Assistive Technology: Top 8 Free Browsers for Visual Impairment and More
By Marsh, Debbie; Disaboom.com,Publication Date: 2009
Article reviews free, open source Internet browsers and text-to-speech converters for people with visual impairments as well as physical and cognitive disabilities. (1) WebbIE comes with a suite of accessible programs to enable the user to access news, podcasts, and RSS feeds on the Internet; (2) EdWeb offers a comprehensive manual to help downloading full symbol support and text-to-speech talking buttons accessible with a mouse, touch screen, mouse emulator, or switch scanning; it also includes a free talking word processor; (3) Fire Vox a screen reader for the Firefox web browser, also supports Math ML and the CSS speech module and works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux; (4) CliCk, Speak enables users with cognitive disabilities such as dyslexia to listen to web content, offering multilingual support via a mouse-driven interface; (5) Orca, a scriptable screen reader, enables combinations of speech, braille, and magnification; (6) Simply Web 2000, a browser for Internet Explorer, has a software-based speech synthesizer which can be used as a talking web browser in standalone mode; (7) SpeakOn enables downloads of audio and text and implements with Seeing Ear library books and eText and TNAUK publications, which can be converted to HTML format for use with a cell phone or external player; and (8) Thunder, a British screen reader, can be used for accessing news, music, electronic books, and email.
Assistive Products Discussed: WEBBIE
SIMPLY WEB 2000
THUNDER SCREEN READER
Published by: Disaboom, Inc. (Website:http://www.disaboom.com)
Link to text: http://www.disaboom.com/vision-and-hearing-technology/assistive-technology-browsers-for-the-blind
