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Interaction on the Web is often problematic for visually disabled users. In order to analyse how visually disabled users deal with problematic situations we carried out a secondary analysis of 2 independent datasets containing the interaction of 24 users. As a result, we determine the situations in which cop-ing occurs including uncertainty, reduced mobility, confusion and overload, and identify 17 tactics employed to overcome these situations, being impul-sive clicking, exploration tactics and re-doing some of the most noteworthy. These tactics are novel in that they are contextualised and complete: their presence denotes the presence of specific problems. Therefore these tactics are behavioural markers of cognitive processes that indicate problematic situ-ations. We highlight the importance of these behavioural markers for design-ers and tools in order to remove the need to cope, evaluate accessibility-in-use and inform navigation models.
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This is the author copy of the paper:
Markel Vigo, Simon Harper (2013) Coping Tactics Employed by
Visually Disabled Users on the Web. International Journal of Human-
Computer Studies 71(11), 1013-1025. Elsevier
The published paper is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
ijhcs.2013.08.002
Note that there might be some inconsistencies between this and the
above publication so use this copy at your own risk.
1
Coping Tactics Employed by Visually Disabled Users on
the Web
Markel Vigo
, Simon Harper
School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Interaction on the Web is often problematic for visually disabled users. In
order to analyse how visually disabled users deal with problematic situations
we carried out a secondary analysis of 2 independent datasets containing the
interaction of 24 users. As a result, we determine the situations in which cop-
ing occurs including uncertainty, reduced mobility, confusion and overload,
and identify 17 tactics employed to overcome these situations, being impul-
sive clicking, exploration tactics and re-doing some of the most noteworthy.
These tactics are novel in that they are contextualised and complete: their
presence denotes the presence of specific problems. Therefore these tactics
are behavioural markers of cognitive processes that indicate problematic situ-
ations. We highlight the importance of these behavioural markers for design-
ers and tools in order to remove the need to cope, evaluate accessibility-in-use
and inform navigation models.
Keywords: Behavioural sciences, web tactics, behavioural strategies,
coping tactics, blind users, low vision, screen readers, screen magnifiers.
1. Introduction
The World Wide Web is an eminently visual media and as such, web
pages are normally designed with visual metaphors in mind. However, there
are a plethora of users who have access restrictions to the Web through the
visual channel. Users employing devices such as smartphones while on the
move and users of bicycle or in-car interfaces not only have to experience the
Corresponding author
Email address: markel.vigo@manchester.ac.uk (Markel Vigo)
Preprint submitted to International Journal of Human-Computer StudiesSeptember 19, 2013
limitations of constrained screens and keyboards, but also they have to split
their attention. While these users are considered to be situationally impaired,
visually disabled users face these situations constantly; consequently they
tend to rely on the auditory channel to interact with the Web.
According to the World Health Organisation1, based on individuals’ vi-
sual acuity, visual disabilities are classified as mild, moderate or severe vi-
sual impairment and blindness. Individuals who are visually disabled (low
vision users and blind users) employ assistive technologies to overcome the
access problems to visual media. Assistive technologies are the devices that
augment and transform content across interaction modalities. For instance,
screen magnifiers, which are normally employed by low vision users, aug-
ment the visual channel by zooming into the content. Screen magnifiers also
have colour inversion and cursor enhancement features, amongst others. The
shortcomings of using screen magnifiers are that users only have a partial
view of the page they are interacting with and therefore the interaction con-
text is lost. Screen readers, which are employed by blind and low vision users,
transform content across modalities: the content which is intended to be vi-
sually displayed is conveyed through the auditory channel. To do so, screen
readers extract content from the web page and read it out loud in a serial
fashion by reading it from the top-left to the bottom-right area of the page,
by jumping between blocks of paragraphs or between sections denoted by
headings. Advanced features such as “auto web spot” by VoiceOver screen
reader are able to detect areas of pages that are visually and structurally
meaningful such as the mast header, navigation links, main content or the
footer, and provide users with navigation mechanisms to jump to them.
Actually, users explore web pages by passively listening to the output of
the screen reader, which is a strategy adopted by 5.4% of skilled users and
18.4% of novices (WebAIM, 2012); this strategy tends to be employed when
users get to a page for the first time. This is an inefficient yet effective way to
navigate through a web page. A vast majority of users (accounting for more
than 75%) report that they employ scanning strategies such as navigating
through links and through headings as their main strategy (WebAIM, 2012).
As these quasi-sequential navigation techniques are often suboptimal, users
employ their own navigation strategies in order to more efficiently navigate
1International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Available at
http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en#/H53-H54
3
through web pages (see an analysis of these strategies in §3).
In addition to the accessibility problems that may be encountered and
are covered by accessibility guidelines (Caldwell et al., 2008), the naviga-
tion mechanisms employed by screen reader users hinder their performance
(Bigham et al., 2007; Takagi et al., 2007) when compared to that of their
sighted counterparts. While the problems visually disabled users face are
well covered by the literature (Theofanos and Redish, 2003; Lazar et al.,
2007; Power et al., 2012), the situations provoked by these problems are less
known. Using coping theory as a framework of reference (see §2), we classify
the problematic encounters into problems caused by uncertainty, reduced
mobility, confusion and overload in §5.1. In order to explore the specific
cases of the general case we provide a mapping between a Web technology
driven classification and general coping situations in §5.2. Then we anal-
yse how users react and what are the solutions and workarounds employed
(namely tactics) in order to overcome or bypass such problematic situations
in §6. We compare the problematic situations and tactics identified with
previous work in §7; we also contextualise tactics in light of coping theory
and we finally discuss how matching tactics to coping situations paves the
way to programmatically detect problematic situations. The implications for
evaluating accessibility-in-use and modeling navigational behaviour are also
discussed.
2. Adaptive Behaviour and Coping
Adaptive behaviourists establish that skills are learned through expe-
rience and when these skills are automatically exhibited, the relationship
between individuals and the environment is more effective. At early stages
of skill acquisition, an enormous effort and concentration is required, while
at the later stages skills become gradually automated. Adaptive behaviour
is the behaviour by which individuals adjust to the environment. Coping
is defined as “the constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to
manage specific external or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or
exceeding the resources of a person”(Lazarus and Folkman, 1984) and as such
it can be considered an extreme adaptation. Even if the boundary between
adaptive behaviour and coping is fuzzy, these are normally distinguishable ef-
forts. Coping is often required when new situations are faced and such events
cannot trigger automatic responses. Cognitive control mechanisms deal with
automatic behaviours, whereas coping takes place if the response is purpose-
4
ful and requires effort. Both of them are adaptational activities yet coping
requires effort and consciousness. One of the misconceptions about coping
is relating it to successful outcomes. Coping strategies can be good or bad
depending on the individuals and their environment. Therefore, its effective-
ness is determined by the long-term effects of employing a given strategy in a
specific situation. Another common misunderstanding is to consider coping
as gaining mastery over the environment. Coping does not only entail ap-
plying problem-solving strategies but also managing one’s emotions, which is
considered equally important for adaptational purposes. Coping tactics tend
to be exhibited in the following situations:
Uncertainty. In the context of coping theory uncertainty is defined
as “the sense of doubt that blocks or delays the action” (Lipshitz and
Strauss, 1997). There are 3 situations that generate uncertainty: in-
adequate understanding, incomplete information and undifferentiated
alternatives. The strategies adopted for coping with uncertainty in
real life are assumption based reasoning, weighting pros and cons of
competing alternatives and forestalling. Decision making under uncer-
tainty is typically biased by the use of stereotypes in the judgements
(representativeness), the familiarity with the stimuli (availability) and
the initial assessment, which determines subsequent ones (anchoring)
(Tversky and Kahneman, 1974).
Reduced mobility. Case studies describing the way in which concen-
tration camp prisoners, prisoners of war or people who have suffered
natural catastrophes behave give some hints about the coping strategies
that are adopted in analogous situations where freedom and autonomy
are reduced or non-existent (Moos, 1976). The tactics adopted in such
situations, amongst many others are: null coping, surrendering to cop-
ing, taking advantage of smallest portion of autonomy or focusing on
small gratifications.
Confusion. Confusion is a category built on the appraisal factors
of novelty, unfamiliarity and ambiguity of the setting (Lazarus and
Folkman, 1984). Therefore, the initial expectations of the user play a
central role. When any of these factors is present confusion is likely to
happen.
Overload. Selective attention allows individuals to discriminate be-
tween many sources of information (through the visual and auditory
5
channel) and select just the one it is targeted. It is a mechanism to
overcome information overload by tracking some stimuli at the expense
of others. This way, one can attend to what is important in a given en-
vironment and to adaptively cope with changed circumstances. When
it comes to coping, filtering and withdrawal emerge as the strategies
employed by individuals (Savolainen, 2007).
In circumstances of uncertainty, reduced mobility, confusion and overload,
coping involves the simultaneous management of the following variables that
can be operationalised through coping tactics (White, 1974).
Individuals have to keep the right amount of information about the
environment. Cognition requires the right amount of information as a
guide to action: depending on the situation, adaptation may require
seeking for more information or just removing the exceeding one.
Individuals have to maintain satisfactory internal conditions in terms
of alert and information processing in order to be ready for any event
that may happen.
Individuals have to maintain autonomy or freedom on the environment.
This requires a constant monitoring of the available ways of escaping
from any potentially threatening situation.
3. Related Work
Goble et al. (2000) employed the travel metaphor to define the Web mo-
bility of visually disabled users, where blind users employed several mobility
instruments in their journeys: in-journey guidance is the implementation
of asking for directions in the physical world by means of bookmarks and
browser history; previewing and probing are employed to get a glimpse of the
page by traversing it in a sequential fashion or by jumping between head-
ings. This allows the identification of obstacles and areas of interest for later
exploration. Clicking on a link, followed by a quick exploration of the page
beyond the link and returning to the linking page is another implementation
of probing corroborated by Bigham et al. (2007). In this study it was found
that when coming across accessibility barriers, some blind users make use of
cursor keys, which is the functionality that simulates the use of the mouse
by reading out loud the area of the page which is hovered.
6
In exploring navigability of e-commerce sites for blind users, Takagi et al.
(2007) discovered the importance of landmarks for orientation purposes; ad-
ditionally it was observed that users stick to their methods even if accessibil-
ity bridges such as headings or skip-links are provided. Alternatively, users
employ the exhaustive scanning tactic by listening to content in a sequential
fashion; also, users exhibit the gambling scanning tactic by jumping for-
ward and skipping a determined amount of lines until bumping into content
that draws their attention, normally because of its strong information scent;
thereafter users navigate sequentially. The memorisation of the amount of
links users have to skip in order to get to the main content was also observed
in pages users were familiar with (Yesilada et al., 2007). When it comes
to information retrieval tasks, it was observed that screen reader users try
to write accurate queries in search engines in order to minimise the overall
search time (Sahib et al., 2012). If results are not satisfactory, instead of
refining the initial query – as sighted users do – screen reader users submit
a different one.
Users make the most of screen readers by increasing their speech rate or by
using them jointly with another assistive technology such as Braille displays
(Borodin et al., 2010). Additionally, the role that previous experience and
familiarity with pages plays is also highlighted in that it shapes how users
are able to guess the labels in non-accessible forms. Another example of how
familiarity determines interaction is related to the dynamic nature of Web
2.0: if users have previously experienced frequent updates in a given web
page, this leads them to learn how to manually refresh the page and then
navigate right to the area that is updated (e.g., a ticker).
The coping strategies employed by low vision users have been used to
inform behaviour based transcoding of web pages (Lunn et al., 2011). The
interesting contribution regarding tactics relies on the fact that this work
confirms the similarity of the tactics employed by blind users and low vision
users employing screen readers, screen magnifiers or both: candidate chunk
discovery is equivalent to gambling scanning (Takagi et al., 2007), masthead
avoidance is observed elsewhere (Yesilada et al., 2007) when referring to the
memorisation of the number of links to skip in order to get to the main
content, probing (Goble et al., 2000) is identified again, clustered element
strategy extends the usage of cursor keys (Borodin et al., 2010) by describing
how it is used in a concentric fashion; finally, the backtracking strategy de-
scribes how users, when facing difficulties, click back until reaching a familiar
web page.
7
Most works above describe adaptive behaviour tactics in that they do not
report whether users have undergone extreme adaptations, which suggests
that the tactics above are regularly employed procedures. As we are inter-
ested in the tactics employed by visually disabled users when encountering
problems, the most closely related work about coping tactics deals with the
frustration of blind users on the Web (Lazar et al., 2007). Under frustration,
users often employ asking for help,re-trying,giving up and restarting tactics.
However, the most frequent actions taken by users (accounting for the 78%
of the reported tactics) were inconclusive about how users tackled frustrating
situations: “I was unable to solve it”, “I knew how to solve it because it has
happened before”, “I found an alternative solution”, “I figured out how to
fix it myself ” and “I rebooted”. Our work expands on this by analysing the
coping tactics employed by visually disabled users in problematic situations.
4. Observational Setting and Data Acquisition
In order to expand on the hints provided by previous work, we conducted
a secondary analysis of two heterogeneous datasets belonging to two indepen-
dent in-situ studies: the first is a think-aloud exercise where visually disabled
users had to accomplish a number of tasks, while the second study reports
the observations carried out by two investigators during a course where users
learnt how to develop their Internet skills.
When analysing data to identify coping situations and behaviours, in-situ
observations have a number of benefits compared to other data collection
methods: in-situ observations allow to recognise emergent behaviours, iden-
tify the sources of user frustration and enable a better understanding of when,
why and how users employ determined tactics. On the other hand, in-situ
observations have some limitations as they are resource intensive; moreover,
observers may introduce subjectivity or may miss relevant events.
Visually disabled users are heterogeneous and the tactics they employ to
overcome problematic situations may vary based on their abilities or exper-
tise. That is why we categorise the participants of both studies in terms of
experience, disability and assistive technology used. Experience is measured
in terms of exposure to the Web so we group participants as experienced if
they have been exposed to the Web for more than one year and we group
them as novices otherwise. Regarding disability, users are categorised as
blind or visually impaired, and the assistive technologies they employ are
screen readers, screen magnifiers, a combination of them or none of them.
8
The heterogeneity of datasets jointly with the fact that datasets were
collected by different researchers who employed different collection methods
allows us to triangulate the data and remove the possible bias introduced in
each study.
4.1. Study 1
The goal of this study was to analyse the interaction of blind and visually
impaired users on the Web. A think-aloud method was employed so that the
observer could record what users verbalised jointly with interaction data2.
4.1.1. Type of Data Analysed
As mentioned, the dataset not only contains the verbalisations of the user
that correspond to the think-aloud protocol, but includes also additional ex-
planatory comments made by the observer that help to clarify the situations;
the interaction with the keyboard and the mouse, and the commands exe-
cuted are also recorded. An excerpt of the interaction of U12 in this dataset
looks as follows3:
Arrow Down to select Africa [by mistake]
[Page brings up Telegraph Travel window but JAWS does read it out]
(It’s gone, the information refuses to come up)
Click on back (I’ll start again)
Read out top of the page [user is in the travel page, not in the weather
page but he does not realise]
Tab down through links
Tab up page (where is the weather?)
4.1.2. Users
Table 1 shows the profile of the 19 participants that took part in the
study: 13 blind (68%) and 6 visually impaired users (32%). 16 participants
(84%) employed screen readers in the study (2 of them used them jointly
with a Braille display) distributed as 11 JAWS users (69%), 3 SuperNova
users (19%) and the remaining 2 (13%) used another screen reader. Finally,
2 visually impaired users did not use any assistive technology at all but just
2Dataset from study 1 cannot be published due to the ethical arrangements made by
its author.
3The square brackets are the comments made by the observer and the round brackets
is the verbalisation of the user.
9
looked closer to the screen and only 1 visually impaired user relied on a
screen magnifier alone. All participants had more than 1 year of experience
in the Web so we classified them as experienced users. It can be observed
that the group was not homogeneous and the usage of assistive technologies
varied across users and disabilities. Unsurprisingly, some visually impaired
users employed screen readers, while some other did not use any assistive
technology. The last column in table 1 refers to the onset in which the
disability was acquired4.
4.1.3. Tasks
Each participant had to accomplish 4 tasks without any time limitation;
they had to find (1) the weather forecast for a specific location, (2) spe-
cific information about a journal in a digital library, (3) information about
Solomon Islands in a large catalogue of resources, and (4) purchase a suit in
a large department store.
4.2. Study 2
The study presented in this report is based on in-situ observations of
visually impaired users interacting with Web technology. These observa-
tions took place in a course where people with visual disabilities learn to
use technology and they are especially helped to develop Web access skills.
Participants are taught all the basics about computers, Internet, browsers,
screen readers and screen magnifiers. Thus it can be understood as a course
to acquire computer literacy. Users often talked among themselves in order
to recommend a certain website or to give some assistance when they needed
help. They were supervised by visually disabled tutors who gave them a
crash course on basic commands before they were started. Sometimes, the
tutors would also suggest some websites for job seeking purposes.
The two observers that reported observational data played the role of
classroom assistants, offering their assistance to users during the course. Par-
ticipants were informed that two observers were in the class ready to help.
Adopting a peripheral membership role (Adler and Adler, 1987), observers
4Due to the neuroplasticity of the brain, the visual cortex of those who have an early
onset of blindness gets adjusted for other purposes; e.g., the part that was originally
devoted to vision is repurposed for touch or hearing. Even if there is not an agreement
upon the age in which the cortex loses its plasticity, it is suggested that it occurs around
the age of 16 (Sadato et al., 2002).
10
Table 1: Users taking part in study 1.
id disability assistive tech-
nology
specific AT experience onset
U1 blind screen reader SuperNova experienced before 16
U2 blind screen reader JAWS experienced N/A
U3 blind screen reader SuperNova experienced congenital
U4 visually impaired none User looks
closer to the
screen
experienced N/A
U5 blind screen reader JAWS experienced congenital
U6 blind screen reader JAWS experienced before 16
U7 blind screen reader JAWS and
Braille display
experienced after 16
U8 visually impaired screen reader PW Webspeak experienced N/A
U9 blind screen reader JAWS experienced N/A
U10 visually impaired screen reader SuperNova experienced N/A
U11 visually impaired none User looks
closer to the
screen
experienced N/A
U12 blind screen reader JAWS experienced before 16
U13 blind screen reader JAWS experienced before 16
U14 visually impaired screen magnifier Zoomtext experienced N/A
U15 blind screen reader HAL experienced N/A
U16 blind screen reader JAWS experienced congenital
U17 visually impaired screen reader
and screen
magnifier
JAWS and
Zoomtext
experienced before 16
U18 blind screen reader JAWS experienced N/A
U19 blind screen reader JAWS and
Braille display
experienced after 16
11
sat next to the participants on a one-to-one basis. Participants were ob-
served while interacting with the Web so that the difficulties encountered,
problems faced and steps taken could be identified and jotted down by ob-
servers. When participants faced difficulties, help was not provided if it was
not explicitly requested. In such situations, participants were encouraged
to overcome the problem by themselves. Assistance was provided as a last
resort when all remaining options had been exhausted and it was clear that
participants would be unable to accomplish their goals. The notes taken dur-
ing the observations were transformed into formal observation reports after
each session (available at Lunn and Michailidou, 2007, 2008).
4.2.1. Type of Data Analysed
The dataset contains a detailed description of the actions taken by users,
the way in which assistive technology is employed and the problems en-
countered. For example, the following excerpt shows how user interaction is
described in these datasets: ... the button was not within U20’s field of view
due to screen magnification. Also, the background colour and button colour
did not have a high contrast and U20 found it difficult to identify the button
and click on it. It only when the mouse pointer changed from a pointer icon
to a hand icon that ...”.
4.2.2. Users
5 users were observed in periods of time comprising a maximum of 2
months. The small amount of number of users can be counterbalanced with
multi-session observations ranging from 2 to 5 sessions, where a wide variety
of behaviours can be exhibited. Table 2 shows the profile of the participants:
U20 is visually impaired and makes use of Zoomtext. He had used the
Internet before but when the course started he had already forgotten how to
use it. U21 is visually impaired although his vision is variable. Some days
he can see better than others and on these occasions he will make use of the
Zoomtext screen magnifier. On a bad day the Jaws screen reader will be used.
He has basic knowledge on computers although he is inexperienced on the
Web. U22 is profoundly blind, has a guide dog and is a Braille competent
user; his interaction method is the Jaws screen reader. He never used a
computer prior to the course. U23 is visually impaired but not profoundly
blind; he never used a computer before and spent most of his time learning
basic computer functionalities. Only at the end of the course was able to
start browsing using the Jaws screen reader. U24 is a experienced user who
12
Table 2: Users taking part in study 2.
id # of
sessions
disability assistive technology
(AT)
specific AT experience onset
U20 5 visually im-
paired
screen magnifier Zoomtext novice N/A
U21 5 visually im-
paired
screen reader or screen
magnifier
JAWS or
Zoomtext
novice N/A
U22 4 blind screen reader JAWS novice N/A
U23 2 visually im-
paired
screen reader JAWS novice N/A
U24 2 visually im-
paired
screen magnifier Zoomtext experienced N/A
is visually impaired and uses the Zoomtext screen magnifier. His goal in
the course was to acquire further browsing skills. Based on their skills and
knowledge on accessing the Web, all the subjects that took part in study 2
but U24 were considered novice users.
4.2.3. Tasks
There were no structured tasks to accomplish as users were free to browse
the Web. Users tended to browse on sites that were going to be useful for
them in the near future. For instance, they emulated the booking of a flight
or the purchase of an item in an e-commerce site. Users also tried to browse
on nationwide and local media; they also browsed for fun and this sometimes
led them to serendipitous findings. However, they were encouraged by tutors
to navigate through pages that would allow them to get a job as one of the
goals of this course was to increase their employability prospects. Users were
not constrained by time in any of their tasks.
4.3. Data Analysis Method
We analysed the datasets of study 1 and study 2 in two main stages:
discovery and coding (Taylor and Bogdan, 1984). In the discovery stage we
got familiar with the data and identified the main themes and concepts. To
do so, we paid attention to those events that were especially problematic for
users. Datasets contained three main indicators pointing to these problematic
situations: problems reported by the observers (e.g., “user is confused over
which resource to use”), utterances of users that denoted problems (e.g., “I’ve
no idea what these links are”) and a combination of observer and user reports.
13
The actions taken by users as a reaction to problems, namely tactics, were
also collected. Specific key or mouse events are of a too low granularity level,
making it difficult to find a manageable set of tactics. Therefore, a medium
granularity level – a concatenation of low level events – allowed us to find
tactic patterns across users. In the coding stage we refined the discovered
concepts and found relationships between them in order to categorise them.
To do the categorisation we followed as follows:
Initially, in order to identify coping situations we did a first pass us-
ing categorical coding by classifying encountered problems and tactics
according to the situations described in §2: uncertainty, reduced mo-
bility, confusion and overload. We proceeded similarly to categorise
the tactics employed. One of the advantages of using coping theory to
categorise problematic situations and the tactics employed to overcome
them is that it allows to identify and describe the problems faced by
users on the Web independently of how the underlying technology is
deployed (see §5.1).
One of the weaknesses of current literature is that tactics employed by
users are dependent on the implementation and design of web pages.
For instance, one of the tactics found by Yesilada et al. (2007) was
that users counted the number of tabs in order to skip content at the
top of the Google results page. If the mentioned web page updates
or if the design patterns of websites evolve or if assistive technology
provides the mechanisms to bypass such problems, the coping tactic
becomes obsolete. By employing categorical coding, we aim at having
generalisable outcomes that are applicable in the future regardless the
evolution of design patterns, Web technology or user agents.
In a second pass we coded the data in a open or emergent fashion. In
this way, the categories describing problematic situations emerged with-
out any intentional prejudice. As a result we came up with the follow-
ing categories that determine problematic situations on the Web: ac-
cessibility issues, unmet expectations, navigation strategy, exploration
strategy, information architecture, assistive technology and emotional
issues (see §5.2 for further information).
Finally, we mapped the general categories found as a result of employ-
ing categorical coding into the categories encountered by employing
14
emergent coding. While the former categories are independent of the
underlying Web technology, the latter are dependent on it. By pro-
ceeding in this way, we were able to identify the emergent specific cases
of the general case.
The categorisation of the problematic interactions faced by users was car-
ried out with dataset 1 (the dataset from study 1) at each pass of the data
analysis (categorical coding and open coding). At each pass, we employed
dataset 2 to confirm and validate the categorisation built using dataset 1.
We found that our initial categorisation was able to accommodate the prob-
lematic situations found in dataset 2. This confirms the flexibility of the
categorisation and the lack of possible bias that might have been introduced
when building it. As a result, except those categories containing a small num-
ber of reported problematic situations, there are not categories that belong
to a specific dataset and the problematic situations of each dataset appear
at least once in each category, as table 4 and table 5 illustrate.
When it comes to the categorisation of the tactics employed to overcome
the problematic situations, the two datasets contain all the identified tactics
although some of the implementations of tactics are particular to a dataset.
The last column in table 6 sheds more light in the particular user group that
employs a determined tactic. This can be justified in that the stereotypical
user of dataset 1 is an experienced screen reader user, while dataset 2 mainly
contains visually impaired novices. This indicates that the strength of our
categorisation resides on being able to accommodate heterogeneous datasets
containing heterogeneous user profiles.
5. Inventory of Problems Faced
The analysis revealed 129 problematic situations in which the 24 users
faced problems of a different nature. Table 3 outlines the number of situations
categorised by disability and employed assistive technology.
5.1. General Coping Situations
By considering coping theory discussed in §2, we categorise coping in the
Web with regard to situations of uncertainty, reduced mobility, confusion and
overload. The boundaries of such categories were not always clear as some-
times we could find situations fitting in more than one category. For instance,
15
Table 3: Number of problematic situations analysed
Category Study 1 Study 2
situations users situations users
Visually impaired 31 7 34 4
Blind 50 12 14 1
Screen reader users 71 15 16 2
Screen magnifier users 0 1 21 2
Screen reader and screen magnifier users 5 1 11 1
None 5 2 0 0
it was common to find confusing and overloading situations where each cat-
egory appeared at a different degree. We decided to classify such situation
based on its most prominent characteristic – especially if it was indicated by
the user –, for instance: if confusion prevailed over being overwhelmed the
situations was classified as “confusing”.
5.1.1. Uncertainty
Unexpected banners, previous negative experiences in navigating through
similar content or lack of alternative text for pictures are some of the problems
that cause uncertain situations. U10 expressed uncertainty as “I can’t read
this but I will give a try, I am assuming it is what I want so let’s see where
it takes me”; also while U18 was exploring a page and was not able to find
what he was looking for, commented “I’m not confident this is what I want”,
when coming across some pictures that did not have any alternative text.
5.1.2. Reduced Mobility
Looping on a sequence of pages and not being able to escape, finding
oneself in a dead-end web page or software compatibility problems depict
some of these situations. These situations are illustrated by U10 when real-
ising he had unintentionally looped “I’ve got back to shorts again ... shorts
again! or U21, when he was not able to get out of the navigation bar; the
observer comments “JAWS seemed to read the links many times, as though
in an infinite loop”. Some expressions illustrate how users got disoriented:
Oh, I’ve got lost, I don’t know where I am now” as a consequence of U17
clicking in the wrong link or “Not sure where I am ... if in doubt go back to
the beginning ”, after U2 read all the results provided by a search engine.
16
5.1.3. Confusion
There is a broad scope of situations that generate confusion to users:
problems with text size, the lack of search results, encountering unfamiliar
content and functionalities, or misuse of assistive technology, to name a few.
An example of a confusing situation is the one faced by U16 when a search
engine provided 0 results: Where have the results gone? ”; U19 was unable
to distinguish between a link and text, “It’s not there ... it’s annoying me
now ... it’s not a link!”.
5.1.4. Overload
Some of the situations that illustrate overwhelming situations are a large
amount of search results, too many steps to complete a transaction and a
large number of items in navigation menus. Overload can be illustrated by
the following examples: when the prospect of a large amount of links de-
terred U7 from carrying on: 900 links ... OK that’s enough”; U6 was
aware that the page contained what he was looking for but the goal was
buried somewhere in between all the information provided: “This is a prob-
lem sometimes, you can have 30 or 230 links that you have to sit and listen
to!”.
5.2. Specific Emergent Coping Situations
5.2.1. Accessibility (A)
As expected there are a number of accessibility barriers that cause prob-
lems in accessing the content and hinder the interaction of visually disabled
users. While this category encompasses those problems that are covered
by accessibility guidelines (Caldwell et al., 2008), it can be argued that the
remaining categories contain also accessibility issues if one has a more am-
ple definition that goes beyond the traditional understanding of accessibil-
ity. For instance when encountering pictures without alternative content
U12 described “[screen reader] keeps reading out part of weather page: ‘min’,
‘min’,‘min’ ”; in the case of U2, when a number of links were similarly la-
belled: “everything seems to say ‘suit pieces’, will probably have to click on
every link to find out what happens”.
5.2.2. Unmet Expectations (UM)
Our analysis found that user expectations tend not to be met due to
a number of reasons: coming across unfamiliar layouts and functionalities,
bumping into banners and advertisements and lack of results when querying
17
search engines, to name a few. For instance, U10 got surprised when finding
a banner about mortgages while searching for the weather forecast: “Mort-
gages? What’s that got to do with the weather? ”; similarly when no results
were provided by a search engine U1 expressed “Don’t understand what all
this is about”.
5.2.3. Inter-page Navigation Problems (N)
Inter-page navigation refers to the steps taken by users to reach to the
page that contains their goal. Therefore, we focus on the hyperlink assess-
ment made by users and the sequence of hyperlinks scanned and clicked.
Navigation problems can be illustrated as when U17 realised he had looped
while searching for information “Damn, I’m just going round in circles ”;
when U12 had wrongly implemented the backtracking technique (as he un-
intentionally skipped the page he was looking for) and got to another different
one: “Where is the weather? ... I have come to the conclusion that I am on
the wrong page ”.
5.2.4. Intra-page Exploration Problems (E)
Intra-page exploration refers to the navigation of the user within a web
page, it is all about reading and listening to content, scanning through links
in order to find the goal or the link which will lead to the goal. Exploration
problems can be described as the situation faced by U18 when arrowing
around (using the virtual cursor) deviated him from the goal, which was
actually very close to him. Another example of exploration problems is de-
picted when U10 got to a page containing his goal but it was missed as the
user just gave a quick overview to the page without traversing it.
5.2.5. Information Architecture (IA)
This category refers to those elements of the interface that regardless
their (lack-of) accessibility cause problems to users. They can be considered
design problems as they are closely related to current website conventions
in terms of layout and content arrangement (mast header, lateral navigation
links menu, banner, content, footer, etc.) and the amount of information in
each component. Such problems can be described as follows: U23 found too
much textual information between the top and the main content of the page,
This is doing my head in this”. Similarly, a number of links sat in between
the location of U2 and his desired content: There are lots of links between
the search box and results”.
18
Table 4: Mapping general situations to emerging coping situations: number
of users experiencing problems in study 1 (s1) and study 2 (s2)
A UM N E A AT EM unique users
s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2
uncertainty 5 1 3 1 - - - - - - - - 3 1 9 (38%)
reduced mobility 2 1 - - 4 3 1 3 0 1 2 1 - - 11 (46%)
confusion 1 1 9 3 10 2 9 3 - - 1 2 - - 21 (88%)
overload - - - - 0 1 - - 6 4 - - - - 10 (42%)
5.2.6. Assistive Technology Issues (AT)
There are some interaction problems that are caused by the lack of knowl-
edge about specific features of screen readers, misuse of their functionalities
of because users forget to activate a specific interaction mode (i.e., forms
mode in JAWS). For instance, a software compatibility problem frustrated
U15 : “this is a waste of time ... it just will not read it ... don’t want this ...
can’t go on this ... can’t understand it”; the lack of synchronisation between
the screen magnifier and the screen reader lead U17 to an unwanted location:
I meant to click on search [link]”.
5.2.7. Emotional Coping (EM)
The current mood and the confidence on what users are doing plays a
key role in determining subsequent interactions on the Web. This category
refers to the situations that are constrained by a previous negative experi-
ence in a similar page or in the previous task. As an example of emotional
coping, U20 was disheartened because of a previous bad experience, which
negatively influenced his subsequent experience. Similarly, after unsatisfac-
torily exploring the page, U18 clicked on a link not being sure of what he
was doing “I’m not confident this is what I want”.
A mapping between the problematic situations categorised through cate-
gorical (see §5.1) and open coding (see §5.2) allows to identify the emergent
specific cases of the general case. Table 4 shows the number of users who
experienced problematic situations in each mapped category, whereas table
5 depicts the number of problematic situations analysed.
19
Table 5: Mapping general situations to emerging coping situations: number
of problematic situations in study 1 (s1) and study 2 (s2)
A UM N E A AT EM total
s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2
uncertainty 13 1 3 1 - - - - - - - - 5 2 25 (19%)
reduced mobility 2 2 - - 6 3 1 4 0 2 2 1 - - 23 (18%)
confusion 2 4 11 9 12 2 11 4 - - 1 3 - - 59 (46%)
overload - - 0 1 0 1 - - 16 10 - - - - 27 (21%)
6. Compendium of Tactics Employed
Users employ different tactics when tackling problematic situations. Gen-
erally, there is not a unique way of implementing each tactic but there are
several ways in which users articulate them. Next, we discuss the categori-
sation of tactics and the different implementations we found; table 6 shows
the details about the frequency and number of users who employed each tac-
tic, its implementations, the coping situation in which the tactic occurs and
whether a given implementation was specific to a particular groups of users
(rightmost column).
6.1. Tactic 1: Asking for Assistance
Users asked for assistance for many different purposes and in diverse
contexts of use. Our analysis discovered that novice users employed this
tactic when encountering problems. We provide further details on the main
purposes of this tactic:
I11. Get reassurance. Under a situation of uncertainty some users ask for
help to be reassured. The lack of confidence of U5 confused her about
whether she could type the keywords in a textbox “Shall I just type in the
search terms? ”. A previous disheartening negative experience U20 had un-
dergone led him to ask for help to be reassured: is this is where I click? [his
confidence was slightly knocked from not being able to complete the previous
task]”.
I12. Get confirmation. In a situation of confusion, some screen reader users
request a description of what is displayed on screen. U22 also wanted to be
confirmed whether a navigation menu was being repeated at every page in
all the pages of a site. In order to perform a search U10 expected to find a
20
textbox to submit a query although he encountered a link that would lead
him to it “is there a search facility?”.
I13. Get further instructions. Some novice users requested further instruc-
tions under a variety of situations: e.g., while traversing confusing layouts or
when looking for buttons that were located out of their field of view. For ex-
ample, U24 was confused on how to proceed next in filling out a form “[U24
became confused as he was unsure what to do next...became visibly frus-
trated]”. Issues related to screen reader functionalities were also mentioned:
users asked about how to activate/deactivate features, they also asked for
more efficient reading modes when the ones used were not considered ef-
fective any more (such as exhaustive scanning techniques) or asked about
basic functionalities (U22 did not know how to tab backwards). Users also
requested more instructions when the screen reader behaved unexpectedly.
6.2. T2: Impulsive Clicking
Users click on links without much forethought in order to escape from the
problematic situation they are undergoing. In our analysis, we found that
users clicked on links with low information scent, which indicates that pages
beyond these links were not likely to lead users to their goals. Impulsive
clicking was employed mainly by expert users, implemented in several ways:
I21. Deliberately clicking on low scented links. Users click on a link that will
not lead them to their goal but will alleviate the problem they are facing.
This behaviour was found in situations of uncertainty caused by accessibility
issues, especially when pictures lack alternative text or links are poorly la-
belled. U1 clicked on a bitmap without knowing what it was: “I’m just going
to click on one of these things, I don’t know what it is for”.U2 encountered
a high number of poorly labelled links “everything seems to say ‘suit pieces’,
will probably have to click on every link to find out what happens...tried any
one to see what you get”.U7 got confused because the screen reader com-
bined the content of cells of a table containing links, “it reads The British
Journal of PERIODICAL Visual Impairment, this does not make sense!”
but the user still clicked on the link. U7 had to undergo the uncertainty
caused by a large number of links, “when I was listening I heard that one
of the links was weather [the target link] - this is a problem sometimes, you
can have 30 or 230 links that you have to sit and listen to!” but instead of
looking for that precise link the user clicked on another link he knew would
21
not lead him to the goal. In these situations of uncertainty users clicked
on links that would help them escape from the page that was causing them
problems even if this entailed to change the navigation course.
I22. Clicking on any link after coming across unexpected functionalities or
content. Users click on any reachable link in a situation of confusion pro-
duced by a previous unsuccessful exploration, by a unfamiliar functionality
or by mistakenly clicking on a link. The following are some of the situations
that provoke such behaviour: unconventional features in the form of a un-
expected search functionality made U1 click on a linked keyword even if U1
was expecting a search box, “does not tell me where to do this”. Even if U2
did not get what he was looking for in a search engine results page, “found a
few links, none directly what I want” he still clicked on the results. U19 was
unable to distinguish between links and content as he was expecting a piece
of text to be a link “nothing happens...I’m going to have to click on another
link” and then clicked on the next available link.
I23. Clicking on any link as long as it is accessible. U10 clicked on any
link that was accessible (in terms of being properly labelled) due to the
uncertainty caused by surrounding inaccessible content “the links are hard to
read, I’m trying to find a link I can read”. As a consequence, not following a
highly scented but accessible link leads U10 to a page that does not contain
his goal.
6.3. T3: Exploration Tactics
Exploration tactics refer to the actions taken by users to acquire more
information about the current web patch in order to accomplish their tasks.
Exploration tactics are implemented in several ways:
I31. Persevering. Some novice users repeated the same actions time and
again, mostly under situations of confusion. These situations can be illus-
trated as when U20 was not able to distinguish between advertisements and
search results; also, when clicking on a link did not apparently work for U21
(as he was clicking on a link that was leading him to the current page). Per-
severance was exhibited by U20, who kept looking around, while U21 clicked
time and again on the same link.
22
I32. Escaping from non-useful, non-usable or inaccessible content by tabbing
down or scrolling down. This behaviour was observed when U20 came across
a highly scented text and mistakenly tried to click on it thinking it was a
link “It’s not there...it’s annoying me now...it’s not a link!”.U17 proceeded
similarly when instead of finding the results produced by a search engine, he
encountered a number of links that sat between the search box and results:
“where have the results gone?”.
I33. Fast tab/scroll/arrow down the page without completely listening to
content. Users employ this tactic on familiar pages “I know you can get
weather forecasts from this site” (U3 ) and tab down the page very quickly
without reading the content of links in a complete way. On unfamiliar pages
some users also employ this technique if content is arranged according to
some criterion (alphabetically, yearly, etc.); this tactic has some risk in that
users may miss the content they are looking for: while tabbing down very
quickly, U5 and U14 skipped the links they were looking for and had to
backtrack.
I34. Moving around. Screen magnifier users explored areas of interest in a
circular and outwards fashion with their screen magnifiers. Moving around
is mainly employed under situations of confusion caused by unexpected ban-
ners, navigation menus with a unclear purpose or when a misleading link was
clicked, to name a few. Moving around was employed when the screen mag-
nifier and the cursor were not focusing at the same content: before moving
around U17 unintentionally clicked on a link because the screen reader and
screen magnifier were focusing on different content; similarly, U12 clicked
twice on a link thinking it was the text he was currently reading.
6.4. T4: Narrowing down search
This tactic is similar to exploration tactics (T3) although it is applied in a
sequence of pages instead of applying it in a single page. Users narrow down
the selection of links in their navigation towards their goal by not visiting
those links that lead to unsatisfactory pages. Therefore users just click on
those links that had not been selected yet. Narrowing down search was
mostly employed under situations of confusion caused by clicking on links
with low information scent and when users clicked on highly scented links
that did not lead them towards the goal (also called high-quality distractors
by Brumby and Howes (2008)). It was observed that after retracing (see I63
23
below) and reaching the turning point of the previous failed trial, some users
employed this tactic.
6.5. T5: Gaining Orientation
We observed that users sometimes lost their orientation within a web
page (local orientation problem) and when they traversed through different
web pages (global orientation problem). In the former case users are not
able to locate themselves within a page, whereas in the latter users lose their
spatial location in the sequence of pages they have traversed. Users employ
this tactic not only to overcome mobility problems caused by disorientation
as one could expect, but also to overcome confusing situations.
I51. Gaining local orientation by going to the top of the current page. Some
expert users get to the top of the page after reaching the bottom of the page
when they have not found what they are looking for. U2 was feeling disori-
ented at the bottom of the page after reading the list of results provided by
a search engine: “not sure where I am...if in doubt go back to the beginning”.
After scanning through all the results provided by a search engine and not
finding expected results U14 ’s cursor was located at the bottom of the page;
U14 believed results must be in that page, “I’m convinced I have here the re-
sults...can’t find any actual result” so U14 got to the top of the page, started
the navigation over and traversed the page more slowly this time.
I52. Gaining global orientation by backtracking to a shelter. A shelter is a
web page users are familiar with and does not challenge them. The tactic
is implemented in such a way that users tend to backtrack to it from the
page that is causing problems. For instance, U19 had to backtrack to a
shelter after reaching a dead-end page as a consequence of clicking on a
highly scented link that did not lead him to the goal: “I seem to have come
to a dead end here, it’s so frustrating - it’s not logically where I would have
expected to be”. Similarly some users backtracked to a shelter after clicking on
low scented links that made them lose their orientation for several reasons:
U13 gets to a dead-end page “it’s gone, the information refuses to come
up”; on the other hand, it is the lack of accessible content that made U17
backtrack “it’s not doing what it is supposed to do, just reading ‘link’, ‘link’,
‘link’ ”. Backtracking was also employed when U11 realised she was looping
time and again and was unable to get out of the loop “I’ve got back to shorts
again...shorts again!”.
24
6.6. T6: Re-doing: Re-check, Re-type, Re-trace and Re-start
We found a number of situations in which users repeat their actions for
several reasons: to check the consistency of the outcomes in the case of
re-checking, to write a more accurate keyword after getting unsatisfactory
results from search search engines, to retrace their previous unsuccessful
traversal path in order to reach a turning point and to start over.
I61. Re-checking. This tactic is observed on individuals who check at least
twice whether the link they have clicked is actually a good choice. It works
as a reassurance mechanism. The lack of support for global orientation in a
site and accessibility problems make U1 lose his global location with respect
to the homepage and keeps on clicking on a link that leads to the current
page: “this is quite hard to understand”. Same action is carried out by U23
after reading a web page and not finding what he was looking for; he kept
on intentionally landing on the same page after backtracking and refining his
search.
I62. Re-typing queries. A number of users rewrote their search keywords
in search engines and digital libraries. We found that re-typing is not only
employed as a technique to refine a query and get better results, but also
after unsuccessfully exploring search engine results that actually point users
to their goals: after exploring on a particular result provided by the search
engine and not getting what he was looking for, U20 typed another query
instead of exploring remaining results, “[he believed that search terms must
have been incorrect]”. Search keywords were also re-typed after exploring a
page that contained U12 ’s goal, which was conveyed by inaccessible pictures,
therefore missing this key information. Similar behaviour was observed in
U2, as he was not able to get the piece on information he was looking for “I
can’t read it, I can’t understand why when you type in the title, it does not
give you all the details on one page”, he then tried new keywords.
I63. Re-tracing. When facing some difficulty, users retrace their steps until
they reach again the turning point that has caused the initial problem. In
these situations users often go to a shelter (I52) directly or backtracking, and
then retrace. For instance, the large number of links that appeared to U23
via drop-down menus made him get lost. The lack of results provided by a
search functionality (“nothing found...I’ll do that search again”) made U17
retrace and try a new search query instead of going directly to the search
box located in the current page.
25
I64. Re-starting. Some other users start over their tasks when finding them-
selves in a situation of reduced mobility: U21 was not able to get out of
the navigational area (PH2)“[JAWS seemed to read the links many times, as
though in an infinite loop]” so he decided to restart the task.
6.7. T7: Not Operating or Delegating on Assistive Technologies
We found that some users employ tactics related to the usage (or misuse)
of assistive technologies. The following tactic implementations (but I73) are
mainly used under circumstances of information overload.
I71. Activating advanced screen reader functionalities. Using the link list
dialogue provided by JAWS when coming across a vast number of links –
“this is a problem sometimes, you can have thirty or two hundred and thirty
links that you have to sit and listen to!”,U7 – and employing functionalities
that remove clutter or bypass groups of links – “it has found a hell of a lot
of pages, there are lots of links between the search box and results”,U2
are some of the features activated by users when too much content (textual
content and links) was found.
I72. Swapping assistive technology. Depending on how well U21 could see
in a given day he would employ the screen reader or the screen magnifier.
However, on one occasion it was observed that due to the tiredness caused
by the amount of content read out loud by the screen reader, U21 decided
to stop using it and launched the screen magnifier instead.
I73. Waiting. Some users do not operate during a determined amount of
time until some events happen on the web page. For instance, U5 stopped
operating the computer when it took too long for pages to load; U20 was
frustrated as the updates in a news carousel did not let him read the news –
“[it caused frustration because he is a slow reader and did not finish reading]”
– so he had to wait until the desired news appeared again.
6.8. T8: Giving Up
Giving up is the tactic by which users surrenders to coping. In our anal-
ysis, it is employed due to a broad variety of causes and under different
circumstances in a quite balanced way: lack of mobility accounted for 7
cases, confusion for 6, and uncertainty and overload for 4 each. Most of
the problems that provoked to give up were common to other problematic
situations. We found that the type of problem users encountered is not the
26
principal factor to employ this tactic, but a sequence of failures and unsuc-
cessful interactions. Therefore, giving up often occurs after navigating with
difficulties through a number of pages and coming across a problem that is
completely different to the ones experienced previously. For instance, when
U2 and U3 managed to escape from a loop of pages, if the next visited page
contained any sort of problem, especially if it was an accessibility problem
(e.g., linking pictures without alternative text or poorly labelled links), they
gave up their task.
7. Discussion
7.1. On the Problems and Coping Situations Discovered
Previous research that systematically analysed guidelines coverage of prob-
lems encountered by blind users found that WCAG 2.0 covered 50% of the
problems (Power et al., 2012). Our analysis confirms that most of the prob-
lems encountered by visually impaired users are not caused by accessibility
problems. The categories found in §5.2 are consistent with those found in the
literature although our categories can be considered of a higher granularity.
For instance, the categorisation by Power et al. (2012): “Content found in
pages was not expected by users”, “Expected functionality not present” or
“Functionality does not work as expected” is included in our more general
“Unmet expectations”.
Even if the goal of this paper is not to exhaustively analyse the extent
of the problems covered by existing guidelines, we found that at least those
that could be considered traditional accessibility issues accounted for 19%
of the problems analysed. Therefore, our findings suggest that the situation
could be even worse as the 50% found by Power et al. (2012) would be the
upper-bound of accessibility problems encountered by visually disabled users
that are covered by WCAG guidelines. However, we are cautious about this
statement because it is also the case that this 19% accounts for the most
problematic situations, leaving out expected and more frequent accessibility
problems.
By categorising encountered problems from a perspective of coping sit-
uations we are able to identify and classify coping tactics as a consequence
of these problematic situations. For instance, should web design patterns
evolve, we would expect that users who asked for help to be reassured (I11)
would still be undergoing situations of uncertainty; similarly, we would ex-
pect persevering users (I31) to be subjected to confusing situations.
27
Table 6: Coping situations and employed tactics.
Tactic implementation coping situa-
tions
# users # situations particular user group
T1. Asking for assistance I11. Get reassurance uncertainty 3 6 n/a
I12. Get confirmation confusion 3 4 screen reader users
I13. Get further instructions confusion 4 5 novices
T2. Impulsively clicking I21. Deliberately clicking on low
scented links
uncertainty, re-
duced mobility
6 9 experienced
I22. Clicking on any link after finding
unexpected functionalities or content
confusion 5 6 experienced
I23. Clicking on any link as long as it
is accessible
uncertainty 1 1 experienced screen reader users
T3. Exploration tactics I31. Persevering confusion 2 5 novices
I32. Escaping from useless, non-usable
or inaccessible content by tabbing down
or scrolling down
confusion,
overload, uncer-
tainty
6 8 n/a
I33. Fast tab/scroll/arrow down the
page without listening to content com-
pletely
overload 8 9 n/a
I34. Moving around confusion 3 8 screen magnifier users
T4. Narrowing down search confusion 3 7 n/a
T5. Gaining orientation I51. Local orientation by going to the
top of the current page
all 4 5 experienced screen reader users
I52. Global orientation by backtracking
to a shelter
confusion, re-
duced mobility
11 20 n/a
T6. Re-doing: re-check, re-
type, re-trace and re-start
I61. Re-checking confusion, re-
duced mobility
5 6 n/a
I62. Re-typing queries all 6 12 n/a
I63. Re-tracing confusion, re-
duced mobility
5 6 n/a
I64. Re-starting reduced mobil-
ity
2 2 n/a
T7. Not operating or dele-
gating on AT
I71. Activating advanced screen reader
functionalities
overload 5 10 n/a
I72. Swapping assistive technology overload 1 1 novices
I73. Waiting uncertainty,
confusion
2 2 n/a
T8. Giving up all 13 21 n/a
28
7.2. On the Tactics Employed
7.2.1. How Discovered Tactics Compare to Previous Work
Previous work on the tactics employed by visually disabled users is scat-
tered. In our study, we come up with 8 tactics and 17 ways in which users
implement them. Even if the goal of this work was to identify the tactics em-
ployed under extraordinary conditions such as confusion, reduced mobility,
uncertainty and overload our work provides evidence to confirm and bring to-
gether previous works. Persevering (I31) was identified as re-trying by Lazar
et al. (2007) as a tactic employed to tackle frustrating situations. Moving
down without listening to content (I33) is consistent with the so-called gam-
bling scanning strategy discussed by Takagi et al. (2007) and also by the
memorisation of the number of links to skip in order to get to a determined
location in a web page (Yesilada et al., 2007). Moving around (I34), which
was first observed by Borodin et al. (2010) on screen reader users employing
cursor keys, was later identified on screen magnifier users as the clustered
element strategy (Lunn et al., 2011). Our analysis could only confirm the
latter case. Giving up (T8) was also found elsewhere in the context of coping
by visually impaired users (identified as withdrawal by Lunn et al. (2011))
and the frustration of blind users on the Web (Lazar et al., 2007). Sheltering
(I52) was discussed as a stage of the backtracking strategy identified by Lunn
et al. (2011), where users backtracked to a familiar location. Re-checking
(I61) is similar to the probing strategy, by which users catch a glimpse of a
web page to get an overview, backtrack and come back to the page (Goble
et al., 2000). Re-starting (I64) is also identified by Lazar et al. (2007). Using
the advanced functionalities offered by screen readers (I71) is something one
would expect from visually disabled users and it was previously identified by
Borodin et al. (2010) and Lunn et al. (2011).
T1 and I62 were identified elsewhere but we discovered different imple-
mentations. T1 was discussed in Borodin et al. (2010) as falling back to exter-
nal help, while we have extended its definition by identifying three different
purposes for asking assistance: for reassurance (I11), to get a confirmation of
what is on screen or what has been done (I12) and to get extra instructions
(I13). When it comes to re-typing queries (I62), we have found that re-typing
was not only employed as a technique to refine a query and get better results
(as discussed by Sahib et al., 2012), but also as a tactic when accessibility
problems prevented users from achieving their goals.
To the knowledge of the authors, the remaining tactics – I21, I22, I23, I32,
29
I51, I63, I72 and I73 – are not identified in previous work. We argue that these
tactics are especially exhibited under extraordinary situations and previous
works have not focused on coping, but on strategies employed in ordinary
situations. The above explained overlap suggests that some of the tactics
are employed under ordinary and extraordinary situations; some tactics are
implemented in a different way when problems are found and remaining
tactics – those that do not overlap – are particular to coping situations.
7.2.2. How Tactics Are Seen in Light of Coping
As the tactics we discovered are identified under extraordinary situations
they can be explained in light of coping theory. In this way, we corroborate
that these are coping tactics instead of routinely employed tactics. To do
so, we match the discovered tactics with the strategies that indicate coping
behaviours (seen in §2):
Exploration tactics to keep adequate information about the environment. The
active exploration of issues and search for information is one of the most
common coping mechanisms in real life (Caplan, 1964). We discovered ex-
ploration (T3) and narrowing down search (T4) are the most sophisticated
tactics as they lead users to actively innovate and be more effective. In other
words, T3 and T4 bring about epiphanies that provide users with new in-
sights and skilled behaviours. On novice users T3 and T4 are only applied
when users already have the basic knowledge or the confidence to operate on
the Web. Since knowledge and skills are acquired through practice, if users
are not sufficiently skilled, reassurance tactics (see below) provide users with
the required confidence to employ T3 and T4. Being confident seems nec-
essary because using exploration tactics implies taking risks such as going
through unexplored areas (see I33).
Tactics to gain reassurance in order to maintain satisfactory internal condi-
tions. We found that the lack of confidence on what one is doing is a major
problem for visually disabled users. Asking for assistance (T1) is employed
by users to reassure themselves by asking for confirmation about what they
are doing or what is happening and by getting feedback from their peers.
Actually, active invoke for help was described as one of the main coping
mechanism employed by individuals in real life (Caplan, 1964). Re-doing
(T6) was employed to double-check the effect of previous actions. It is a way
of reassuring oneself by confirming the steps taken so far.
30
As a result of employing these tactics users feel more confident and
gain spatial awareness about what surrounds them. Exploration tactics (see
above) are often employed only if users feel in control; this situation is only
reached if users have sufficient skills or if they feel confident. Therefore, it
can be understood that in order to gain a certain level of autonomy users
first employ reassurance tactics (T1 and T6) prior to exploration tactics.
Tactics to gain more freedom and autonomy. Impulsive clicking (T2) can be
understood as one of the coping mechanisms employed by individuals in real
life when freedom and autonomy are reduced, making individuals to focus
on small gratifications (Moos, 1976). Jointly with gaining orientation (T5)
these tactics are employed under situations of reduced mobility, uncertainty
and confusion. The usage of both tactics entails the move to a safer place
and enables users to browse without any obstacle and retake their objectives.
Giving up (T8), which is a last resort tactic, is employed when remaining tac-
tics have been exhausted. In real life, surrendering to coping is a way to give
up in order to lessen the perception of stress (Moos, 1976). Therefore giving
up is also considered as a tactic to gain more freedom.
Tactics are not always used in isolation but are operationalised in con-
junction with other tactics as a way to form strategies. For instance, in a
number of occasions we observed how users went to a shelter (I52), then re-
traced (I63) and finally employed a narrowing down search tactic (T4). We
therefore conceive tactics as fundamental behavioural constructs that can be
composed and dovetailed to form complex strategies.
7.3. On the Relationship between Problematic Situations and Tactics Em-
ployed
We understand coping tactics as behavioural markers of cognitive pro-
cesses. If we establish a relationship between the tactics employed and the
situations being experienced we can programmatically infer problematic sit-
uations. Table 6 highlights this relationship by providing a mapping between
coping situations and tactics. For instance, the table conveys that if users
decide to quickly scroll down until they reach the bottom of the page (I33)
it is likely they are subjected to a situation of overload. For some other
tactics the coping situation will not be that clear: when deliberately clicking
on a low scented link (I21) users may be experiencing uncertainty or may be
undergoing a situation of reduced mobility.
31
Interventions to pre-empt and bypass coping situations will help to at-
tenuate these situations. While problematic situations categorised in light of
coping are generalisable and independent of the underlying web technology
and idiosyncrasy, some of the solutions are dependent on the current mark-
up and web design practices. We suggest tackling problematic situations
in two complementary ways: a tightly coupled approach catches (and sub-
sequently allows to repair) problems based on established design guidelines
that correspond to each of the categories identified in §5.2; a loosely coupled
approach provides the means to remove uncertainty, reduced mobility, confu-
sion and overload in order to attenuate the encountered problems (see §7.4).
In this sense, Leuthold et al. (2008) have proposed enhanced text interfaces
to avoid narrowing down search (T4) and re-checking (I61) tactics, which
would indirectly avoid confusing situations according to our findings.
Detecting problematic situations in this way opens several research av-
enues: if we loosely define accessibility problems as those deterrents that
prevent optimal user interaction, we conceive that all the identified problem-
atic situations are caused by accessibility problems. In §7.5 we suggest that
behaviour-driven accessibility evaluations pave the path to innovative and ef-
fective methods that go beyond traditional guidelines conformance methods.
7.4. Practical Implications I: Removing the Need to Cope
In order to remove the problems that arise from the emerging situations
we have uncovered, these problems could be addressed from an accessibil-
ity, usability or information architecture perspective. It is less clear how to
address navigation and exploration issues, and even less clear how to deal
with unmet expectations, assistive technology problems or emotional coping.
One possible strategy to avoid the distress caused by coping situations is to
smooth out those factors that can potentially harm the interaction from a
coping perspective: uncertainty, reduced mobility, confusion and overload.
We propose a set of techniques that can help to diminish the risk of coping.
Uncertainty. In order to avoid the uncertainty generated by web content, de-
signing for familiarity or at least for learnability will lessen the unavoidable
process of traversing through unfamiliar grounds. Designing for learnability
mitigates the lack of skill showed by inexpert users; familiarity (i.e., being
consistent with established practices) facilitates the use of automated inter-
action routines to users of a higher expertise. To do so, it is essential to
promote users’ understanding of the task flow, to make them aware of the
32
functionalities of the interface and to provide help to locate and understand
the goal of such functionalities (Grossman et al., 2009).
Reduced mobility. Ineffective navigation strategies adopted by users lead
them to getting stuck in dead-end pages and looping through pages. Some of
these situations are caused by orientation problems that can be ameliorated
by spatial hypermedia techniques. These techniques take advantage of the
visual and spatial affordances to organise and interpret information (see the
VIKI framework by Marshall and Shipman, 1995). Similarly, Walden Paths
(Furuta et al., 1997) aim at addressing the temporal and linearly incremental
way in which users browse by providing directed linear paths while allowing
users to explore off-path nodes.
Confusion. Clicking on high-quality distractors (i.e., links with strong infor-
mation scent that do not lead to the goal (see Brumby and Howes, 2008))
and clicking on low scented links generates confusion on the user. When
users click on such links, they get a confusing impression as they realise that
the page they land on will not lead them to the goal. Addressing such prob-
lem from a guidelines perspective (see success criteria 2.4.4 Link Purpose
and 3.2.4 Consistent Identification in WCAG (Caldwell et al., 2008) leads
to providing meaningful texts (avoiding texts such as ‘click here’, ‘more’ and
similar) and to making sure link texts are consistent: e.g., links with the
same text should not link to different locations. Removing ambiguity and
being consistent with link texts is crucial; however, it is a preliminary step
because it does not prevent users from the problems caused by information
scent or the bad execution of the re-checking technique (I61). Ideally, links
should not only clearly describe the purpose of the web page they point to,
but they also have to provide some hints on the content users will come
across. The literature suggests link augmentation techniques such as Gist
summaries (Harper and Patel, 2005) that provide a summary of the page
beyond a link and numeric scores of the accessibility level of the linked page
(Vigo et al., 2009).
Overload. There are several factors on the Web that cause overload: high
information density, the arrangement of information and the semi-serialised
fashion in which content is rendered by screen readers. In order to remove in-
formation density some have suggested providing relevant summaries (Berger
and Mittal, 2000); applying adaptive hypermedia techniques such as high-
lighting important content, hiding non-relevant content and removing clutter
33
is another way of alleviating information overload. Some other interventions
should go in line with including advanced navigation techniques in screen
readers.
We emphasise that the tactics we have identified are behavioural mark-
ers of cognitive processes that indicate problematic situations (see table 6).
Therefore, if we automatically detect the employed tactics we are able to
infer the situations users are undergoing and provide the means to over-
come them. Currently, we are running user studies by injecting scripts to
detect such behaviours on web pages. For instance, the script detecting fast
movements downwards (I33) checks whether the user moves abruptly down
(through scrolling or tabbing); to detected local orientation (I51), scripts
check whether users reach the bottom of the page and then move up until
they get to the top. The retracing algorithm (I63) detects the longest tra-
versed path which has been repeated at least two times. For instance, in
the following sequence of web pages: wpiwpjwpkwplwpm
wplwpkw pjwpkwplwpmwpi, the algorithm detects
{wpk, wpl, w pm}as the longest pattern and wpmas the turning point page.
The techniques to relieve coping situations discussed above could be applied
when tactics are automatically detected through these algorithms.
7.5. Practical Implications II: Evaluating Accessibility-in-Use
Accessibility-in-use is defined as “the effects that real accessibility prob-
lems will have on the quality of interaction as perceived by real users when
interacting with real pages for achieving real goals” (Vigo and Brajnik, 2011).
As discussed in §7.1, the findings by Power et al. (2012) support that in ad-
dition to the problems covered by accessibility guidelines there are some real
problems that may only be encountered during the interaction with pages
and cannot be caught by analysing the underlying code and structure of
pages, let alone specified through guidelines. We emphasise that coping tac-
tics employed by users are behavioural markers of cognitive processes. As
such, the presence of coping tactics indicates problematic situations not only
caused by accessibility problems. Therefore, coding the proposed tactics into
detection algorithms and injecting them into web pages – as illustrated in
§7.4 – allows to detect such problems. A tool that shows the feasibility of
this approach has been proposed elsewhere (Vigo and Harper, 2013b). We
pose that evaluating accessibility-in-use is complementary to traditional ac-
cessibility testing in that it enables to broaden the detection of barriers that
34
prevent users from optimal interaction.
7.6. Practical Implications III: Informing Navigational Models for Visually
Disabled Users
Web navigation models for sighted and screen reader users do not con-
sider the role that problematic situations play in navigation and link selection
strategies. The proposals for modeling the interaction of users with disabil-
ities on the Web focus on adapting existing low level interaction modeling
methods to the interaction modalities of screen reader users. Schrepp (2010)
adapts goals, operators, methods and selection rules (GOMS) to those users
who rely on keyboard navigation and employ an exhaustive scanning strat-
egy. Trewin et al. (2010) accommodation the motor, perceptual and cognitive
actions of one blind user to the low level behaviours modeled by keystroke
modeling level (KLM). They found that KLM had to be adapted to cater
for the fast speech rates set and the particular way of using keyboard com-
mands. The observed parallelisation of hearing, cognitive processing and
motor operations was also included in the updated KLM model.
Navigation models assume that information overload, situations of re-
duced mobility, and confusing or uncertain situations have no influence on
the interaction of the user. For instance, they assume that users will follow
the same link selection strategy no matter if a web page has 20 or 250 links.
Our findings suggest that in the latter case, information overload may influ-
ence users’ behaviours. Considering these situations in navigation models is
especially important for people with disabilities and visually disabled users in
particular as they face more severe navigation problems than sighted users.
We discuss the inclusion of coping tactics in Web navigation models in Vigo
and Harper (2013a).
8. Conclusions
We have identified 17 tactics employed by visually disabled users when
they experience problems on the Web. In addition to isolating the tactics
we have uncovered the situations where these tactics are exhibited. Con-
sequently, not only do we add a substantial amount of behavioural tactics
to the existing corpus, but we also provide contextual and situational in-
formation about tactics. Relating tactics to technical problems and coping
situations allows us to understand what users do when they are undergoing
problematic situations. This has at least two important implications when
35
it comes to the removal of the need to cope: on the one hand, we make de-
signers aware of the problems that bring about such situations; on the other
hand, the incorporation of algorithms to detect tactics in tools will allow to
infer such problematic situations in real time and provide automatic help so
that users do not have to undergo extreme adaptations. These are invaluable
insights for researchers and user agent developers as new research avenues on
transformation, evaluation and modeling are opened.
9. Acknowledgements
The datasets of the analysis can be found in http://wel-data.cs.manchester.
ac.uk/investigations/2.
The COPE project is funded by the Department of Education, Universi-
ties and Research of the Basque Government (BFI-2010-305).
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Digital libraries (DLs) have become popular and unique information resources for diverse users. This entry introduces and highlights the key concepts related to DLs and their evolution: digitization, collection development, metadata, interface design, user types, and DL evaluation. These concepts represent the critical components of DL development. Moreover, new developments in DLs are also presented: social media and AI applications. Most importantly, this entry identifies future directions of DL research and practice on DL design environments, DL universal design, AI applications in DL development, and DL research methodologies.
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Little is known about the navigation tactics employed by screen reader users when they face problematic situations on the Web. Understanding how these tactics are operationalised and knowing the situations that bring about such tactics paves the way towards modeling navigation behaviour. Modeling the navigation of users is of utmost importance as it allows not only to predict interactive behaviour, but also to assess the appropriateness of the content in a link, the information architecture of a site and the design of a web page. Current navigation models do not consider the extreme adaptations, namely coping tactics, that screen reader users undergo on the Web. Consequently, their prediction power is lessened and coping tactics are mistakenly considered outlying behaviours. We draw from existing navigation models for sighted users to suggest the incorporation of emerging behaviours in navigation models for screen reader users. To do so, we identify the navigation coping tactics screen reader users exhibit on the Web, including deliberately clicking on low scented links, escaping from useless or inaccessible content and backtracking to a shelter. Our findings suggest that, especially in problematic situations, navigation is not driven by information scent or utility, but by the need of increasing autonomy and the need of escaping from the current web patch.
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Evidence suggests that guidelines employed in conformance testing do not catch all the accessibility barriers encountered by users on the Web. Since accessibility is strongly tied to the users' experience there is a subjective perception of accessibility barriers and their severity. What is more, not only intangible qualities characterise the way in which these barriers are perceived, but also navigation styles, age, onset, expertise and abilities play a key role. In order to overcome the limitations of conformance testing and catch the problems that emerge during the interaction we propose a user-interaction-driven method to automatically report accessibility problems. To do so, we initially isolate the problematic situations faced by users and the tactics employed in such situations. These tactics are considered behavioural markers of cognitive processes that indicate problematic situations; the presence of tactics denotes the presence of problems. Then, we design and deploy algorithms to automatically detect the exhibition of these tactics and consequently detect problematic situations. WebTactics, a tool that unobtrusively detects and reports the problematic situations undergone by visually disabled users illustrates the method we propose.
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Understanding search behavior is important and leads to more effective interfaces that support searchers throughout the search process. In this article, through an observational user study, we investigate the search behavior of 15 visually impaired and 15 sighted searchers while they complete complex search tasks online. We study complex search tasks because they are challenging, cognitively intensive and affect performance of searchers. We compare the behavior of the two groups of searchers at four stages of the information-seeking process namely, Query Formulation, Search Results Exploration, Query Reformulation, and Search Results Management. For each stage, we identify research questions to investigate the impact of speech-based screen readers on the information-seeking behavior of visually impaired users. Significant differences were observed during query formulation and in the use of query-level support features such as query suggestions and spelling suggestions. In addition, screen-reader users submitted a lower number of queries and displayed comparatively limited exploratory behavior during search results exploration. We investigate how a lack of visual cues affected visually impaired searchers' approach towards query reformulation and observed different strategies to manage and use information encountered during the search process. We discuss the implications that our findings have for the design of search interfaces and propose a set of design guidelines to consider when designing interfaces that are usable and accessible with screen readers. This work also enhances our understanding of search behavior when using an auditory interface and could be useful when designing audio-based information retrieval systems. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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