1 Towel: Real World Mobility on the Web Simon HARPER, Robert STEVENS, Carole GOBLE University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK Key words: Visually Impaired, WWW, Mobility, Travel, Navigation, Orientation, Adaptability, Tools. Abstract: The ‘Towel’ project seeks to find solutions to problems encountered by both visually impaired and sighted users when travelling in the World Wide Web. Drawing similarities between real-world travel metaphors of visually impaired people and web-based travel metaphors of both visually impaired and sighted people, enhances an understanding of the problem and therefore enables solutions to these travel problems to be more easily identified. By likening web-travel to real-world travel in terms of mobility, navigation, orientation, and mapping, and by fitting web-travel into a real-world travel framework a number of similarities can be identified, and problems characterised. These problems have solutions in the real-world and so these real-world solutions may be of use in addressing web-based travel problems. 1. INTRODUCTION Browsing the World Wide Web (WWW) can be a complex and difficult task, which is further complicated if the user happens to be visually impaired because the richness of visual navigational cues presented to a sighted user are not appropriate or accessible to a visually impaired user [Petrie97]. Web browsing and searching suggests a degree of travel as well as reading, and while there are a number of WWW Browsers that support the reading task for visually impaired people, few support the task of travelling around a page, a web site or indeed the WWW in general. Many such browsers are concerned with the 'sensory translation' of visual information to auditory information, and are not concerned with enhancing web mobility [Jones96]. In a survey, carried out by email, a marked difference can be seen