The Productivity Works, pwWebspeak Web Browser

pwWebSpeak is an Internet browser designed for users who wish to access the Internet in a non-visual manner. This includes users who cannot be tied to a keyboard or monitor, blind or visually impaired users, users with dyslexia or other learning disorders, and users who are learning new languages.

The intelligence built into pwWebSpeak understands the HTML constructs and automatically bypasses those constructs that have no relation to the information content of a document. Both speech and large character interpretation of the Web pages are provided so that all classes or users can use the software effectively.

pwWebSpeak is designed specifically to interact directly with the information on the Web pages and to translate the information content into speech. The user may navigate through the structure of a document based on its contents, paragraphs and sentences, rather than having to deal with scrolling and interpreting a structured screen display.

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) "Bobby" Web Site Accessibility Verifier

Bobby is a program which finds common accessibility problems on web sites. It was created to help web designers insure the greatest possible audience for their web sites and especially to highlight common accessibility problems that make using the web difficult for those with disabilities. When Bobby analyzes a page, it provides detailed information on:

• Problem HTML tags and constructs that make it difficult for people with a variety of disabilities to access a web page
• Image and document load times to insure quick page access on slow modems
• A comprehensive analysis of how the page's HTML might be incompatible with those versions of HTML implemented by the major web browsers (including Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Mosaic, and AOL)
• Common problems with image maps
• A variety of other important tests including looking for missing ALT text in image tags

UCLA and University at Dresden's HTML to Braille Transformation Service

Both UCLA (http://www.ucla.edu/ICADD/html2icadd-form.html) and the University at Dresden (http://elvis.inf.tu-dresden.de/html2brl/) provide an HTML to Braille transformation service. These services allow anyone who has an HTML coded document to send that document to the server which then:

• converts the document to the ICADD DTD which may then be easily converted to Braille, large text or voice ready file format
• converts the document to the ICADD DTD and then converts that instance to a Braille formatted file. This resulting file may then be sent to a braille printer or refreshable braille display for the blind user.

University of Toronto

SoftQuad together with the University of Toronto are presently engaged in a project to make SGML and HTML authoring and browsing tools accessible to people with disabilities and to guide SGML and HTML authors in creating accessible documents. The user who is reading hyperlinked multimedia documents using access technology such as screen readers, Braille displays or screen magnifiers, faces three challenges:

• obtaining an overview of the document
• moving to specific sections or elements in the document
• retrieving alternative descriptions or labels of graphic or audio objects

The user with sight can get a good sense of the content and scope of a document at a glance. Formatting and layout allow the user to quickly find a specific part of a document. This is not the case when using screen readers, Braille displays or screen magnifiers. SoftQuad and the University of Toronto are exploiting the structure inherent in SGML to allow users to efficiently navigate and obtain an overview of the document.

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