Abstract
There are about 60 million persons worldwide who have uncorrectable low vision. Development of technology that can help low vision users access the World Wide Web has far lagged behind that designed for totally blind users. We have developed a user interface software called LowBrowseTM to help those with low vision more effectively access Internet web pages. LowBrowseTM utilizes a transcoding design that renders the webpage structured document in two distinct windows: a top frame for reading, and a bottom global frame for navigating global layout of the webpage. The style sheet parameters including font color, font size etc. of the reading frame can be configured according to the users' preferences and best performance. Once the users choose their optimal and most comfortable style settings, they will be able to read all the following web content in that selected setting. A large cursor is used in the global frame to aid navigation in the global layout of the webpage. When the cursor hovers over text, that text is displayed in the reading frame, at a user prefered color, size, font and background configuration. The text is displayed as a single line in the reading frame, and up-arrow and down-arrow keys are used to switch between lines if the text string is more than one line. When the mouse hovers over images, they are rendered in a separate popup window that displays the image with zoomable scale. User preferences and settings are saved in the user's directory and persist across browser sessions. LowBrowse is currently implemented as a Mozilla Firefox Extension. In summary, LowBrowseTM can present content tailored in a consistent fashion according to the low vision user's preference for any Web page.
This work is supported by NIH grants EY01592 and EY017583.