ISCA Archive IDS 1999
ISCA Archive IDS 1999

Customizable web access for the blind

Yacine Bellik, Siwar Farhat

This article deals with blind user access to the Web. We first present the different existing approaches that facilitate Internet access to blind users and the different ergonomic rules that HTML page designers should respect. Then, we present our approach for a dynamic improvement of the accessibility. This approach uses a customization interface that allows the user to choose the mod ifications he would like to perform on the Web pages and the information to visualize. Our system, SeeWeb, should operate between the user and a traditional navigator (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc). It allows the analysis of the HTML document and its content. It also enables to modify the page structure, according to user’s preferences and some ergonomic rules. The user interface coupled to a screen reader allows the restitution of the information in a more comprehensive way for the blind user. This work has been carried out as a coope ation between LIMSI-CNRS (a research laboratory) and TECHNIBRAILLE (an industrial partner).