Skip to main content

Book4All: A Tool to Make an e-Book More Accessible to Students with Vision/Visual-Impairments

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5889))

Abstract

Empowering people who are blind or otherwise visually impaired includes ensuring that products and electronic materials incorporate a broad range of accessibility features and work well with screen readers and other assistive technology devices. This is particularly important for students with vision impairments. Unfortunately, authors and publishers often do not include specific criteria when preparing the contents. Consequently, e-books can be inadequate for blind and low vision users, especially for students. In this paper we describe a semi-automatic tool developed to support operators who adapt e-documents for visually impaired students. The proposed tool can be used to convert a PDF e-book into a more suitable accessible and usable format readable on desktop computer or on mobile devices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Adjouadi, M., Ruiz, E., Wang, L.: Automated Book Reader for Persons with Blindness. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds.) ICCHP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4061, pp. 1094–1101. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Bottoni, P., Ferri, F., Grifoni, P., Marcante, A., Mussio, P., Padula, M., Reggiori, A.: E-Document management in situated interactivity: the WIL approach. Universal Access in the Information Society 8(3), 137–153 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Brzoza, P., Spinczyk, D.: Multimedia Browser for Internet Online Daisy Books. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds.) ICCHP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4061, pp. 1087–1093. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Burgstahler, S.: Universal Design of Distance Learning. Information Technology and Disabilities (2002), http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv08n1/burgstahler.htm

  5. Chen, G., Li, Q., Jia, W.: Automatically Generating an E-textbook on the Web. World Wide Web 8(4), 377–394 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Contini, E., Leporini, B., Paternò, F.: A Semi-automatic Support to Adapt E-Documents in an Accessible and Usable Format for Vision Impaired Users. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds.) ICCHP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5105, pp. 242–249. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. DAISY/NISO Standard, Structure Guidelines (2008), http://www.DAISY.org/z3986/structure/

  8. Edmonds, C.: Providing access to students with disabilities in online distance education: Legal and technical concerns for higher education. American Journal of Distance Education 18(1) (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Finnish Government Information Society, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, http://www.mmm.fi/attachments/maanmittausjapaikkatiedot/5g7g69SqF/Kansallinen_paikkatietostrategia_Eng_2005_2010%5B1.pdf

  10. Gil-Rodríguez, E.P., Planella-Ribera, J.: Educational Uses of the e-Book: An Experience in a Virtual University Context. In: Holzinger, A. (ed.) USAB 2008. LNCS, vol. 5298, pp. 55–62. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Hardy, M.R.B., Brailsford, D.F., Thomas, P.T.: Creating structured PDF files using XML templates. In: Proc. of the 2004 ACM symposium DocEng 2004 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hassan, T.: Object-Level Document Analysis of PDF Files. In: Proc. Of ACM Symposium DocEng 2009, Munich, Germany (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Hersh, M., Leporini, B.: Making Conference CDs Accessible: A Practical Example. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds.) ICCHP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5105, pp. 326–333. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Kanahori, T., Suzuki, M.: Scientific PDF Document Reader with Simple Interface for Visually Impaired People. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds.) ICCHP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4061, pp. 48–52. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Leporini, B., Paternò, F.: Increasing Usability when Interacting through Screen Readers. Universal Access in the Information Society 3(1), 57–70 (2004); Guidelines, Standards, Methods and Processes for Software Accessibility

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. NIMAS, National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard, http://nimas.cast.org/about/nimas

  17. Sun, Y., Harper, D.J., Watt, S.N.K.: Design of an e-book user interface and visualizations to support reading for comprehension. In: Proc. of the 27th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 510–511 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets - Paul McFedries. Pdf twitter, http://mcfedries.com/cs/content/TwitterTTT.aspx

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Calabrò, A., Contini, E., Leporini, B. (2009). Book4All: A Tool to Make an e-Book More Accessible to Students with Vision/Visual-Impairments. In: Holzinger, A., Miesenberger, K. (eds) HCI and Usability for e-Inclusion. USAB 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5889. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10308-7_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10308-7_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10307-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10308-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics