SIGIR 2010
Geneva, Switzerland
July 19-23, 2010
Towards Accessible Search Systems
Workshop of the 33
rd
Annual International
ACM SIGIR Conference
on Research and Development
in Information Retrieval
Organised by
Pavel Serdyukov
Djoerd Hiemstra
Ian Ruthven
Preface
Current search systems are not adequate for individuals with specific needs: children, older
adults, people with visual or motor impairments, and people with intellectual disabilities or low
literacy. Search services are typically created for average users (young or middle-aged adults
without physical or mental disabilities) and information retrieval methods are based on their
perception of relevance as well. The workshop is the first ever to raise the discussion on how to
make search engines accessible for different types of users, including those with problems in
reading, writing or comprehension of complex content. Search accessibility means that people
whose abilities are considerably different from those that average users have will be able to use
search systems with the same success.
The objective of the workshop is to provide a forum and initiate collaborations between
academics and industrial practitioners interested in making search more usable for users in
general and for users with specific needs in particular.
The papers selected for this workshop are a mixture of research, discussion and position papers.
We have deliberately selected a broad range of papers for this workshop to reflect the diverse
research areas that contribute to the discipline of Accessible Search.
We would like to thank our panellists for providing a stimulating start to our workshop and the
programme committee for generously providing comments and guidance to the submitting
authors. We would particularly like to thank our keynote speakers Allison Druin and T. V.
Raman.
Programme committee
Leif Azzopardi, University of Glasgow
Jamshid Beheshti, McGill University, Montreal
Dania Bilal, University of Tennessee
Carlos Castillo, Yahoo Research
Kevin Collins-Thompson, Microsoft Research
Arjen de Vries, CWI, Amsterdam
Diane Kelly, University of North Carolina
Mounia Lalmas, University of Glasgow
Barbara Leporini, CNR, Pisa
Andrew MacFarlane, City University, London
Marie-Francine Moens, University of Leuven
Meng Wang, Microsoft Research Asia
Website http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/~ir/accessiblesearch/
Programme
9.00-9.15 Registration and welcome
9.15-10.15 Keynote (chair: Djoerd Hiemstra)
Searching for the Future: Understanding Children’s Challenges, Actions, and Roles in Searching
Allison Druin
10.15-10.45 Coffee break
10.45-12.05 Session 1 Childrens’ Information Retrieval (chair: Ian Ruthven)
A Closer Look at Children's Information Retrieval Usage: Towards Child-Centered Relevance
Frans Van der Sluis and Betsy Van Dijk
Assessing Fun: Young Children as Evaluators of Interactive Systems
Yusrita Mohd Yusoff, Ian Ruthven and Monica Landoni
Text Simplification for Children
Jan De Belder and Marie-Francine Moens
Children searching information on the Internet: Performance on children’s interfaces compared
to Google
Hanna Jochmann-Mannak and Leo Lentz
12.05 – 14.00 - Lunch
14.00-15.00 Keynote (chair: Pavel Serdyukov)
Toward More Accessible Search
T.V. Raman
15.00-15.40 Session 2 Information Retrieval for Users with Special Requirements (chair: Ian
Ruthven)
WebMark: A Rapid Internet Browsing Technique for Visually Impaired Web Users
Hesham M. Kamel
The Mediated Information World of Children on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Dania Bilal
15.40-16.10 Coffee break
16.10-17.00 Panel (chair: Dania Bilal)
Table of contents
Searching for the Future: Understanding Children’s Challenges, Actions, and Roles in Searching
Allison Druin 1
Toward More Accessible Search
T.V. Raman
2
A Closer Look at Children's Information Retrieval Usage: Towards Child-Centered Relevance
Frans Van der Sluis and Betsy Van Dijk
3
Assessing Fun: Young Children as Evaluators of Interactive Systems
Yusrita Mohd Yusoff, Ian Ruthven and Monica Landoni
11
Text Simplification for Children
Jan De Belder and Marie-Francine Moens
19
Children searching information on the Internet: Performance on children’s interfaces compared
to Google
Hanna Jochmann-Mannak and Leo Lentz
27
WebMark: A Rapid Internet Browsing Technique for Visually Impaired Web Users
Hesham M. Kamel
36
The Mediated Information World of Children on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Dania Bilal
42
1
Searching for the Future: Understanding Children’s
Challenges, Actions, and Roles in Searching
Allison Druin
University of Maryland, College Park, USA
allisond@umiacs.umd.edu
ABSTRACT
“I don't know where it is!"
“I never find the stuff I'm looking for..."
“Maybe I can find the Vice President's birthday in the
SpongeBob Square-Pants website?"
These are all responses we have received from 7, 9, or 11 year
old children that have been searching online at home. In this
talk, I will present seven search roles children display as
information seekers using Internet keyword interfaces, based on
a home study of 83 children. These roles are defined not only
by the children's search actions, but also by who influences
their searching, their perceived success, and trends in age and
gender. These roles suggest a need for new interfaces that
expand the notion of keywords, scaffold results, and develop a
search culture among children. Future interfaces for mobile
phones, netbooks, and more will be discussed.
BIOGRAPHY
Allison Druin is associate professor in the College of
Information Studies at the University of Maryland, and director
of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Druin's research is
dedicated to designing technology for children. She believes
that children should have a voice in making new technology for
kids. Children's ideas need to be heard through-out the entire
technology design process. In 1998, the lab began a unique
technology design team. Seven children, aged seven to eleven,
joined with researchers from computer science, education, art,
robotics, and other disciplines, twice a week, to form an
intergenerational, interdisciplinary design team. The team
pursues projects, writes papers and creates new technologies.
Druin's team created for instance the International Children's
Digital Library, a multilingual free digital library of children's
books, consisting of more than 4,000 books in over 50
languages, with more than three million users from over 160
countries worldwide. Druin also founded CHIKids at ACM
SIGCHI, a program where children were CHI conference
reporters, software testers, multi-media storytellers and more.
Druin received her Ph.D from the University of New Mexico's
College of Education in 1997 and a master degree from MIT
Media Lab in 1987. She is the author/editor of three books on
the design of children's technology. She received several awards
for work. ACM SIGCHI awarded Druin the SIGCHI Social
Impact Award together with Ben Bederson in 2010, and the
SIGCHI Distinguished Service Award in 1998. Druin received
a prestigious National Science Foundation Career Award, a five
year research grant for promising junior faculty research, which
she used to focus on the development of the classroom of the
future.
