screen readers

Being comfortable in looking at the screen is very important when using the computer. For people with perfect vision, this does not pose a concern. But for people with limited or low vision, it may be difficult to see images and regular text on the screen.

An application known as a screen reader can provide the needed solution for people with visual impairments. Here, we will take a look at what a screen magnifier is, and how it helps persons with low vision.

Reading your electronic documents using your hands instead of your eyes may sound almost impossible. However, this is actually what many blind persons do. This is done through a device known as a Braille display.

Braille displays are hardware that enable users to read in Braille the text displayed on the computer screen. Using this device, blind people can navigate through the computer’s desktop, create and edit documents, and browse the Internet.

After the Oracle's acquisition of Sun, one of the first decisions to make was to fire Willie Walker, the ORCA project lead. ORCA is a Linux based screen reader, which became very famous and popular among visually impaired people. Sun had a strong commitment to support ORCA in so many ways to offer screen reader users another option, a wider choice of operating systems.

While it is practically possible to use Linux with screen readers, in the past it had been very difficult, many people used a terminal solution and accessed their Linux machine through another computer. ORCA made it possible to directly use a Linux machine, and eventually got it to a point where visually impaired people could use it as their primary system.

The Internet has no boundaries. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Nonetheless, hurdles remain for many who would like access to the worldwide web,
especially those with disabilities. At issue are details seldom considered by web designers, programmers and non-disabled users.

But there are solutions, for example for blind people who want to surf the web. Screenreaders dictate website contents or print pages in Braille format.

Many documents have been written about web accessibility. This is only appropriate as web accessibility covers a considerably large amount of topics. However, similar to any principle, web accessibility also has its set of limitations.

Here, we will try to point out those limitations in order for you to better understand web. Accessibility. It is important to note though that experts are presently working on these issues to address or improve them.

I have worked with many people who started losing their vision but still wanted to be able to use the computer. It is not to say that it is an easy task, but it is definitely possible to go through this challenge, and keep using the computer. Actually, the computer can be great to perform tasks which you were able to do with perfect vision.

When posting documents on web sites, they have to follow the same accessibility requirements that the site does. For example, when the web site needs to comply with Section 508, PDF documents do too. There are a few things which I find are often overlooked when creating accessible PDF documents, in the following you can read about those and ensure that you address those issues as well.

On June 8, 2009 a href="http://www.apple.com">Apple has announced the new, iPhone 3G S it's newest iPhone. Instead of reviewing the features, I will discuss why is it a great advancement in the field of accessibility. Apple has implemented many accessibility features into it, which might become a large breakthrough for people to access mainstream, off the shelf products, without having to use extra assistive technologies.

Things get more complex when a person has more than one disability. Let's examine what happens when a person is both deaf and blind. The major difficulty in this case is that while blind people are mostly compensated by technology through sound, deaf blind people cannot take advantage of these solutions.

The easiest way for deaf blind people to interact with technology is by touch. All visual and audible information should be converted into tactile information.

On an increasing number of web sites you can find the phrase "accessibility statement". Sometimes it is very visible and hard to miss, in other cases we can barely find it. Did you ever read any of these statements? If you ever did, do you read it on all sites where you find them? In this article I will explain what is the accessibility statement, and give you a couple of points to decide if you need it on your web site.