James M. Clarke

I am a second-year PhD student at the University of Surrey, working on the security and privacy of accessible technologies for people with visual impairments. Visual impairment is a broad term to describe any vision loss, ranging from partial vision loss to completed blindness. In the United Kingdom, there are more than 2 million people who have visual impairments, with around 60% of them being women. People with visual impairments have various tools called assistive technologies, which can help them use computers and access the Internet, such as screen readers.

My past work investigated how various assistive technologies interact with website cookie notices. Cookie notices provide a method for users to decide which cookies are stored on their devices, impacting their privacy online. Through several system and user studies, we observed the current practices of cookie notices and users’ opinions towards cookie notices. We found that several cookie notices were inaccessible to users using assistive technology and that users generally had a negative perception of cookie notices. We also discovered that many websites omitted the necessary headings in their cookie notices, as illustrated in the figure. Based on this, we gave recommendations to improve the current cookie notice landscape.

In our recent work, I am looking at the security and privacy of the assistive technologies themselves. While in its early stages, I have found several issues, which we have brought to the attention of assistive technology manufacturers with the aim of improving the security and privacy of these tools.