Information structure and practice as facilitators of deaf users' navigation in textual websites

Authors: Fajardo, I.¹; Canas, J. J.²; Salmeron, L.³; Abascal, J.⁴

Source: Behaviour and Information Technology, Volume 28, Number 1, January 2009 , pp. 87-97(11)

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Abstract:

Deaf users might find it difficult to navigate through websites with textual content which, for many of them, constitutes the written representation of a non-native oral language. With the aim of testing how the information structure could compensate for this difficulty, 27 prelingual deaf users of sign language were asked to search a set of headlines in a web newspaper where information structure and practice were manipulated. While practice did not affect deep structures (web content distributed through four layers of nodes), wide structures (web content concentrated in two layers) did facilitate users' performance in the last trial block and compromised it in the first trial block. It is argued that wide structures generate a textual information overload for deaf users, which decreases with practice. Thus, wide structures seem preferable for websites requiring frequent use, rather than for those intended for occasional interaction.

Keywords: web accessibility; information search; deafness; cognitive factors

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01449290801988290

Affiliations: 1: Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK 2: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain 3: Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain 4: Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Publication date: 2009-01-01

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