Do text transcoders improve usability for disabled users?

Abstract

Text transcoders are web--server systems that produce, on the fly, a text-only version of a web page requested by a user of a browser. Although the potential benefits of text transcoders axe multifaceted and discussions on appropriateness of text transcoders to produce accessible versions of web sites are still ongoing, at the moment the impact of transcoded pages on disabled web users has not been scientifically studied yet.This paper describes an experiment aimed at evaluating usability of web pages processed by a text transcoder and used by 29 disabled persons. Results based on subjective and objective data show how usability changes, and which results can be generalized to a wider population.