When students use audio browsers, the information is presented mostly in a linear or sequential fashion, Gillan pointed out. His challenge as a cognitive psychologist is to determine how to read information from a table so that it makes sense to someone who can't see it. For example, they may see the table's information as a string of text. Then he will begin adding components to see what helps. Once they have determined which devices provide the most help, developers will implement them with tools Pontelli and Gupta already have developed for reading the structure of Web pages and for filtering information between different formats.
People read tables differently for different purposes.
We want to classify the different approaches and design schemes that will allow users to quickly and easily navigate them. He expects to use quite a bit of what he and Gupta already have developed, which will give them a chance to test in the real world some of the ideas they've been working on. He hopes to have something to test by the end of the year. Once they have developed working systems, Gillan will become involved again in user testing. The researchers want to be sure that the implementation works as well as they thought it would, that all the parts work together and that the tools are easy to use, Gillan said.