TY - GEN
T1 - Sinter
T2 - 11th European Conference on Computer Systems, EuroSys 2016
AU - Billah, Syed Masum
AU - Porter, Donald E.
AU - Ramakrishnan, I. V.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2016 held by owner/author(s).
PY - 2016/4/18
Y1 - 2016/4/18
N2 - Computer users commonly use applications designed for different operating systems (OSes). For instance, a Mac user may access a cloud-based Windows remote desktop to run an application required for her job. Current remote access protocols do not work well with screen readers, creating a disproportionate burden for users with visual impairments. These users' productivity depends on features of a specific screen reader, and readers are locked-in to a specific OS. The only current option is to run a different screen reader on each platform, which harms productivity. This paper describes a framework, called Sinter, that efficiently and seamlessly supports remote, cross-platform screen reading, without modifying the application or the screen reader. Sinter addresses these problems with a platform-independent intermediate representation (IR) of a remote application's user interface (UI). The Sinter IR encapsulates platform-specific accessibility code on the remote system, facilitates development of additional accessibility features, and is simple enough to be reconstructed and read on any client platform. In the example above, Sinter allows a Maconly reader to read remote Windows applications. Sinter supports low-bandwidth, remote access to a wide range of applications, including Microsoft Word and Apple Mail, with both Windows and OS X clients and servers, as well as a web browser client. Sinter's IR-level programming model facilitates development of accessibility features and other enhancements, transparently to the remote application and reader. Sinter's latency is low enough for practical use, even over a relatively slow network connection.
AB - Computer users commonly use applications designed for different operating systems (OSes). For instance, a Mac user may access a cloud-based Windows remote desktop to run an application required for her job. Current remote access protocols do not work well with screen readers, creating a disproportionate burden for users with visual impairments. These users' productivity depends on features of a specific screen reader, and readers are locked-in to a specific OS. The only current option is to run a different screen reader on each platform, which harms productivity. This paper describes a framework, called Sinter, that efficiently and seamlessly supports remote, cross-platform screen reading, without modifying the application or the screen reader. Sinter addresses these problems with a platform-independent intermediate representation (IR) of a remote application's user interface (UI). The Sinter IR encapsulates platform-specific accessibility code on the remote system, facilitates development of additional accessibility features, and is simple enough to be reconstructed and read on any client platform. In the example above, Sinter allows a Maconly reader to read remote Windows applications. Sinter supports low-bandwidth, remote access to a wide range of applications, including Microsoft Word and Apple Mail, with both Windows and OS X clients and servers, as well as a web browser client. Sinter's IR-level programming model facilitates development of accessibility features and other enhancements, transparently to the remote application and reader. Sinter's latency is low enough for practical use, even over a relatively slow network connection.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84971578949&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84971578949&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2901318.2901335
DO - 10.1145/2901318.2901335
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84971578949
T3 - Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Computer Systems, EuroSys 2016
BT - Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Computer Systems, EuroSys 2016
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 18 April 2016 through 21 April 2016
ER -