From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: WebAnywhere screenreader installed on servers!
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:20:11 -0400
I'd rather not discuss this here it has nothing to do with the Mac.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet and Felix *"
To:
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 7:14 PM
Subject: WebAnywhere screenreader installed on servers!
Online service lets blind surf the Internet from any computer,
anywhere
Visions of future technology don't involve being chained to a
desktop
machine. People move from home computers to work computers to mobile
devices; public
kiosks pop up in libraries, schools and hotels; and people
increasingly
store everything from e-mail to spreadsheets on the Web.
But for the roughly 10 million people in the United States who are
blind or
visually impaired, using a computer has, so far, required special
screen-reading
software typically installed only on their own machines.
New software, called WebAnywhere, launched today lets blind and
visually
impaired people surf the Web on the go. The tool developed at the
University
of
Washington turns screen-reading into an Internet service that
reads aloud
Web text on any computer with speakers or a headphone connection.
"This is for situations where someone who's blind can't use their
own
computer but still wants access to the Internet. At a museum, at a
library,
at a public
kiosk, at a friend's house, at the airport," said Richard Ladner,
a UW
professor of computer science and engineering. The free program
and both
audio and
video demonstrations are at
http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu.
Ladner will demonstrate the tool next week in Dallas at the National
Federation of the Blind's annual convention. WebAnywhere was
developed under
Ladner's
supervision by Jeffrey Bigham, a UW doctoral student in computer
science and
engineering. The research was funded by the National Science
Foundation.
Free screen readers already exist, as do sophisticated commercial
programs.
But all must be installed on a machine before being used. This is
the first
accessibility tool hosted on the Web, meaning it doesn't have to be
downloaded onto a computer. It processes the text on an external
server and
then sends
the audio file to play in the user's Web browser.
"You don't have to install new software. So even if you go to a
heavily
locked-down computer, say at a library, you can still use it,"
Bigham said.
In May, Bigham was named the winner of the Accessible Technology
Award for
Interface Design for the Imagine Cup, a student programming contest
sponsored
by Microsoft Corp. The prize comes with $8,000 and a trip to Paris
in early
July.
For the past month WebAnywhere has been available on request.
Bigham said
he's received inquiries from librarians who would like to make all
their
machines
accessible on a limited budget. He's also had interest from
teachers who
struggle to find the time to locate free software, get permission
to install
it
on a school computer and then maintain the program so that a
single computer
is accessible to a visually impaired student. This software would
make any
computer in the lab instantly accessible for Internet tasks. The
Web-based
service also eliminates the need for local technical support:
there is no
software
to install or update because each time a person visits the site he
or she
gets the latest version.
To test the software, researchers had people use the tool to do
three things
typically done at public machines: check e-mail, look up a bus
schedule and
search for a restaurant's phone number. People using WebAnywhere
were able
to successfully complete all three tasks, using a variety of
machines and
Internet
connections.
Like other screen readers, WebAnywhere converts written text to an
electronically generated voice. So far the system works only in
English. But
the source
code was released a few weeks ago and a Web developer in China has
expressed
interest in developing a Chinese version.
The UW team plans to create updates that will allow users to
change the
speed at which the text is read aloud and add other popular
features found
in existing
screen readers. The service is currently hosted on a server at the
UW
campus.
Bigham is also working with Benetech, a Palo Alto, Calif.,
technology
nonprofit that distributes free electronic books, to make its
collection of
more than
30,000 books accessible to blind users without them having to
install any
screen-reading software.
He believes this could be the first of many Web-based
accessibility tools.
"Traditional desktop tools such as e-mail, word processors and
spreadsheets
are moving to the Web," Bigham said. "Access technology, which
currently
runs
only on the desktop, needs to follow suit."
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