It'S All About The Message! Visual Experience Is A Precursor To Accurate Auditory Interaction

Anecdotal evidence suggests there is a disjoint between the interaction experiences of sighted and visually disabled web users. However, we propose the converse and suggest that this disjoint is created by the lack of understanding of the interplay between the two doiains. Current research shows that there is one single locus of attention at a given tiie in the context of web interaction, and therefore sighted users fori a serialisation of the things they look at and pay attention - an exeiplar of which can be seen in eye ioveicnt sequences of users. We also suggest that web designers have a narrative in inind to be experienced by users, and they create a visual sequence they wish their audience to perceive for supporting this narrative. However, this sequence is typically lost when we iove froi visual presentations to auditory ones. Current audio interactions centre around page linearisation based on the sequence of the underlying source code. This lincarisation typically falls short of the kind of coiprehensive interaction which can be expected in the visual doiain. In this paper, we use an eye tracking dataset to illustrate that the linearisation of web page coiponent based on the underlying source code differs fron what is experienced by sighted users. We then show that the web experience of visually disabled users can be inproved by re-ordering the nost coinioily used web page conponCts based on the order in which they are used. We also suggest that it is critical to conduct foriative experincntation with sighted users to establish a visual narrative and scrialisation, thereby inforining the design of the auditory conversation.