[Ncabs] Requesting help from screen reader users

[Sean Mealin]

Hi everyone,

I have a friend that is doing some research at North Carolina State
University on how screen reader users surf the internet.  In his own
words:
“This is for research to be published in the Assets 2011 conference.
We want to analyze web browsing strategies and start developing
techniques for optimizing them, automatically discovering them, help
researchers explore them, etc.”
This is where I thought you could come in.  What he’s asking, is for
volunteers to run a program to record the different keystrokes as they
browse the internet for at least 15 minutes.  Here’s some important
information:
-Everything will be anonymous.  All information that could be used to
identify you will be removed.
-All you have to do is browse the internet for 15 minutes (on any web
sites you want).  Please nothing of an adult nature.  All you have to
do is go to the web sites you normally go to, and do whatever you
normally do on them.
-The program will save a text file of the keys that you press, so you
can look through it and make sure that there’s nothing in there that
you don’t want anyone else to see.
-You have complete control over when the program is (and is not)
recording your keystrokes.
-Most of the analysis will be automated in a statistical program
environment called “R”.
-When you send your log file to me, you can ask that I remove all
information, so the person who is doing this study will have
absolutely no way of knowing who you are.

Here’s what you have to do:
1.	Download the recorder program from: http://sina.fi.ncsu.edu/rui.zip
2.	Unzip the downloaded file to wherever you like.
3.	Go into the “rui” folder that just unzipped, and press enter on the
“Recorder.exe” file.
4.	Tab to the checkbox that reads “”mouse clicks”, and uncheck it with
spacebar.  Do the same thing for the checkbox that reads “mouse
moves”.
5.	Press tab again to the “browse” button, and press enter.  A normal
save file window comes up.  Please save the file wherever you want,
and with whatever name you want.  By default, it will save it in your
“my documents” folder; all you have to do once the window opens is
type in a name, and press enter.
6.	After the save file screen closes, you will be put back into the
“rui 2.03” window.  Press tab until you get to the “Start recording”
button.
7.	Before pressing the “start recording” button, launch a web browser
window (that way, once the application starts to record, you can just
alt-tab to the window and start browsing).  Popular web browsers are
Internet Explorer and Firefox.  Please feel free to use whatever web
browser you like.
8.	In the “rui2.03” window, press enter on the “Start recording”
button, and then switch to your browser window.  When browsing the
internet, please try to avoid entering any passwords.  All passwords
will be removed, but it is just easier (and safer) if you don’t enter
any passwords when the program is recording your keystrokes.  Please
do not close the “rui2.03” window, or it will not record your
keystrokes!
9.	After at least 15 minutes of browsing the internet, go to the
“rui2.03” window, and press enter on the “stop recording” button.
10.	If you would like to, you can go to the log file (by default in
your “my documents” folder), and look through it to see what the
application recorded.  Please do not edit it unless you really need to
remove some information from it.
11.	Please email me the log file, and I will pass it along.  My email
address if you don’t have it is spmealin at ncsu.edu.  As I said before,
if you would like me to, I can remove any personal information before
passing it on to the researcher.

Please feel free to email me with any questions, or if you need any
help.  There is a deadline for this research, so the sooner you can do
it, the better.

Thanks for your help.

Sean Mealin