Abstract
To be excluded from access to the Web is becoming and increasingly severe disadvantage. One potential cause of exclusion is to have a visual impairment. Technologies exist which can make the Web more accessible to such people, but those technologies depend to a large extent on the way the Web content is designed. This chapter gives an introduction to the underlying Web technology and then to the assistive technologies which have been developed to facilitate access, notably specialized non-visual browsers and screen reader/visual browser combinations. Speculation about the future suggests that technologically the picture is quite positive as access and mainstream technologies merge together. The technologies are not the whole answer though; accessible content will only be generated if and when website owners pay greater attention to the need for it.
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Notes
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Any reader who is interested in the design potential of CSS should consult Clark (2002) and the CSS Zen Garden, http://www.csszengarden.com/
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A list of such tools can be found at http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
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See http://www.tiresias.org/equipment/eb19.htm for a current list of such software.
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Currently, available aids are listed at http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_lowvisioninfosheet.hcsp
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The page returned by a search engine such as Google is an extreme example.
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A more complete list of such browsers can be found at http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Browsing
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Further papers on the research underpinning BrookesTalk can be found at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/speech
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Jaws: http://www.freedomscientific.com; Window-Eyes: http://www.gwmicro.com; Hal for Windows: http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk/.
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Note, though, that at the time of writing the latest released version of Internet Explorer is version 7 and this is not compatible with existing screen readers. This is a serious and severely retrograde development from Microsoft.
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Edwards, A.D. (2008). Assistive Technologies. In: Harper, S., Yesilada, Y. (eds) Web Accessibility. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-050-6_10
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