Investigation of Uims Architectures for the Development of User Interfaces Concurrently Accessible by Blind and Sighted Users

The proliferation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) has presented several serious accessibility problems to blind people. Existing approaches to overcome such problems are customised to specific environments and are restrictive in their scope. Moreover, they do not take into consideration the specific dialogue requirements of the various graphical applications. It is argued that in order to resolve such existing problems and also to ensure that GUIs in the future will be made accessible to blind people, an appropriate methodology for the construction of interface development tools is required which will take in consideration and efficiently integrate both blind and sighted user requirements. The domain of User Interface Management Systems is investigated as the most appropriate epistemic basis and the design of a suitable interface development architecture is structured for the generation of Human-Computer dialogues that are concurrently accessible by blind and sighted people. E-mail [email protected], E-mail [email protected]