Coral helps blind users quickly understand changing websites
Coral: Contextual Gists for Blind and Low Vision Screen Reader Users' Understanding of Dynamic User Interfaces
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
People who are blind or have low vision use screen readers to navigate websites, but modern sites change dynamically and can be hard to understand this way. The authors designed Coral, a tool that listens to what’s on the page and what the user is doing, then summarizes important updates in a way the screen reader can speak out loud. In tests, Coral helped users learn about the page faster and with less effort. This work sheds light on how smart tools can make web browsing more accessible for people with vision impairments.
What this means in practice
- •For web accessibility engineers: Add contextual audio summaries to screen readers to improve users’ understanding of changing web interfaces.
- •For assistive technology developers: Develop browser extensions that intelligently narrate interface updates tailored to blind and low vision users’ goals.$Commercial implications: Enables products that enhance screen reader output with goal-relevant interface summaries, improving accessibility tool usability.
Authors
Ritesh Kanchi, Jianna So, Krzysztof Z. Gajos
Abstract
Blind and low vision (BLV) screen reader users construct mental models of user interfaces (UIs) through incremental screen reader interaction, a time-consuming and cognitively demanding process complicated by modern interfaces that may not convey dynamic content accessibly. We interviewed eleven BLV screen reader users about UI understanding and derived design objectives that informed Coral, a context-aware browser extension. Coral synthesizes interface and user context to generate screen reader-narrated gists which holistically notify users of interface states and changes relevant to their likely goals and ongoing interaction. In a comparative evaluation with eight BLV screen reader users, participants used Coral to form initial expectations and interpret interface changes, and reported spending less time and effort manually verifying interaction outcomes. Together, our findings provide deeper insight into how BLV screen reader users navigate gaps in their UI understanding, and how intelligent support that combines interface and user context can bridge these gaps.