SADIe Transcoding Architecture

SADIe provides users with the option of transcoding the webpage to better suit the device that they are using to access the webpage. Primarily the transcoding is targeted at visually impaired users who are accessing the webpage via a screen reader, but we see no reason why our proposed technique could not be extended to other deices in the future.

Figure 1: Architecture For The SADIe Project
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1. The first stage is for the user to tell the Webpage Transcoder which webpage is to be transcoded and what transcoding effects are to be applied to the webpage. The Document Object Model (DOM) of the webpage is provided to the transcoder plus the user’s choice of transcoding. We propose four different types of transcoding that can be applied to the webpage:
• Defluff – This involves removing elements from the screen that provide little or no information on the page.
• Reorder – This involves reordering the page so that the areas that provide the most important information appear near the top of the page.
• Menu – This option displays the menu of the webpage at the top of the page.
• Concertina – Some elements on a website can be collapsed so that the user can access an overview of the information that the element contains or they can expand the element so that all the information is available.
2. The Ontology Discoverer calls the ontology database and queries it in order to find the ontology that best describes the structure of the webpage that is to be transcoded.
3. At this stage, the ontology is reasoned over so that the webpage element roles can be discovered in order for the transcoding to take place.
4. The final stage is for the webpage to be transcoded based on the user choices and the roles that have been discovered by reasoning the ontology. For example, if a user has indicated that they would like menu elements to be placed at the top of the page, then the transcoder uses the ontology reasoning to find all the menu elements so that they may be repositioned. With all the transcoding completed, the modified webpage is produced for the user’s Web device to access.