People who experience blindness in his eyes, when it will use the computer in general is assisted by a screen-reader software. But to buy a screen-reader software is more expensive, about more than $ 1,000, so sometimes they can not sit like a normal person in a library or Internet cafe (cafe). Now, a new web based program will help the blind to change the situation.

Programs on the web is called WebAnywhere. WebAnywhere was developed by computer science graduate student at the University of Washington, Jeffrey Bigham. Unlike other software to be installed on PCs, WebAnywhere is an Internet application that can make the Web accessible to people who are blind.
Bigham hopes that people who are blind will be able to check a flight time on the computer at the airport, plan a bus with the desired route through the computer at the library or type emails quickly over the Internet. To get WebAnywhere, people who are blind to manage to get online, which can be complicated on a computer not ready to give verbal feedback. But Bigham's research found that WebAnywhere, which is specifically used by blind people, would know keyboard tricks and when to ask for assistance.

Once WebAnywhere online via the Internet, people who are blind can surf using WebAnywhere browser, which can be connected to the web page and then voiced the contents of the article in that page out loud, as long as the computer has speakers or headphones. The program can skip around the section titles, tab through charts or read the page from top to bottom.

Lindsay Yazzolino, 19-year-old blind student from Brown University, who works part time at the University of Washington, revealed that WebAnywhere is an improvisation of the total lack of public access over the years. Yazzolino, very pleased with the features of the keystroke navigation WebAnywhere and some pages in it, mainly because the program WebAnywhere is free.

Bigham expect others to make improvements to the program WebAnywhere, by making it as open source that will invite people who like to play around with the code and open to the programmer from anywhere. Richard Ladner, a computer science professor at the faculty of the University of Washington, want the existing commercial search engines that want to adopt WebAnywhere module, and one day hope Ladner, blind people also can design their own web pages.

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