Transcoding proxy for nonvisual Web access

Abstract

These days, the web has been coming to play various types of roles, so each site has been designed in a complex way to integrate as many roles as possible. Web authors tend to cram various functions and many links into one page to improve usability for sighted users. This authoring trend makes nonvisual Web access harder. To solve this problem, we decided to develop a system to transcode already-existing Web pages to be accessible, which works as an intermediary (proxy) between a Web server and a user. Our transcoding proxy consists of 5 modules using 3 kinds of annotations. The user interface of the system is characterized by three transcoding modes: simplification, full-text and original page. In this paper, we will describe an overview of our transcoding proxy as well as the user interface of the system.