Alternative Browsers for People with Disabilities

published by Dan in Accessibility | Web Technology with No Comments

While the top three alternative browsers are really cool they do not suit the needs of people with disabilities. Listed below are two free alternative browsers special designed to answer the needs of visually impaired people.

Simply Web – Simply Web 2000 is a software-based speech synthesizer that can be used as a stand alone “Talking Web Browser”. It can be downloaded for free at their website. The caveat though is that you would need a screen reader to make full use of it. Any screen reader would do but it is of course best used with the Simply Talker 2000 screen reader. The Simply Taker 2000 is sold for US$100 each. Language supported is English. Works best with Internet Explorer 5.0.

Emacspeak “The Complete Audio Desktop” – “Emacspeak is a speech interface that allows visually impaired users to interact independently and efficiently with the computer.” Features include a whole slew of speech-enabled applications (157 applications in all!) with everything from documentation applications to messaging and even Google clients like Blogger and Google Reader. They even have speech-enabled programming applications! Emacspeak can be downloaded for free from their website. Language supported is English. Works in Linux (Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE and Turbo distros).

To find out more about different alternative browsers for people with disabilities you can visit the Alternative Web Browsing page of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.

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