Improving web usability for the hard-of-hearing

Recently, with continued advances in information technology, there is an ever-growing amount of information accumulated on the World Wide Web. At the same time, the need to make this information accessible to any person who needs it becomes a serious issue. This paper focuses on web content accessibility for the hard-of-hearing. This is motivated by the fact that the first author, who is engaged in educating hard-of-hearing persons through daily classes, felt that hard-of-hearing persons would interact with web pages differently than hearing persons. Using web-based interactive course materials seems effective since they allow the creator to control the presentation of the content. However, the issue of how the hard-of-hearing interact with the web has not been adequately studied.