3D HapticWebBrowser:3D HapticWebBrowser:

Nikolaos Kaklanis

Konstantinos Votis

Konstantinos Moustakas

Dimitrios Tzovaras

CERTH/ITI, Greece

Towards Universal Web Towards Universal Web Navigation for the VisuallyNavigation for the Visually ImpairedImpaired

The problem

There has been much work to offer audio rendering of web pages to visually impaired users, but even the best audio rendering applications still suffer from some limitations such as:

Sequential navigationSequential navigation Long processing timeLong processing time Difficult navigation within a long page or across web pagesDifficult navigation within a long page or across web pages Audio rendering only works when HTML is well-formedAudio rendering only works when HTML is well-formed

3DHapticWebBrowser approach

Hapgets are 3D virtual objects with audio and haptic feedback

HTMLHTML Components Components HapgetsHapgets

From HTML components to hapgets

Each hapget has a 3D visual representation a description a haptic icon an earcon a 2D visual representation

(only the hapgets representing images)

Architecture overview

Main advantages against the existing technologies (e.g. screen readers)

The visually impaired users can: freely navigate into the web page

no sequence is imposed

perceive the structure of the web pagehaptically explore 2D maps found on the web

(Video #1)(Video #1)

Guidance for the visually impaired users A mechanism has been developed in

order to provide some guidance to the visually impaired users though the haptic exploration of the web page.A force is being applied automatically by the

application to the haptic device in order to move the 3D cursor to one of the 4 corners or to the center of the 3D scene.

(Video #2)(Video #2)

Available options

There is a set of options that can be set according to user’s needs/preferences.enable/disable earcons/haptic iconschange hapgetschange hapgets’ size and their haptic

characteristicsetc.

(Video #3)(Video #3)

Haptic exploration of 2D maps found on the web

When a 2D image found in a web page is being identified as a mapby its alternative text or its URL

a corresponding multimodal mapmultimodal map (haptic & aural) is being automatically generated.

Map image analysis

Road names identification

Road network structure identification

3D map model construction

Road names transformation into speech

Woodland DrOCR

(Video #4)(Video #4)

UsiXML support What is UsiXML

an XML-based language describing user interfaces

The “3D HapticWebBrowser” is also:an HTML2UsiXML convertera rendering engine of UsiXML documents

haptic audio visual (3D)

(Video #5)(Video #5)

Future work Future extensions include support for:

JavascriptJava appletsActiveX componentsBookmarksHistoryFiles downloading/uploadingmore HTML componentsetc.

Questions...

The whole video can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l3nz1PxKTk