CollabAlly: Accessible Collaboration Awareness in Document Editing

Cheuk Yin Phipson Lee, Zhuohao Zhang, Jaylin Herskovitz, Joo Young Seo, Anhong Guo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Collaborative document editing tools are widely used in both professional and academic workplaces. While these tools provide some accessibility features, it is still challenging for blind users to gain collaboration awareness that sighted people can easily obtain using visual cues (e.g., who edited or commented where and what in the document). To address this gap, we present CollabAlly, a browser extension that makes extractable collaborative and contextual information in document editing accessible for blind users. With CollabAlly, blind users can easily access collaborators' information, track real-time or asynchronous content and comment changes, and navigate through these elements. In order to convey this complex information through audio, CollabAlly uses voice fonts and spatial audio to enhance users' collaboration awareness in shared documents. Through a series of pilot studies with a coauthor who is blind, CollabAlly's design was refined to include more information and to be more compatible with existing screen readers.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationASSETS 2021 - 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450383066
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 17 2021
Event23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS 2021 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: Oct 18 2021Oct 22 2021

Publication series

NameASSETS 2021 - 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Conference

Conference23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS 2021
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period10/18/2110/22/21

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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