A study on the usability of hierarchical structures in websites for the visually impaired

Despite all of the information-gathering media, it remains unclear whether or not any website structures allow easy access to information for the visually impaired. In this study, visually impaired people who use screen readers were targeted, and the amount of informational content displayed on webpages and the hierarchical structures of the sites was examined. The results of a mental workload evaluation considering the search time and information access operations showed that the search time and the mental workload were considerably lower in the case of site structures that had less link text on the top page and a lot of second-layer content (information provided on the website). Furthermore, although the visually impaired subjects required a longer time to complete searches, their mental workload trend was similar to sighted users with respect to the differences in the hierarchical structure. This indicates that a high-usability website that is efficient and requires little mental workload when searching for information can be created for both sighted and visually impaired persons.