Creating an e-community for the visually impaired
The VISUAL project focused on developing innovative technology for enabling the visually impaired and sighted people to produce accessible content. Unlike other similar technologies, information can be provided using not only a graphical interface, but voice as well. The adoption of VoiceXML technology guarantees no time losses in the information delivery and total independence from the graphic interface and the accessing device. Additionally, the offered voice solution allows translation to different official languages of the EC. Within the context of this project a novel tool, the so-called VISUAL Web Authoring Tool (VWAT) has been realised. The VWAT offers increased advantages as far as accessibility guidelines (WAI) and voice interactivity are concerned. In addition, accessibility problems can be identified since the tool allows validation of the accessibility ratio of a web page. The tool offers increased flexibility and simplicity when integrating compliance to accessibility rules into the web pages. The VWAT enables editing VoiceXML documents and grammar files. With the aid of this tool, html code of non-voice-adapted pages can be read with identification of a few basic elements. At the same time, the tool provides extra code to transform the web page into an adapted one. For instance, when an image is found the developer is asked to provide comments for later reading or when a link is identified code is automatically added to allow people to hear the web address. Potential partners for further collaborations include web designers, particularly visually impaired for exploiting the tool in order to facilitate their work and get involved in web creation. Other partners include public administrations and schools that could adopt the VWAT for eLearning purposes. Existing portals could also employ the system in order to attract visually impaired people who experience difficulties when accessing them.