Firefixia: An accessibility web browser customization toolbar for people with dyslexia

Abstract

People with dyslexia often face difficulties on consuming written content at the Web. This occurs mainly because websites' designs do not consider the barriers faced by them, since dyslexia is not taken into account as often as other functional limitations. Guidelines for designing accessible Web pages are being consolidated and studied. Meanwhile, people with dyslexia face barriers and develop workarounds to overcome these difficulties. This work presents a customization toolbar called Firefixia, especially designed to support people with dyslexia to adapt the presentation of Web content according to their preferences. Firefixia was tested by 4 participants with diagnosed dyslexia. The participants evaluated and provided us feedback regarding the toolbar most/least useful features. From the presented results, one expects to highlight the need for end-user customization features that are easy to access, easy to use, and easy to explore. Participants reported that the most useful customization features are the text size, the text alignment, and the link color. Finally, this work indicates promising directions for end-user customization tools such as Firefixia. Copyright 2013 ACM.