Assistive tools for accessing web pages (devices and software)


General principles

People with disabilities can make use of their other senses to communicate and obtain information. For example, people with hearing disability can read with their eyes. Visually impaired users can receive information through hearing or braille with the use of their tactile sense (i.e. by reading with the fingers over braille contents). Braille patterns are formed by raised dots. Different patterns represent different words, letters and numbers which can be read by visually impaired users with their fingers. Braille can also help users who are both vision and hearing impaired. Furthermore, visually impaired users often use the 'TAB' or 'Arrow' key (instead of the mouse) to navigate to the desire links.

Illustration of braille pattern

Assistive tools

Many international bodies and companies develop assistive tools to assist users with disabilities to access the computer. Examples of some of these assistive tools include:

• Screen reading software - The screen reading software, together with a text-to-speech (TTS) engine, enables visually-impaired users to operate computer and access the content on screen. In recent years, software vendors in the US and Europe have made much progress in developing screen reading software, which can now support many Windows applications and new technologies, such as Flash, JavaScript and PDF documents. More recently, Chinese versions of this software have been developed and are available in the market.
  
  
• Refreshable braille display device - These are electrical devices normally connected to a computer. The contents of web page or text document displayed on the screen, if existed in text format or with a text equivalent, can be converted to braille display on these devices. The braille patterns are translated real time and can be changed dynamically on command and thus the contents of the web page or text document can be read online. Such braille devices normally work hand in hand with a screen reader software and the contents of the braille display will be formatted by the rendering provided by the screen reader software.
  
  
• Some software tools can enlarge the characters displayed on the screen to assist users with poor or low vision.
  
  
• Some commercial companies equip their products with special plug-in features to translate their contents (which are not necessarily in text format) to synthesized speech.
  
  
• Other hardware adaptation - apart from assistive tools that are related to accessing contents of web pages, adaptation or special hardware are also required for other types of disabilities, such as people who are in wheelchairs or people who cannot use their hands. Some examples are:
  
  
• Consideration may be given to height, colour (e.g. use of non-glare colours and colours with good contrast), edges (e.g. round edge to minimize impact problems) of furniture housing the computer equipment which are used by people in wheelchairs or visually impaired.
  
  
• Display monitors of larger screen size and movable screens help users with poor or low vision.
  
  
• For people who cannot use their hands well, control buttons and panels should be put at the front of the equipment so that they can be reached easily. The buttons should be easy to operate so that they can be manipulated with one hand or simple motion. Similarly, other devices such as disk drive, CD-ROM drive should also be easy to operate and require only simple manipulation.
  
  
• Specialised assistive tools such as mouth-stick, head-stick and speech input recognition device / software can be used for users with little mobility.
  
  
• Raised markings and sounds associated with keys of a keyboard can be used to give orientation to users so that they know the positions they are at and the particular status of a given key. For example, some keys such as the 'Caps Lock' key may have 2 status - CAPS on and CAPS off. By having an audio indicator for each, the user knows the status he/she is at.
  
  
• Special adaptation such as changing the key repeat rate can also help users who cannot use their hands quickly at the keyboard.