The evolution of the World Wide Web (Web) affects the way people develop Web pages and interact with it. Not too long ago, navigating the Web was simply a matter of clicking links, moving from one static page to another, and Web forms require the page to be reloaded every time communication is required between the client and the server. Now it’s possible to spend a considerable amount of time interacting with a single page through its “dynamic micro-content” – items such as Tickers, Slideshows and search facilities – that update independently, without requiring the page to be reloaded. These concepts are popular among users and they can be found throughout the Web; just take a look at Yahoo! or AOL.

Web pages with the latter capabilities provide an exciting, interactive experience for sighted users. For visually disabled users, however, they simply result in further barriers when accessing these pages. Assistive technologies, such as screen readers, are currently unable to effectively deal with dynamic updates. This is because content has to be presented to the user before Assistive technologies can interpret them, but dynamic micro-content actively changes the presented content accordingly to how the developers designed them. Often these changes go unnoticed as Assistive technologies are not able to adapt to these advancement.

The WIMWAT project aims to address this with a preemptive approach, by identifying the type of dynamic micro-content on the page and where they are located, so that Assistive technologies can warn their users or pay more focus on these areas.

Objectives

1. Classify the different types of popular dynamic micro-content area (widgets).
2. Comprehend the full Web page source code to identify the widgets before the page is presented to the user. Through this way, areas where widgets are likely to occur can be predicted.