07/19/2008

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP  / Associated Press

The computer technology gap between those who see and those who can't just got a little smaller.

A new Web-based application that enables blind people to check a flight time on a public computer at the airport, plan a bus route at the library or type up a quick e-mail at an Internet cafe recently went live and its user base is growing.

WebAnywhere was developed by a computer science graduate student at the University of Washington as an alternative to computer-based software that helps the blind surf the Web on their home computers.

Because that software costs upward of $1,000, few public computers have it installed, leaving blind Web surfers stranded without their personal computers or laptops.

Getting online on a public computer that doesn't give verbal feedback can be a little complicated, but WebAnywhere developer Jeffrey Bigham explains that Web savvy blind people know plenty of keyboard tricks and when to ask for help if the usual approaches aren't working.

When the program was still in development, Sangyun Hahn, the University of Washington's first blind doctoral candidate in computer science, went to the library with Bigham so he could videotape him using the browser. "I was still setting up and he was already on the page," Bigham said.

Once online, a blind Web surfer goes to the WebAnywhere browser, from where they can link to and then hear any page read out loud — as long as the computer has speakers or a headphone jack. The program can skip around the section titles, tab through charts or read the page from top to bottom.

WebAnywhere could benefit from some tweaking but it's a big improvement over a total lack of public access, says Lindsay Yazzolino, a Brown University student from Issaquah, Wash., who has a summer job at the University of Washington.

Yazzolino, 19, who has been blind since birth, would like to see a better search function and fewer keystrokes required for navigation around Web pages, but she loves the fact that the program is free.

Bigham says he hopes others will make improvements to his open-source software. The more sophisticated text reader programs that cost about $1,000 can read other languages, do more complex searching, use a more natural speaking voice and allow the reader to speed up. But they aren't available to everyone everywhere.

Bigham says he doesn't have a personal connection to the issue of computer accessibility — except through his fellow students who are blind — but recognizes the area as wide open for programmers.

"Because it hasn't been looked at as much, there's a big opportunity to have a social impact," Bigham said.

His faculty adviser, professor Richard Ladner, says he's seen a growing interest among computer science students to try "to solve real world problems that affect people as opposed to writing yet another computer game."

Ladner has big dreams for WebAnywhere. He's hoping a commercial search engine will adopt the program as a module so that more people can use it at one time. That change and the other improvements Bigham envisions could someday make the computer-based software obsolete for Web surfing.

Ladner's next dream would be for Web developers to keep blind people in mind when they design their pages. He says the changes required would make information on the Web easier to find for everyone.

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On the Web:

WebAnywhere: http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu