of many others • Virtual Vision developed by MicroPower in Brazil • Window-Eyes developed by GW Micro in the USA

39. Observations in the table: (1)Kurumin Linux + Wine Windows emmulator (http://www.winehq.org/) + DOSVOX (2) Special action required to start reading pdf files (3) Problems with frames (4) V3 (to be used with ORCA) under development (5) Some office applications; Braille printer formatting (6) Magnification; Braille display control

40. Some comments are necessary concerning DOSVOX, JAWS and Adobe Reader Read Out Loud feature

41. DOSVOX was initially examined because: • It was the first TTS product to have a pt-BR voice synthesizer • It is free • Many blind people are used to it • There are some office applications that can use it • It prepares texts for Braille printing • There are 2 ways of overcoming the limitation of not reading pdf files

42. Afterwards, DOSVOX was disconsidered for this first part of the project because: • It would be more complicated to read pdf files • Reading T&Ds requires a lot more sofistication due to images, mathematical expressions, tables, etc that DOSVOX does not support • There are texts in languages other than pt-BR

43. JAWS was chosen for this first part of the project because: • Many blind people (in Brazil and worldwide) use it • It comes with many languages, including pt-BR • It reads many text formats • It deals well with formulas and images, if authors are aware of accessibility and prepare their works in a proper manner

44. The Adobe Reader has a Read Out Loud feature that: • Reads pdf files • Is independent of the OS • Can be use with solutions that do not read pdf files

45. These were the results of the examination of the TTS solutions & They have to be applied to ‘navigation’ and to ‘reading’ contents

46. ‘Navigation’: • Adobe Reader Read Out Loud feature is not considered because it reads pdf files • Is only possible when the W3C specifications are followed, if they are not, ‘navigation’ becomes impossible when there are combo boxes, radio buttons, etc • In some sites, reading becomes slow and confusing due to many levels of menus (some we tested had menus with 3 levels!!) • The use of frames makes ‘navigation’ difficult, sometimes the SW ‘gets lost’

47. The whole process is very slow because every new page is read from the top left, even if the only information to be changed (from the previous page) was in the middle of the page • The use of shortcuts on the top left or all over the top is very helpful – a blind person does NOT use the mouse, all ‘navigation’ is performed with tab, , ,  , PgUp, PgDn, etc

48. The difficulty comes from screens being bidimensional; people who can see are ‘trained’ to interpret bidimensionally displayed info on graphical interfaces TTS products are linear readers!

49. ‘Reading’ contents: • Both JAWS and Adobe Read Out Loud feature were examined • After using the products to read ETD files, 3 types of problems were identified • There is much work to do to find solutions for them

50. Problem type # 1: Nature of ETDs • They are scientific works – they have images, graphs, tables, formulas, etc • They can have parts (titles, abstracts, keywords) in languages that are not that of the text • They may be bilingual, as for example in a graduate program in translation