Audio Enriched Links provide previews of linked web pages to users with visual impairments. Before a user follows a hyperlink, the Audio Enriched Links software presents a spoken summary of the next page including its title, its relation to the current page, statistics about its content, and some highlights from its content. We believe that such a summary may be a useful surrogate for a full web page, and help users with visual impairments decide whether or not to spend time visiting a linked page.
News
February 11, 2005: Version 1.42a of the software has been released. This version fixes a bug in the installer that prevents AEL from working with JAWS ® 5.1.
Please, if you have any problems using the software or have any suggestions about how the software might be improved, email me at parente@cs.unc.edu.
You can get the new release from the Download section on this page.
Requirements
The current version of Audio Enriched Links requires the following:
- Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP
- Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher
- JAWS ® version 4.50 or higher
Download
This is any early version of Audio Enriched Links so it undoubtedly has some bugs. Any bugs or accessibility problems may be reported to the author.
As of February 11, 2005, version 1.42a is the current stable release of Audio Enriched Links. Click here to download the Audio Enriched Links installer. Your download will begin a few seconds after you visit this page. Read the instructions in the next section for more information on how to install, use, and uninstall the software.
The latest source code is available through CVS at SourceForge. Please note that the code in CVS may be unstable at any time. Use it at your own risk. Click here to visit our SourceForge site.
The current version of the Audio Enriched Links software and source code are available for download under the terms of the MIT License.
Instructions
The following instructions explain how Audio Enriched Links may be installed, used, and uninstalled.
Installing
- Download the current stable version of Audio Enriched Links from the download section on this web page.
- Save the installer to a location you can remember easily, such as the Desktop.
- When the download has completed, navigate to the folder where you saved the installer. Select it and press Enter to begin the installation.
- Read the license agreement and press the Next button to continue.
- Choose a folder where Audio Enriched Links will be installed. The default location should be fine in most circumstances. Press the Next button to start the installation.
- When installation completes, press the Finish button to close the installer.
Requesting Spoken Previews
While browsing the Web in Internet Explorer, you may request a preview of a page on the other side of the current link.
- Navigate to a link using any of the normal JAWS ® navigation keys like the cursor keys, Tab and Shift-Tab keys, or JAWS ® links box.
- Press Ctrl and ` (usually the key next to the 1 key and near the Escapekey on your keyboard). If the link leads to another web page, JAWS ® will speak the following information about the next page:
- The title of the page
- If the link leads to another location on the current page, to another page within the current web site, or to a page on another website altogether
- The type of content that appears the most often on the page (for example, images, links, tables, etc.)
- The number of paragraphs, images, headings, forms, and tables that appear on the page
- The number of warnings about and errors in the HTML source for the page (for example, images missing alt attributes)
- The percentage of readable text on the page as compared with the total text in the HTML source (generally, higher means less formatting and more content, lower means more formatting and less content)
- A selection of ten highlights taken from the top of the page (for example, headings and large fonts)
- Email links, links that execute scripts, links that lead to files, links that lead to non-HTTP sites, and links that lead to unreachable destinations all speak short summaries.
Requesting Earcon Previews
The preview earcons are short musical previews that encode some of the information in the longer, spoken summaries. Email links, links that execute scripts, links that lead to files, links that lead to non-HTTP sites, and links that lead to unreachable destinations all have short, unique earcons associated with them. The best way to learn these earcons is to focus on one of these types of links and press Ctrl-Shift-` to hear the earcon. Then press Ctrl-` to hear the spoken description.
Earcons for web page previews are more complex. They encode information about the next web page including the following:
- If the percentage of readable text is less than 30% or greater than 30%
- If the number of HTML warnings and errors are less than 50 or greater than 50.
- If the next page is in the same domain, a different domain, or if it is a actually the current page.
Each piece of information is presented in the following manner:
- If the percentage of readable text is greater than 30%, then the low strings will be louder, fuller, and sound three simultaneous notes. Otherwise, the low strings will be softer, thinner, and play only one note instead of three.
- If the number of warnings and errors are less than 50, the clarinet melody will be in a major key (for example, happy sounding). Otherwise, the clarinet melody will be in a minor key (for example, sad, ominous sounding).
- If the link leads to a page in a different domain, chimes will be played at the end of the earcon. If the link leads to another part of the same page, a woodblock will be tapped at the end of the earcon. If the link leads to another page on the same site, neither the woodblock or chimes will sound.
As of version 1.4, previews that haven’t finished loading also play a short earcon indicating that they’re not ready yet. The earcon is three notes on a Koto, a Japanese harp that has a distinct Asian sound to it.
Using the earcons can take some training, but can provide very short but informative previews for experienced listeners. Practice makes perfect.
Uninstalling
- Open the Windows Control Panel.
- Open the Add/Remove Programs dialog.
- Select Audio Enriched Links from the list of installed programs.
- Press the Remove button.
- Confirm that you wish to remove Audio Enriched Links from your computer.
Future Work
Some possibilities for future work on Audio Enriched Links include the following:
- Ability to rate web pages you’ve visited previously so you know whether or not to visit them again
- Improved page highlights
- Relevance ranking to current web page (i.e. is the next page similar in content/topic to the current page)
- User control over what information is given in a preview
- Braille output of preview information
FAQ
The following are frequently asked questions and answers about Audio Enriched Links. Many of them come from questions posted on the JFW mailing list.
I’ve installed AEL. Where’s the shortcut so I can run it? I don’t see anything on the Desktop or in the Start Menu.
Audio Enriched Links is an addon for JAWS ®. You use it through JAWS ® by pressing the keys for the speech and earcon previews. There is no separate program to run, so there are no shortcuts.
I have multiple versions of JAWS ® installed. Which version will the Audio Enriched Links installer patch?
Currently, the Audio Enriched Links will be installed to work with the highest version of JAWS ® you have installed. A future version of the installer may ask which version or versions of JAWS ® you’d like to patch if you have more than one.
My laptop doesn’t have a control key or a grave key. How can I use the software without these keys?
The speech and earcon preview keys can be reconfigured using the JAWS ® keyboard manager. Change the LinkSpeechPreview and LinkEarconPreview keys for the Internet Explorer 5-6 script in JAWS ® 5 or the BrowseUI script in JAWS ® 4.
I’m having trouble getting Audio Enriched Links to work. It appears to have installed properly, but I don’t hear anything when I request a preview. What’s wrong?
There are probably some bugs in the software and installer since it hasn’t been tested on all versions of Windows under all system configurations. However, you might try installing the software with administrator privileges just to be certain that all of the components are registered properly. If that doesn’t work, please report your problem so I can try to resolve it.
