Developing and Deploying a Real-World Solution for Accessible Slide Reading and Authoring for Blind Users
Zhuohao Zhang, Gene S-H Kim, Jacob O. Wobbrock
Abstract
Presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides remains largely inaccessible for blind users because screen readers are not well suited to 2-D “artboards” that contain different objects in arbitrary arrangements lacking any inherent reading order. To investigate this problem, prior work by Zhang & Wobbrock (2023) developed multimodal interaction techniques in a prototype system called A11yBoard, but their system was limited to a single artboard in a self-contained prototype and was unable to support real-world use. In this work, we present a major extension of A11yBoard that expands upon its initial interaction techniques, addresses numerous real-world issues, and makes it deployable with Google Slides. We describe the new features developed for A11yBoard for Google Slides along with our participatory design process with a blind co-author. We also present two case studies based on real-world deployments showing that participants were able to independently complete slide reading and authoring tasks that were not possible without sighted assistance previously. We conclude with several design guidelines for making accessible digital content creation tools.