ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1999
ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1999

New WWW browser for visually impaired people using interactive voice technology

Yasuo Horiuchi, Fujiwara Atsushi, Akira Ichikawa

It is important for visually impaired people to be able to access information via the WWW, however, this is currently difficult since conventional web browsers are based on the \GUI". In this paper, we introduce new web-browser technologies based on the concept of an interactive voice system technology. First, it is suggested that the guide method with a logical-tree structure is superior to the display-based method. Second, a new web browser which utilizes this logical guide method is introduced and a prototype web browser is developed. Based on subjective evaluations, it is demonstrated that this browser is useful for visually impaired people. Lastly, the method of guiding visually impaired people through forms and tables is introduced and its effectiveness is demonstrated by subjective evaluations.