Visually impaired Web surfers now have an easy, collaborative way to improve Internet accessibility, thanks to IBM researchers. People with vision problems often rely on software that reads web pages to them. But the software won’t work with every element on a page unless the proper information is there. New software from IBM Research allows the users to report such shortcomings so they can be remedied.
In addition, Internet users who want to help improve Internet accessibility can respond to requests from visually impaired users, using the tool to contribute alternative text that solves the issue. The new text is stored on a Social Accessibility Project server and is automatically accessed each time a registered user visits the originally flawed web site.
"The Web has become an important infrastructure for society," said Chieko Asakawa, Distinguished Engineer in IBM Research. "Visually impaired users have been experiencing inconvenience in not having good alternative texts which are essential for screen reading software to tell them what's showing on a Web page to support navigation. To overcome the issue, we came up with an idea of creating a collaboration tool to, for the first time ever, allow visually impaired users and any Internet users who wish to participate in the Social Accessibility Project to work together to make an impact on improving Web content accessibility."
The Social Accessibility Project Website and collaboration tool are available free of charge on IBM alphaWorks Services website.