Downloading music and videos from the Internet: a study of the accessibility of TPB and the iTunes Store Presentation at Umeå University January 24, 2007.

Downloading music and videos from the Internet:

a study of the accessibility of TPB and the iTunes Store

Presentation at Umeå UniversityJanuary 24, 2007

David Furendaldavid.furendal@gmail.com

Background

• Downloading of music and videos from the Internet has become incredible popular!

• Can systems for downloading these files be used by people with disabilities?

• Idea:– Study two of the most popular systems.– What are the strengths and weaknesses in the

accessibility of each system?

Accessibility

• Describes to what degree a system is usable for as many people as possible without modification.

• Computer users are getting older…

• Assistive technologies.

The Pirate Bay

• “The world's largest BitTorrent tracker”.

• In January, 2007 the worlds 268th most visited web site with 1 418 296 registered users.

• Many torrents points to copyrighted material.

• Free of use.

The iTunes Store

• The first really successful online digital music store.

• Started by Apple computers in 2003.

• Over 3.5 billion songs sold and a market share of 88% in the US.

• Offers download of music, video and audio books.

Material

• Systems evaluated– iTunes 7.0.2.16– The Pirate Bay 2.0

• Computer– Dell Inspiron 6400, laptop with 15.4” screen

• Operating system– Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2.

• Web browsers– Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11– Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1– Opera 9.10

• BitTorrent clients– uTorrent 1.6, English version– Opera 9.10

• Screen magnifier– Microsoft magnifier

• Screen reader– JAWS v7.10.452

• Other tools– Colorblind Web Page Filter– The W3C Markup Validation Service– The WC CSS Validation Service

Method

• Five fictitious characters with different disabilities was created using Personas.

• The study were made by using the systems in the same way as the users would do.

+ Material written by people with disabilities+ Scientific work

Yuriko, a 21 year old woman who is blind

Background:

– Yuriko studies history of science at the University of Kyoto. She has been blind her whole life. She loves listening to music and playing the piano…

– She uses Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and the screen reader JAWS v7.10.452

Yuriko, a 21 year old woman who is blind

Result:

– The Pirate Bay possible to use thanks to the simple design and the use of valid XHTML.

– The iTunes Store is impossible to use.• “iTunes is one of the most difficult pieces of software to

use. This is because it uses non-standard windows controls to display and manage items, and so screen reading technology does not stand a chance of reading the screen contents. Even the application's menu bar is inaccessible” (Brian Hartgen, 2007)

Summary of the result

The Pirate Bay The iTunes Store

Low vision Good accessibility Poor accessibility

Blindness Good accessibility No accessibility

Dyslexia Poor accessibility Good accessibility

Color Blindness Good accessibility Good accessibility

Deafness Good accessibility No accessibility

Motor impairment Poor accessibility Poor accessibility

Discussion

• Method.

• Why is the accessibility of TPB good?

• Why is the accessibility of the iTunes Store so poor?

• Future systems…

Questions?