Introduction

The Mobile Digital Library Accessibility and Usability Guidelines (mDLAUG) is a set of accessibility and usability guidelines created for digital library (DL) developers to support blind and visually impaired (BVI) users who rely on screen readers to interact with DLs in the mobile environment. The mDLAUG was developed based on the types of help-seeking situations identified by user studies that investigated BVI users’ interactions with DLs using diverse types of mobile devices (i.e., iPhone, iPad, Android phone, and Android tablet). The mDLAUG will be further revised and enhanced based on feedback from key stakeholders of DLs, including users, scholars/experts, and DL developers. The mDLAUG is organized into 10 categories and 23 types of help-seeking situations BVI users encountered in their interactions with DLs.

Background

According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2023), more than 2.2 billion people have visual impairments globally. In the U.S., 50.18 million adult Americans reported suffering from visual impairments (AFB, 2024). The prevalence of BVI users accessing mobile devices via screen readers dramatically increased from 12% in 2009 to 90% in 2021 (WebAIM, 2021). BVI comprises an atypical group of users who rely on screen readers to interact with DLs. They face unique needs, challenges, strategies, and preferences in their interactions with DLs. To design DLs that meet the needs of BVI users, DL developers and scholars/experts must first understand these special needs. DL developers are individuals who create, design, or manage a DL, and scholars/experts represent people who study or test system accessibility and usability issues.

BVIs exhibit unique help-seeking situations in Web interactions. A “help-seeking situation” is defined as a problem that drives BVI users to seek help, either through help mechanisms/features of systems or human assistance, to facilitate their interactions and accomplish their goals/tasks.  These situations arise when the design of information retrieval (IR) systems fails to accommodate BVI users’ interactions with the system’s structure, features, and content. Thus, help-seeking situations highlight the gap between system design and the varied needs of users.

While the diverse formats of DL materials and complicated interfaces pose more challenges for BVI users, not much research has been conducted on DLs in mobile contexts. A systematic examination of BVI users’ help-seeking situations in the mobile DL environment has not yet been performed.

Stages of the creation of the guidelines

The intent of the project is to develop the mDLAUG based on BVI users’ special needs. It consists of four stages. At each stage, feedback from consultants was incorporated into the project.

Stage 1: Build Foundation for mDLAUG

Identify unique help-seeking situations in mobile interactions by document analysis. A thorough and comprehensive literature search and review from the past 20 years was conducted along with related document analysis to identify a list of help-seeking situations that BVI users encounter in their Internet interactions in the mobile environment. Two types of document analyses were provided to: 1) address help-seeking situations and needs of BVI users in the mobile environment and 2) identify existing design guidelines on accessibility and usability in mobile environments and their limitations. Simultaneously, two types of analyses were conducted to identify the status and problems with the existing guidelines as they relate to accessibility and usability in the mobile environment.

Stage 2: Develop draft mDLAUG

One hundred and twenty BVI participants across the United States, with 30 in each of 4 groups, represented different types of mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android phone, and Android tablet). All BVI participants relied on screen readers to interact with mobile devices. Six DLs were selected for the study based on their diverse domains (e.g., history, art, science, and museum collections), diverse formats (e.g., text, image, video, and mathematical formulas), diverse types of hosting organizations, and different DL types (e.g., stand-alone, federated). These were the Library of Congress Digital Collections (LoC), Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), HathiTrust, ArtStor, OER Commons, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Data derived from a series of user studies, including previous BVI user studies in the mobile environment conducted by the research team (Xie et al., 2023a; Xie et al., 2023b; Xie et al., 2024), were used to identify the help-seeking situations that BVI users encounter in DLs and their associated help needs and to develop the draft of the guidelines.

Stage 3: Refine mDLAUG

To obtain feedback on mDLAUG, the in-depth survey is conducted with 150 participants who represent three groups of stakeholders (DL developers, accessibility and usability scholars/experts, and end-users) to assess the importance, clarity, relevance, usefulness, and feasibility of guidelines. The findings of the survey will further refine the mDLAUG.

Stage 4: Apply mDLAUG for DL compliance assessment and finalize mDLAUG

Thirty DL developers will use the guidelines to assess six of the leading DLs. Each DL will be evaluated by five DL developers. The objectives are twofold: (1) the guidelines will be tested to determine whether they can be used to assess DLs, and further enhancements will be suggested to improve the mDLAGU, and (2) mDLAUG will be used to assess the current status and conformance levels of the selected DLs in terms of whether they meet the conformance criteria for accessibility and usability for BVI users. Four focus groups, comprised of 7-8 participants each, will then be formed to discuss the problems of the guidelines as identified in the assessment process. Based on suggestions and feedback, the DL design guidelines were modified. Moreover, feedback from advisory board members was also solicited before finalizing the guidelines.

Focus

The mDLAUG created by this project is based on the types of help-seeking situations identified by user studies that investigated BVI users’ interactions with existing DLs in the mobile environment. The inclusion criteria are: 1) The mDLAUG is developed for each individual type of help-seeking situation encountered by BVI users in the mobile DL environment and 2) The mDLAUG focuses exclusively on supporting BVI users who rely on screen readers to interact with DLs.

Audiences

The mDLAUG’s primary audience is DL developers, and it facilitates them to enhance the accessibility and usability of DLs to support BVI users.  At the same time, the mDLAUG is also for DL researchers, experts, teachers, and graduate students who are interested in digitization, DL development, DL management, DL evaluation, and accessibility issues in the mobile DL environment. The secondary audience could also include researchers and practitioners who work on the accessibility and usability of electronic information retrieval systems.

Guidelines structure

The mDLAUG is organized by 10 categories and 24 specific types of help-seeking situations that are derived from user studies conducted in the National Leadership Grant funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Discovery Innovation Grant (DIG) funded by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The categories of help-seeking situations are presented in alphabetical order:

ACC. Difficulty accessing

ACC1. Difficulty directly accessing files
ACC2/COM3. Difficulty accessing/comprehending images
ACC3/COM4. Difficulty accessing/comprehending graphs
ACC4. Difficulty accessing collection items
ACC5. Difficulty accessing expandable/collapsed content
ACC6. Difficulty accessing a query suggestion

COM. Difficulty comprehending

COM1.Difficulty understanding a digital library structure
COM2/NAV1. Difficulty understanding/navigating the search filtering structure
ACC2/COM3. Difficulty accessing/comprehending images
ACC3/COM4. Difficulty accessing/comprehending graphs 

EVA. Difficulty evaluating

EVA1. Difficulty assessing relevance of a collection or an item

EXE. Difficulty executing

EXE1. Difficulty clearing a search box
EXE2. Difficulty exiting an open item
EXE3. Difficulty returning to a previous page 

FIL. Difficulty finding/locating

FIL1. Difficulty finding/locating an icon-based search feature
FIL2/RED3. Difficulty finding/locating/distinguishing search features at different levels
FIL3/HEP1. Difficulty finding/locating/using mobile-specific help information

HEP. Difficulty with help

FIL3/HEP1. Difficulty finding/locating/using mobile-specific help information

INT. Difficulty interacting

INT1. Difficulty interacting with multi-layered windows

NAV. Difficulty navigating

COM2/NAV1. Difficulty understanding/navigating the search filtering
NAV2. Difficulty navigating paginated sections
NAV3. Difficulty navigating through search results
NAV4. Difficulty navigating within an item
NAV5. Difficulty navigating to a search result section 

RED. Difficulty recognizing/distinguishing

RED1. Difficulty recognizing the availability of search results
RED2. Difficulty distinguishing collection titles from thumbnails
FIL2/RED3. Difficulty finding/locating/distinguishing search features at different levels
RED4. Difficulty recognizing authorized features

USE. Difficulty using

USE1. Difficulty using screen readers and voice-activated commands

Under each type of help-seeking situation, the following components are presented:

  • Definition: An explanation of a scenario where BVI users need to seek help during their interaction with DLs due to design issues.
  • Factors leading to the Situation: Underlying design issues that result in the occurrence of a help-seeking situation.
  • Guidelines: Actionable design recommendations to address a specific help-seeking situation.
  • Rationale for Suggesting the Above Guidelines: Justification that explains how the proposed guidelines are relevant to addressing a specific help-seeking situation encountered by BVI users.
  • Techniques and Methods to Comply with a Specific DL design Guideline: Techniques or methods that DL developers can adopt to adhere to a specific DL design guideline.
  • Features Suggested for Users: Recommended features that cater to BVI users’ unique needs in their interaction with DLs in the mobile environment.
  • Examples of Best Practice: Examples where DLs or other systems implement suggested design guidelines.
  • Examples of Poor Practice: Examples where DLs do not fully comply with the suggested design guidelines. Most of the examples are from user studies in which quotes and associated screenshots are provided. For each quote, we provide subject numbers. For the quotes from the IMLS project, each participant ID begins with the specific device group (IP, ID, AP, AT), followed by the subject number within the group, representing the abbreviations of two DLs assigned to the participant. For example, IP5-LD indicates that the participant is in the iPhone group (IP), has the subject number 5 within the group, and has been assigned to the two DLs (L & D). For the quotes from the DIG user study, we provide subject numbers, their vision conditions (B representing blindness and SVI meaning severe visual impairment), and DL platforms (M.Web and M.App). For example, S1-B-M.Web means that the quote was from S1 who is totally blind during interactions with the DL mobile website. For the Poor Practice, we removed the DL organization information in the screenshots.
  • Resources: References that support the development of the design guidelines.
  • See Also: Link(s) to other relevant help-seeking situations and associated guidelines.

Glossary

In order to prepare the audiences to better understand and use the mDLAUG, a glossary was created to present the definitions of the key terms used therein. It consists of terms that relate to the situations, factors, guidelines, techniques, recommended features, and elements of DLs.

Appendices

Appendix I User study: Provide information about how to conduct BVI user studies in the mobile environment, including sampling, data collection, data analysis, user study instruments, and relevant transcripts.

Appendix II Factors: List different categories of factors, definitions of specific factors, and relevant help-seeking situations that these factors lead to.

Appendix III List of guidelines or design recommendations: List the guidelines or design recommendations for each identified help-seeking situation.

Appendix IV Levels of conformance recommendation: Categorize the identified help-seeking situations into three conformance levels including A (Lowest), AA (Mid-range), and AAA (Highest).

Appendix V Mobile gestures for screen readers: Offer instructions explaining gestures and tips for using VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android).

Appendix VI Tips to use voice activated commands: Provide tips to use voice activated commands.

Appendix VII Artificial intelligence tools for developers: Introduce the installation and use of the artificial intelligence (AI) tools by DL developers.

Appendix VIII. Artificial intelligence tools for BVI users: Introduce the installation and use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools by BVI users.

References