WebAnywhere:Helping Blind People Use the Internet
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With the help of screen-reader software, blind people can use a computer, but those products can cost more than US$1000, so you won?t see them in public libraries or at internet cafes.
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A new web-based application called ?WebAnywhere? has been developed by a computer science graduate at the University of Washington ? and best of all, it?s free. Unlike the traditional and costly programs, WebAnywhere is a web-based application that can make surfing the net accessible to the blind on almost any computer.
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The developer, Jeffrey Bigham, hopes that it will enable blind people to check flight times at an airport, plan a bus route at the library or to type up a quick email at an internet caf?.
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To actually get WebAnywhere running, a bind person need to get online which, without a computer set-up with verbal feedback, can be difficult. However, Bigham did plenty of research and found that many web-smart blind people often know loads of keyboard shortcuts and tricks, and when to ask for help.
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Once online, a user can use the WebAnywhere browser, which can link to and read out any page ? as long as the computer has speakers of a headphone socket. The program can read any page from top to bottom, or skip around the section titles or tab through charts.
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Lindsay Yazzolino, a blind Brown University student who has a summer job at the University of Washington said: ?WebAnywhere could benefit from some tweaking but it’s a big improvement over a total lack of public access.?
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Yazzolino said she would like a better search function and fewer keystrokes, but loves the fact the program is free.
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The program is open source and Bigham hopes that others will make improvements to it. Although he is not blind himself, he recognises the area as one that needs some programmers to get stuck in to.
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Bigham?s faculty adviser is hoping that commercial search engines will adopt WebAnywhere as a module. His dream is for web developers to keep blind people in mind when they design their pages, making information available to everyone.
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