Apologies for cross posting.

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The Centre for Research in Library and Information Management
(CERLIM) at Manchester Metropolitan University is currently
undertaking a project funded by Resource: the Council for
Museums Archives and Libraries:

NoVA
Non-Visual Access to the Digital Library:
the use of Digital Library Interfaces
by Blind and Visually-Impaired People

One of the hallmarks of a civilised society is its commitment to
ensuring that all of its citizens can play a full part in its life, and
that none are excluded by reason of birth, belief, aptitude or
circumstance. Exclusion takes many forms and must be countered
in many different ways. The NoVA project is concerned with
countering the exclusion from access to information which can all
too easily occur when individuals do not have so-called ‘normal’
vision. Our domain in this project is digital library services, and our
concern is that all such services should, in their entirety, be as
accessible to blind and visually impaired people as to anyone else.

Although much work is continuing to make interfaces accessible
(witness, for example, the work of the World Wide Web’s Web
Accessibility Initiative (W3C WAI), there is little current work on
how blind and visually impaired people navigate interfaces, and in
particular on how the serial paradigm of a blind person’s search
maps onto the parallelism displayed by interfaces. Work on
accessibility concentrates on transcribing text (for example
replacing images etc. with text) when the problem may in fact be
much deeper.

The overall objective of the Project therefore is to develop
understanding of serial searching in non-serial digital library
environments, with particular reference to retrieval of information by
blind and visually-impaired people.

The aims of the Project are:

- to develop an experimental framework for exploration of serial
searching and retrieval in non-serial environments
- to undertake a series of experiments with serial searching and
retrieval, and subsequent use of digital content
- to map serial/non-serial approaches so as to develop
understanding of how serial searching, retrieval etc. can be
optimised in non-serial environments
- to report on findings and to make recommendations for digital
library system design.

It is anticipated that throughout its duration CERLIM staff will
continue their liaison with experts in the field of access to
information by visually impaired people in the UK, Europe and
North America. These contacts include the RNIB, NLB, DISinHE,
UK academic researchers, SVB (Netherlands).

For further details about this project please contact:

Jenny Craven, Research Fellow
CERLIM
Department of Information and Communications
Manchester Metropolitan University
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Off Oxford Road
Manchester M15 6LL
Tel: 0161 247 6142 email: [log in to unmask]



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Jenny Craven, Research Fellow
The Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM)
Dept. Information and Communications
The Manchester Metropolitan University
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
off Oxford Road
Manchester M15 6LL
0161 247 6142 (email [log in to unmask])


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