Text transcoders are proxy–like systems that respond to
requests sent by user’s browsers, strip images, multimedia
objects, JavaScript code and change the page layout. Al-
though the potential benefits of text transcoders as mecha-
nisms to provide alternative and robust user interfaces are
multifaceted, at the moment their benefits on users of small
mobile devices are not clear.
This paper describes an experiment aimed at evaluating us-
ability of web pages used with PDAs when processed by a
text transcoder. Results based on subjective and objective
data show that effectiveness, productivity and satisfaction
can be improved. Furthermore, the needed transformations
are simple to implement, and mostly achievable by many
text transcoders.
