mICTE2003: Second International Meeting on Multimedia and ICTs in Education, Badajoz (Spain) December 2003.

Versión en castellano

Research of Internet Use by Spanish Speaking Users with Blindness and Partial Sight

R. ROMERO and V. ÁVILA -  Research Unit ACCESO,
Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universitat de València Estudi General,
46010 Valencia, SPAIN - http://acceso.uv.es 

PDF version in mICTE2003 website

The results of an online questionnaire for Spanish speaking Internet users with visual impairment are presented summarized in this paper. This was available during 2002 and covered topics related to description of the visual disability, present job and education level, Internet services used and average daily time, browser used and computer access system, web accessibility problems found and a final section for open comments. The data collected shows that Internet is a highly valuable tool for visually impaired people as it allows them to access written information in an autonomous and instantaneous manner and to communicate with others through individual email and discussion lists. However all users find many important accessibility faults in many web pages that prevent them from having complete access to the information and functionalities of those web sites.

1         Introduction

According to the UK Royal National Institute of the Blind, “Internet is one of the most significant communication developments since the invention of Braille. For the first time ever, many blind and partially sighted people have access to the same wealth of information as sighted people and on the same terms”[1]. In spite of the importance of Internet for the visually impaired users, and the growing number of these users, very few documented information is available and most of it refers to the characteristics of English speaking users. In particular very little is available about the situation of Spanish speaking users.

 In 2001 we published a paper [2] with a qualitative evaluation of the usability and accessibility of web pages based on a list of common tasks to be performed by three visually impaired users with different levels of experience in the use of internet. In a continuation of this line of research a collection of information about Spanish speaking Internet users with visual impairment was done during 2002 by our research group ACCESO at the University of Valencia. The method used was an online questionnaire that the users had to fill and submit through a web page. There was also the possibility of submitting the answers by fax or email. The questionnaire was announced in several discussion lists in Spanish related to technology for the blind and web accessibility: tiflonet, tifloclub, accesoweb and Paidos-NEE. It was also linked from the homepage of Research Unit ACCESO during the whole year.

Figure 1: welcome web page and questionnaire (fragment)

 The topics covered in the questionnaire related to description of the visual disability, present job and education level, Internet services used and average daily time, browser used and computer access system, web accessibility problems found and a final section for open comments. There were a total of 67 items, many of them in the form of closed list of alternatives and ticking boxes to allow for later statistical summarising.

2         Questionnaire results

A total of 43 valid questionnaires were received. Four of them were sent by email and the rest used the available web form, while no questionnaire arrived by fax. Next we show the main results in each of the questionnaire categories:

2.1         Personal description

·         74% of respondents were Spanish. 26% lived in other Hispano-American countries, namely Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Puerto Rico and Guatemala.

·         Age range was between 11 and 70 years old, with median around 35.5.

·         75% were men and 25% women.

·         59% were totally blind and 41% had partial sight.

·         12% have acquired the visual impairment after they started to use Internet.

2.2         Education an d work

·         51% have higher education level, 49% have medium education while only 7% declared to have primary studies.

·         Job profiles are quite diverse: people working at ONCE (Spanish National Organisation for the Blind) or related firms, intermediate manages, university lecturers and so on. We highlight the number of unemployed or retired respondents which adds up to 22%.

·         Regarding how they learnt about using Internet, 66% selected self-learning, 21% declared having received some type of training from ONCE, and 13% declared other training sources: friends, academy…

2.3         Internet use

·         28% considered themselves to be experts in Internet use, 49% considered to have medium knowledge, while 23% believed to be only at beginners’ level. This goes more or less in parallel with the number of years using the web, where 35% have used it more than 3 years, 49% between 1 and 3 years, and only 16% use it for less than 1 year.

·         Use frequency is high. 74% use Internet more than 4 days per week, and 24% between 1 and 4 days per week. Only 2% (1 of the 43 users) access once per week. Average time per session is longer than 1 hour for 55% and between 15 minutes and one hour for 43%.

·         Services most used were web browsing (100%) and email (93%) followed by software download (64%), chat (32%) and internet shopping (27%). One user declared to use it also for online banking which was an option not listed.

2.4         Access system and browser

 ·         28% use Braille display, 28% use external voice synthesis, and 42% use the computer sound card, while 30% declared not using any special hardware to access the web. Note that these were not mutually excluding options.

·         Regarding the software used 9% use screen magnifiers, 23% use Tiflowin, 53% use JAWS, and 21% declared not using any special software. Note again that these were not mutually excluding options.

·         Regarding browsers, Explorer 5 was mostly used (86%). There were two people using IBM Home Page Reader, one using Netscape 4, one using Explorer 4 and one using ICAB. Everyone using JAWS except one person, used it in combination with Explorer 5.

2.5         Problems using the Web

A list of eight accessibility problems was included in the questionnaire. Respondents were asked to answer how often they found these types of accessibility faults when browsing the web. This part resulted more difficult for a few users as some of them did not answered, or declared that they didn’t know what some of the problem were as it can be seen in table 1. This was more the case for Flash and Javascript menus.

Table 1: Number of respondents (out of 43)

The summarized results for the rest of valid answers are shown in figure 2. All problems appeared quite frequently, specially the inaccessible forms, bad page organization which disturbs the navigation, and Flash without alternatives.

D
Figure 2: User perception of frequency of accessibility faults in web pages

Respondents were also asked to mark the level of difficulty found when performing different tasks related to web browsing. Results are shown in figure 3. The start and end of session together with moving to next and previous pages are the easiest tasks. On the other hand, it appears to be more difficult for some users to deal with form controls (list of options, multiple choice, ticking box), pop up windows and sites with frames. It is not clear however, if users found these tasks to be difficult per se or because they are implemented by designers in a way that they are made inaccessible. For example, frameworks without properly labelled frames and poorly designed web forms.

D
Figure 3: Web browse tasks ordered by difficulty

2.6         Final open questions

Users were asked final open questions about positive and negative elements of Internet according to their experience. They mentioned many positive characteristics related to keeping in contact with friends, family and colleagues via email, discussion lists specially those about visual impairment issues, and being able of accessing information independently and immediately, like the press, leisure time information, websites about blindness, listening to online radio stations, and the low cost of doing it. Only one person mentioned online training and another one mentioned online banking as positive aspects.

Negative aspects had to do mostly with many different accessibility faults in web sites. It was suggested that more training and awareness about accessibility was needed for web designers, and it was highlighted the lack of institutional support regarding these questions. High cost, viruses, spam and lack of protection for personal information were also mentioned.

3         Discussion of results

The results shown before should not be taken exactly as quantitative representative of the whole population of Spanish-speaking visually impaired users who access the web. Completion of the questionnaire was purely on a volunteer basis and it represented some time and effort for each person as there were more than 60 items to answer. Not many individuals were directly approached by us, and due to lack of resources we relied mostly in the discussion lists to spread the notice about this research. This, therefore, does not guarantee the representativity of the sample and only qualitative conclusions should be extracted from this work.

The very use of a web form to collect the information, even if it was also possible to send by fax or email, has probably left out of the sample many users without enough skills to interact with web forms as this represents a difficult task for a blind user even if the web form has been designed with accessibility in mind. For example, only 16% of respondents were beginners with less than 1 year experience in the use of Internet, while it is probable that this proportion is bigger in the whole population as this medium is still quite new for these users.

However some conclusions of general application can be extracted from this work:

·         The average Internet user with visual impairment seems to be a young man with higher education and very willing to explore the possibilities of this new medium.

·         It is confirmed that Internet is a highly valuable tool for visually impaired people as it allows them to access written information (most significantly, the press) in an independent and instantaneous manner and to communicate with others through individual email and discussion lists.

·         Blind and visually impaired people can access and use the web with benefit if web sites are designed in an accessible way. For example, 28% of the sampled users already practice internet shopping.

·         However all users find important accessibility faults in many web pages that prevent them from having complete access to the information and functionalities of those web sites. Some of these problems can be easily solved like the inaccessible web forms or images without alternative text. But other problems might need a whole redesign of web sites. In this sense we can emphasize the problems of having too much information in each page, or web sites that are completely developed in Flash.

·         Inaccessible web design seems to be quite common. It is more the norm than the exception and visually impaired users are very aware of this. All accessibility problems listed in the questionnaire were found “always” or “quite frequently” for at least 50% of surveyed users.

·         Users with partial sight have different needs and perception of inaccessible web sites than blind users do. The first ones sometimes complain that their needs are not being taken so much into consideration when promoting what should be done to get accessible websites. So, for example, little attention is paid to having users-resizable font size in the page or good colour contrast.

The time framework of the research must also be taken very much into account. The data were collected mainly during 2002 and the situation described will surely evolve every year. This will be so especially with regard to the tools used to access the web and the computer and with regard to new or more frequent accessibility faults appearing in web pages due to new web-related technologies emerging.

4         Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all participants in this research for the time and effort devoted to fill in the online questionnaires. We also want to thank specially the following people for their valuable contribution, validating the content and accessibility of the questionnaire in the initial phase of the research: Enrique Varela (Fundación ONCE), Jose Manuel Álvarez (manolo.net), Miguel Martín (ONCE Valencia), Cristina Pérez (ONCE Barcelona) and Miguel Ángel Alegría (ONCE Granada).

References

     1.  RNIB, Helpful facts on communicating with blind and partially sighted people. (2003)
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_method.hcsp

     2.  Romero R., Ávila V., and Alcantud F., Análisis de la accesibilidad y usabilidad de páginas web para usuarios ciegos. ISAAC 2001: Odisea de la Comunicación - Segundas Jornadas sobre Comunicación Aumentativa y Alternativa ISAAC España. (2001) pp.684-691
http://acceso.uv.es/Unidad/pubs/2001-isaac/Isaac2001_ciegos.htm

Annex: source data for charts

Figure 2: User perception of frequency of accessibility faults in web pages (% of valid answers)

Figure 3: Web browse tasks ordered by difficulty (% of valid answers)

Original questionnaire form in Spanish