Access to multimodal articles for individuals with sight impairments

Although intelligent interactive systems have been the focus of many research efforts, very few have addressed systems for individuals with disabilities. This article presents our methodology for an intelligent interactive system that provides individuals with sight impairments with access to the content of information graphics (such as bar charts and line graphs) in popular media. The article describes the methodology underlying the system's intelligent behavior, its interface for interacting with users, examples processed by the implemented system, and evaluation studies both of the methodology and the effectiveness of the overall system. This research advances universal access to electronic documents.