Node-read: a visually accessible low-code software development extension
Authors: 
Lachlan Anderson, Briana Barker, Alice Reid, Kaijie Lin, Hourieh Khalajzadeh, 
John GrundyAuthors Info & Claims
Pages 808 - 815
Abstract
Low-code software development environments are reliant on spatial and graphical user interfaces. As a result, many of these tools are in some way inaccessible to the visually impaired, and very few of these tools are built with visual accessibility in mind. In this paper, we evaluate the accessibility of existing low-code Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), for persons with partial or distorted vision. The aim of this study is to motivate making citizen/end-user software development accessible for users who are reliant on screen readers. We conducted a preliminary review of several low-code development environments which were open source and had a large existing user base, and identified that browser-based low-code IDEs did not integrate well with screen reader software. An extension of an open-source software, Node-RED, was created, as it was found to be suitable to our selection criteria. The extension, referred to as "Node-Read", focuses on improving compatibility with JAWS and NVDA screen readers. Node-Read's keyboard shortcuts, along with their inclusion in critical user documentation, were reported by study participants to be helpful in the basic operation of the software.
References
[1]
Benjamin Adrian, Sven Hinrichsen, and Alexander Nikolenko. 2020. App Development via Low-Code Programming as Part of Modern Industrial Engineering Education. In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics. Springer, 45--51.
[2]
Khaled Albusays and Stephanie Ludi. 2016. Eliciting programming challenges faced by developers with visual impairments: exploratory study. In Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. 82--85.
[3]
Khaled Albusays, Stephanie Ludi, and Matt Huenerfauth. 2017. Interviews and observation of blind software developers at work to understand code navigation challenges. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 91--100.
[4]
Ameer Armaly, Paige Rodeghero, and Collin McMillan. 2017. A comparison of program comprehension strategies by blind and sighted programmers. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 44, 8 (2017), 712--724.
[5]
Ameer Armaly, Paige Rodeghero, and Collin McMillan. 2018. AudioHighlight: Code skimming for blind programmers. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). IEEE, 206--216.
[6]
Catherine M Baker, Lauren R Milne, and Richard E Ladner. 2015. Structjumper: A tool to help blind programmers navigate and understand the structure of code. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 3043--3052.
[7]
Andrew Begel. 2004. Spoken language support for software development. In 2004 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages-Human Centric Computing. IEEE, 271--272.
[8]
Sheryl Burgstahler and Terrill Thompson. 2019. Accessible cyberlearning: A community report of the current state and recommendations for the future. Seattle: University of Washington. Retrieved January 1 (2019), 2021.
[9]
Samer Faraj and Lee Sproull. 2000. Coordinating expertise in software development teams. Management science 46, 12 (2000), 1554--1568.
[10]
Anne Fisher. 2021. How Companies Are Developing More Apps With Fewer Developers. https://fortune.com/2016/08/30/quickbase-coding-apps-developers/
[11]
Filipe Del Nero Grillo, Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes, and Daniel Lucrédio. 2012. Towards collaboration between sighted and visually impaired developers in the context of Model-Driven Engineering. In Joint Proceedings of Co-located Events at the 8th European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications (ECMFA 2012), Lyngby. 241--251.
[12]
App Inventor. [n.d.]. App Inventor. https://appinventor.mit.edu/
[13]
Mukta Kulkarni. 2019. Digital accessibility: Challenges and opportunities. IIMB Management Review 31, 1 (2019), 91--98.
[14]
Andreas Kunz, Klaus Miesenberger, Max Mühlhäuser, Ali Alavi, Stephan Pölzer, Daniel Pöll, Peter Heumader, and Dirk Schnelle-Walka. 2014. Accessibility of brainstorming sessions for blind people. In International Conference on Computers for Handicapped Persons. Springer, 237--244.
[15]
Stephen W Liddle. 2011. Model-driven software development. In Handbook of Conceptual Modeling. Springer, 17--54.
[16]
Leandro Luque, Leônidas de Oliveira Brandão, Elisabeti Kira, Anarosa Alves, and Franco Brandão. 2017. Inclusion in computing and engineering education: Perceptions and learning in diagram-based e-learning classes with blind and sighted learners. In 2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). IEEE, 1--8.
[17]
Sean Mealin and Emerson Murphy-Hill. 2012. An exploratory study of blind software developers. In 2012 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC). IEEE, 71--74.
[18]
Lauren R Milne and Richard E Ladner. 2018. Blocks4All: overcoming accessibility barriers to blocks programming for children with visual impairments. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1--10.
[19]
Francisco Oliveira, Heidi Cowan, Bing Fang, and Francis Quek. 2010. Enabling multimodal discourse for the blind. In International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces and the Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction. 1--8.
[20]
Venkatesh Potluri, Priyan Vaithilingam, Suresh Iyengar, Y Vidya, Manohar Swaminathan, and Gopal Srinivasa. 2018. Codetalk: Improving programming environment accessibility for visually impaired developers. In Proceedings of the 2018 chi conference on human factors in computing systems. 1--11.
[21]
Christopher Power, André Freire, Helen Petrie, and David Swallow. 2012. Guidelines are only half of the story: accessibility problems encountered by blind users on the web. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 433--442.
[22]
Matthew Rabin and Joel L Schrag. 1999. First impressions matter: A model of confirmatory bias. The quarterly journal of economics 114, 1 (1999), 37--82.
[23]
Node-Read GitHub Repository. 2021. Node-Read GitHub Repository. Removed-for-blind-review
[24]
Node-Red GitHub Repository. [n.d.]. Node-Red GitHub Repository. https://github.com/node-red/node-red
[25]
Christoph Rieger and Herbert Kuchen. 2019. Towards Pluri-Platform Development: Evaluating a Graphical Model-Driven Approach to App Development Across Device Classes. In Towards Integrated Web, Mobile, and IoT Technology. Springer, 36--66.
[26]
Rintagi/Low-Code-Development-Platform. [n.d.]. Rintagi/Low-Code-Development-Platform. https://github.com/Rintagi/Low-Code-Development-Platform
[27]
Jaime Sánchez and Fernando Aguayo. 2005. Blind learners programming through audio. In CHI'05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. 1769--1772.
[28]
Andreas Stefik, Roger Alexander, Robert Patterson, and Jonathan Brown. 2007. WAD: A feasibility study using the wicked audio debugger. In 15th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC'07). IEEE, 69--80.
[29]
Andreas M Stefik, Christopher Hundhausen, and Derrick Smith. 2011. On the design of an educational infrastructure for the blind and visually impaired in computer science. In Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education. 571--576.
[30]
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). [n.d.]. WCAG 2.1 at a Glance. https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/glance/
[31]
Annalyn Welp, R Brian Woodbury, Margaret A McCoy, Steven M Teutsch, Engineering National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, et al. 2016. The impact of vision loss. In Making eye health a population health imperative: vision for tomorrow. National Academies Press (US).
[32]
First Flow Tutorial: Creating your first flow. [n.d.]. First Flow Tutorial: Creating your first flow. https://nodered.org/docs/tutorials/first-flow
Index Terms
- Node-read: a visually accessible low-code software development extension
Recommendations
Why read if you can skim: towards enabling faster screen reading
W4A '12: Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web AccessibilitySkimming broadly refers to different speed-reading methods that aim to enhance the rate of reading without unduly compromising on comprehension and retention of information. Skimming of content could be particularly useful for people with vision ...
Able to Read My Mail: An Accessible e-Mail Client with Assistive Technology
W4A '17: Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All ConferenceThe Able to Include project aims at improving the living conditions of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) in key areas of society. One of its focus points concerns improving the integration of people with IDD in the workplace ...
Easy to Read Standarisation.: Some steps towards an international standard.
DSAI '20: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusionReading is a means to make Human Rights effective, mainly those related to full participation in society under equal conditions. Literacy is not natural but acquired, and it depends on many factors from personal capabilities to access to education from ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
October 2022
1003 pages
Copyright © 2022 ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
Sponsors
In-Cooperation
- Univ. of Montreal: University of Montreal
- IEEE CS
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 09 November 2022
Check for updates
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Funding Sources
- Australian Research Council Laureate Program
Conference
MODELS '22
Sponsor:
MODELS '22: ACM/IEEE 25th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems
October 23 - 28, 2022
Quebec, Montreal, Canada
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 144 of 506 submissions, 28%
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 120Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)29
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
Reflects downloads up to 18 Nov 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in