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New Program Helps the Blind Surf the Web
Surfing the web just got a whole lot easier for people who are blind. Jeffrey Bigham, a graduate student at the University of Washington, has developed a new program called WebAnywhere. A user can go to WebAnywhere, and then go to other web pages from there. WebAnywhere reads the pages out loud in a computer voice so that blind people can hear the information on the computer screen.
There were already applications that people can put on their computer
to read web pages out loud, but WebAnywhere will work from any
computer. That could be really useful. Bigham said he wanted a way for blind people to surf the web from online cafes, or if they needed to check flight information from the airport.
The site is brand new, so it still has some flaws. Jeffrey made the site open source. That means he is giving away the code -- or computer language -- that the program is written in so other people can find new ways to update it. Now anyone can develop the code to help blind people use the Internet. Jeffrey's professor hopes that search engines like Google will use it. That would make the World Wide Web an easier place to navigate for people who can't see. Great job, Jeffrey, keep up the good work!
I'm Isaac and that's what happened in technology this week. Do you understand why WebAnywhere could be an exciting program for the blind? Play Just the Facts and find out.
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