e-Accessibility: Making the Web Accessible to the Visually Impaired Persons

Accessibility is the possibility of any person to make use of all the benefits of society, including the use of the Internet. Graphical are an obstacle for visually impaired persons to access the Internet, so they need a support technology capable of capturing interfaces and making them accessible. Interfaces should be designed so that when accessed by support technologies they continue to be friendly. For a site to be accessible to blind persons it is necessary that the information be reproduced by means of an “equivalent” textual description, capable of transmitting the same information as the visual resources. The present study is aimed at identifying and defining usability guidance compliant with accessibility W3C directives that can facilitate the interaction between visually impaired and the Internet and still guarantee sites with understandable navigation content. Towards this end an exploratory study was conducted, comprised of a field study and interviews with various visually disabled people from the Instituto Benjamin Constant, reference center in Brazil for the education and re-education of visually impaired persons, in order to get to know visually disabled users better. Through the understanding acquired, different types of impositions and limits that these users are subject to have been identified, enabling a better perception of their needs and special abilities. The impaired user-machine interaction were observed and analyzed, which enabled the identification of aspects that could contribute to the accessibility of sites, with emphasis on facilitating the access of those visually impaired to the Web.