Wikipedia, the open encyclopaedia: is it really open to blind users?

Nowadays Web 2.0 applications allow anyone to create, share and edit on-line content, but accessibility and usability issues still exist. In this direction, wikis are becoming increasingly widespread, and offer great benefits in a variety of collaborative environments. to be universally valuable, wiki systems should be easy to use for anyone, regardless of ability. This paper describes obstacles that a blind user may encounter when interacting via screen reader with Wikipedia. For instance, Wikipedia presents many difficulties for the blind, especially when they wish to edit articles. Based on these accessibility issues, our study is aimed at investigating on the W3C ARIA suite as possible solution to simplify the Wikipedia Editing Page when interacting via screen reader. At the end, a user testing conducted by involving a group of blind users is shortly described.