GAP4APE: a client-side system to enhance accessibility in the Web 2.0 era

Social networking systems have radically changed personal communication by providing new and interesting opportunities both in leisure and in business. Despite their apparent universal appeal, these systems are effectively leaving out a part of users with disabilities, who have difficulties in register, join and participate in the main on-line communities. Facebook represents a critical case: beside some accessibility improvement provided by this social network service, its accessibility represents an issue yet. This paper presents an augmented browsing system, which allows users with disabilities to specify their needs and preferences about Web pages presentation, directly by means of the browser interface. On the basis of the declared settings, the system automatically transcodes the page content (both static and dynamic), producing new pages adapted to the user’s needs. The system, based on the widespread Web browser extension called GreaseMonkey, works on a wide set of Web systems, but has been extensively tested on Facebook.