James M. Clarke

Room 36BB02,

Alan Turing Building

University of Surrey

Stag Hill Campus

Guildford, Surrey

GU2 7XH

I am a third-year PhD student at the University of Surrey, researching the security and privacy of accessible technologies for people with visual impairments. My work includes a study on the accessibility of cookie notices on UK websites, highlighting widespread design issues that negatively affect user experience and privacy, along with recommendations to improve accessibility. I recently completed a large-scale analysis of browser extensions, uncovering extensive tracking behaviours and their impact on web accessibility, and I am currently investigating the security and privacy of screen readers and their add-ons.

latest posts

Nov 26, 2024	Surrey Post Graduate Researcher Poster Competition.
Oct 28, 2024	ASSETs presentation video.
Jul 18, 2024	Privacy Enhancing Technologies symposium poster.

selected publications

Invisible, Unreadable, and Inaudible Cookie Notices: An Evaluation of Cookie Notices for Users with Visual Impairments

James M. Clarke, Maryam Mehrnezhad, and Ehsan Toreini

ACM Trans. Access. Comput., Mar 2024

Abs DOI HTML PDF

This article investigates the accessibility of cookie notices on websites for users with visual impairments (VI) via a set of system studies on top UK websites (n=46) and a user study (n=100). We use a set of methods and tools—including accessibility testing tools, text-only browsers, and screen readers—to perform our system studies. Our results demonstrate that the majority of cookie notices on these websites have some form of accessibility issue, including contrast issues, not having headings, and not being read aloud immediately when the page is loaded. We discuss how such practices impact the user experience and privacy and provide a set of recommendations for multiple stakeholders for more accessible websites and better privacy practices for users with VIs. To complement our technical contribution, we conduct a user study, finding that people with VIs generally have a negative view of cookie notices and believe our recommendations could help their online experience.