Nonvisual tool for navigating hierarchical structures

The hierarchical structure of a program can be quite complex. As such, many Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) provide graphical representations of program structure at different f abstraction. Such representations are not very accessible to non-sighted programmers, as screen readers are not able to portray the underlying hierarchical structure of the information. In this paper, we define a set of requirements for an accessible tree navigation strategy. An implementation of this strategy was developed as a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE and was tested by twelve student programmers. The evaluation of the tool shows the strategy to be an efficient and effective way for a non-sighted programmer to navigate hierarchical structures. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces – auditory (non-speech) feedback, style guides. General Terms Design, Experimentation, Human Factors. Keywords Navigation, hierarchical structures, Java pr...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ASSETS
• Authors: Ann C. Smith, Justin S. Cook, Joan M. Francioni, Asif Hossain, Mohd M. Anwar, M. Fayezur Rahman
• Keywords: ASSETS 2004, Hierarchical Structures, Integrated Development Environments, Non-sighted Programmer