The Second NavAccess Prototype as a Firefox Extension

In Website Navigation for Blind Users, the later version of NavAccess is described as a Firefox extension rather than a separate interface. This change addressed problems found with the earlier prototype, where having a second interface had confused participants. Mozilla Firefox was chosen because its platform is open source, platform independent, and suitable for continued accessibility development.

The link-list module

The first completed module in this Firefox-extension version of NavAccess was a link-list. According to Website Navigation for Blind Users, link-lists are very important for navigating large and complex pages, but the link-lists in major screen readers had only limited functionality. NavAccess expanded what users could do with those lists.

Enhanced link-list features

• Filtering: the list could be filtered by visited or unvisited status.
• Sorting: links could be sorted alphabetically or in tab order.
• Move to or follow a link: after selecting a link, the user could either move to its location on the current page or follow the link to its destination.
• Incremental search: for long lists, users could narrow results through incremental searching.
• Case sensitivity: these incremental searches could be made case sensitive.
• Target-address search: searches could be applied either to the link title or to the link’s target address.
• Context retrieval: users could request the textual context of a link, so they did not need to close the list to understand a context-dependent link.
• Duplicate removal: users could also use a remove duplicates option.

Why these features mattered

Website Navigation for Blind Users explains that these features could be combined to reduce very large link-lists dramatically. With filtering options such as visited/unvisited status and duplicate removal, together with searching and sorting, a list containing hundreds of links could be reduced to only a small number of relevant choices. This made navigation more efficient and reduced the burden of working through irrelevant links.

Summary

The second NavAccess prototype improved on the earlier design by becoming a Firefox extension and by focusing on a stronger, more flexible link-list. As described in Website Navigation for Blind Users, its main advances were better filtering and sorting, the ability to move to links or follow them, incremental and case-sensitive search, searching by target address, retrieval of link context, and duplicate removal. Together, these features gave blind users more control over navigation in large and complex web pages.