Telephone access to the World Wide Web

The work described in this paper was funded under the HEFCE initiative for widening access to Higher Education for disabled people (Zajicek et al, 1996). It addresses the problem of visually impaired people using a computer with a graphical user interface. Currently available screen reader products allow the screen to be read area by area using speech synthesis or Braille display hardware. However as graphical interface technology develops this becomes less cost effective or effectual (Laux et all, 1996)(Petrie et al, 1993)(Stephanidis et al, 1995) The paper describes a helper application program called WebChat which builds a conceptual model of World Wide Web pages and enables their access by visually impaired people. In this format Web pages may also be relayed over the telephone using speech.