A report on a novice user's interaction with the Internet through a self-voicing application

This study used verbal protocol analysis to examine the behavior of an individual with visual impairment using a self-voicing application to find information on the World Wide Web. The results indicated that executing actions (such as typing or pressing keys) and interpreting the computer system's state (data gathering) were the most frequent and time-consuming tasks. Furthermore, the individual had difficulty determining the effects of her actions on the system and whether relevant information was present on a page. These results suggest that there may be problems in interfacing the user with the software and the way textual information is aurally displayed to the user.