Download Irys: The Focus Oriented, Auditory Online User Interface Andrew

change focuses hence doubling as a navigation tool. One such use could be a user returning to the site,
logging in, and then pressing back to see what they were doing last before ending their prior session.
In Raskin's discussion, the removal of a universal redo and undo buttons from the keyboard was
questioned, since the two buttons could relieve a huge time sink caused by the desire to reproduce a
prior action that was accidently omitted.
The “What just happened?” button would also be an interesting approach to a user's manual.
This key binding would require every command executed by the interface to carry an explanation of
what the command did, and what caused this command to be executed. It would put a larger burden on
the programmer having to document every action thoroughly, but in that way, a user could be traversing
the undo/redo stack, learning why certain actions were carried out. It's an interesting feature to
consider as it would be a nice learning utility, but it's inclusion is yet to be determined.
Analysis: Utility
One field of interface design that I found to be interesting was the analysis of given systems and
interfaces. This branch of analysis has come up with given standards for GUIs, which could be a
standard of comparison for the work that is to come. By far the greatest delay in any GUI is the time it
takes the user to visually navigate the interface and locate or move to a given point of interest. As I
design the online interface, this would be an integral tool in measuring its success, and could be used as
a standard for which to aim. The ultimate goal for this project would be to create an interface where
the times of uses become comparable to those of a sighted person using a GUI rather than the overly
simple goal of creating an interface that is slightly better than given screen reading solutions.
Future Work
Currently, Irys has an audio-enabled login and registration page demonstrating the ability to
create web applications that are audio enabled. What remains is then to create the focuses for the end