1. 3D HapticWebBrowser:
Towards Universal Web
Navigation for the Visually
Impaired
Nikolaos Kaklanis
Konstantinos Votis
Konstantinos Moustakas
Dimitrios Tzovaras
CERTH/ITI, Greece
2. The problem
Therehas been much work to offer audio rendering of
web pages to visually impaired users, but even the
best audio rendering applications still suffer from
some limitations such as:
Sequential navigation
Long processing time
Difficult navigation within a long page or across web pages
Audio rendering only works when HTML is well-formed
3. 3DHapticWebBrowser approach
HTML Components Hapgets
Hapgets are 3D virtual objects with audio
and haptic feedback
4. From HTML components to
hapgets
Each hapget has
a 3D visual representation
a description
a haptic icon
an earcon
a 2D visual representation
(only the hapgets
representing images)
6. Main advantages against the existing
technologies (e.g. screen readers)
The visually impaired users can:
freely navigate into the web page
no sequence is imposed
perceive the structure of the web page
haptically explore 2D maps found on the web
8. Guidance for the visually impaired
users
A mechanism has been developed in
order to provide some guidance to the
visually impaired users though the haptic
exploration of the web page.
A force is being applied automatically by the
application to the haptic device in order to
move the 3D cursor to one of the 4 corners or
to the center of the 3D scene.
10. Available options
There is a set of options that can be set
according to user’s needs/preferences.
enable/disable earcons/haptic icons
change hapgets
change hapgets’ size and their haptic
characteristics
etc.
12. Haptic exploration of 2D maps
found on the web
When a 2D image found in a web page is
being identified as a map
by its alternative text or
its URL
a corresponding multimodal map (haptic
& aural) is being automatically generated.
13. Map image analysis
Road names identification
Road network structure identification
3D map model construction
Road names transformation into
speech
OCR Woodland Dr
15. UsiXML support
What is UsiXML
an XML-based language describing user
interfaces
The “3D HapticWebBrowser” is also:
an HTML2UsiXML converter
a rendering engine of UsiXML documents
haptic
audio
visual (3D)
17. Future work
Future extensions include support for:
Javascript
Java applets
ActiveX components
Bookmarks
History
Files downloading/uploading
more HTML components
etc.