A final report about this study has been made concluding that it is not so trivial moving this technology, and a deeply research is needed. To start this research, we have moved the UsaProxy stuff previously used at RIAM project (Usability proxy for websites) to the MyMobileWeb platform. It logs all the events that have been done over the web application to analyse the interaction between users and devices. A MyMobileWeb application has been built to test the logging-event stuff.

In the next months, some tests will be carried out over the use case described below and a final report will be written summarizing all the conclusions that could be extracted from them.

Tianyi Chen of the Web Ergonomics Lab has graduated from the University of Manchester with the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. His thesis for the degree is entitled “Investigating Retrospective Interoperability between the Accessible and Mobile Webs with regard to User Input” describes the errors experienced by Mobile Web users share similarity in scope with those hindering motor-impaired Web users with dexterity issues, and existing solutions from the motor-impaired users domain can be migrated to the Mobile Web domain to address the common errors. By leveraging research from the Web accessibility field into the Mobile Web field, we have linked two disjoint domains together. We have migrated solutions from one domain to another, and thus have improved the usability and accessibility of the Mobile Web.

This paper describes empirical work which makes the link between the behaviour of motor impaired desktop users and non–impaired users of small–devices. This is important because it may, therefore, be possible to leverage existing solutions for motor impaired users into the small–device domain. We find that there is significant overlap in the extent of the problems encountered, but not the magnitude. Eight of the eleven existing errors made by motor impaired users were also present in our small–device study in which two additional error types, key ambiguity and landing errors, were also observed. In addition, small–device rates for common error types were higher than those of desktop users with no impairment, but lower than those of
desktop users with motor impairments.

The paper, titled “What Input Error Do You Experience? Typing and Pointing Errors of Mobile Web Users”, is written by Tianyi Chen, Dr. Yeliz Yesilada and Dr. Simon Harper. The paper presents a user study that investigates the input errors of mobile Web users in both typing and pointing. The study identifies six types of typing errors and three types of pointing errors shared between motor-impaired desktop users and mobile Web users. Results show that mobile Web users often confuse the different characters located on the same key, press keys that are adjacent to the target key, and miss certain key presses. When using a stylus, they also click in the wrong places, slide the stylus during multiple clicks, and make errors when dragging. Those results confirm that despite using different input devices, mobile Web users share common problems with motor-impaired desktop users; and it would be beneficial to transfer available solutions between these user domains in order to address their common problems. This work is part of the RIAM project funded by EPSRC (EP/E002218/1).

A technical paper titled, “The Transition From Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 to 2.0: What This Means For Evaluation and Repair” by Grace Mbipom and Simon Harper has been accepted at SIGDOC 2009, Indianapolis, USA. The paper discusses the implications of the transition for automated evaluation and repair in particular. In addition, the authors motivate the need for the adoption of cross-disciplinary techniques for automated accessibility evaluation and repair of Web content.

The researchers from the HCW lab had a full technical paper accepted at ASSETS 2009. The ASSETS conference explores the use of computing and information technologies to help persons with disabilities and older adults. This year it will be held in Pittsburgh, USA.

This paper is part of a collaboration work between the UK EPSRC funded RIAM project (EP/E002218/1), and the University of Udine. This full technical paper “How Much Does Expertise Matter? A Barrier Walkthrough Study with Experts and Non-Experts” by Yeliz Yesilada, Giorgio Brajnik and Simon Harper, investigates the interplay between expert and non-expert evaluation by conducting a Barrier Walkthrough (BW) study with 19 expert and 51 non-expert judges. The BW method provides an evaluation framework that can be used to manually assess the accessibility of Web pages for different user groups including motor impaired, hearing impaired, low vision, cognitive impaired, etc. this paper concludes that the level of expertise is an important factor in the quality of accessibility evaluation of Web pages. Expert judges spent significantly less time than non-experts; rated themselves as more productive and confident than non-experts; and ranked and rated pages differently against each type of disability. Finally, both effectiveness, which is the quality of finding all and only true accessibility problems, and reliability, which is the repeatability of the outcomes when used in different context, of the expert judges are significantly higher than non-expert judges.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group (BPWG) and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) published the W3C Working Group Note: Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Our lab member Dr. Yeliz Yesilada who is working on the RIAM project made contributions to this document and also the other related published documents.

People with disabilities using computers have similar interaction limitations as people without disabilities who are using mobile devices. This note describes the similarities and differences between the requirements Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 (MWBP). Following these two guidelines makes your Web content more accessible to everyone regardless of situation, environment, or device. Designing the guidelines together, instead of separately, can make the process more efficient. This note includes the following pages:

• From MWBP to WCAG 1.0 and
  From MWBP to WCAG 2.0 are designed for those who already know MWBP and want to learn how they relate to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
• From WCAG 1.0 to MWBP and From WCAG 2.0 to MWBP are designed for those who already know WCAG and want to learn how it relates to the Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP).

Introductory information and links to related documents are in Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices.

The RIAM project team is happy to announce that the team have contributed a new extension to the W3C mobileOK open source library. This extension can be used to validate pages served via the file URI scheme. The W3C mobileOK open source Java library has been developed in such a way that it is very easy to extend. The RIAM team strongly encourages people to extend this library so that a better infrastructure is provided to designers for creating mobile-friendly content.

The mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 Checker library provides a reference implementation of the tests specified in the W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. This scheme requires that pages are served via HTTP protocol, however there might be some cases where validating pages that are stored locally would be useful. Therefore, this new extension has been created and can be used to validate pages served via file URI scheme. The extension is designed and implemented in a way that does not affect the basic reference implementation. It is also important to note that validating pages only with this extension does not guarantee that the page is mobileOK as some tests require HTTP connection. This extension has to be used in-coordination with the W3C mobileOK Checker and does not replace the core mobileOK library.

If one wants to use this extension with the main library then they need to download and install it.

A technical documentation explains in detail how this extension can be installed and used.

This extension has been developed as part of the UK EPSRC funded RIAM (Reciprocal Interoperability of Accessible and Mobile Webs) project with the help of the Mobile Web Best Practices Checker Task Force.

The travel grant will allow Dr. Yeliz Yelisada to attend the 9th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE 2009) where she will be giving a tutorial on Web Accessibility (“Practical Accessibility: A Web Accessibility Primer”) with Dr. Simon Harper.

Darren Lunn’s grant was to enable his attendance at the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A). The theme of this years conference was “Web Accessibility for Older Users: Are We There Yet?”