IBM Magnifies Talking Browser

With the Baby Boomer generation inching closer to retirement age, providing tools to keep them
productive should be on the lists of many companies.
IBM is one such company paying attention to this segment, as it
earlier this week released the latest version of Home Page Reader, its talking Web browser.

The company first debuted
Home Page Reader in October 1998 to address the needs of
blind, visually impaired or elderly people using the Internet.

New features in this release include:

• A new desktop reader with keyboard navigation and speech output on
  Microsoft’s Windows applications, as well as
  properly tagged Adobe Reader 6.01 documents and Flash 7 movies.
• A customizable user interface, allowing users to change fonts, type
  and color.
• A zoom feature to magnify everything on the Web page.
• A developer’s help guide to show how the program handles HTML,
  JavaScript , PDF files (for the Adobe
  Reader) and Macromedia Flash elements. Online tutorials are also
  available.

The company sees a lot of growth opportunity for creating software that makes it
easier for this segment of Internet users. According to a statistic noted by IBM officials from the National
Organization on Disabilities, there are 54 million disabled people in the
U.S. with $225 billion in disposable income.

“The aging population issue is becoming more and more prevalent, even in the
United States,” said Frances West, director of IBM’s worldwide accessibility
center. “We know that in the United States there are 76 million Baby
Boomers, a quarter of them will be entering the aging category by 2006.”

She also noted the fact the U.S. government and governments overseas are
making accessibility a mandate within corporations.

In August 2004, N.Y.
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer reached a settlement with Priceline.com and
Ramada.com over their Web sites, which weren’t accessible to blind and
visually impaired Internet users. This, he said, was a violation of the Americans
With Disabilities Act. The site owners agreed to implement accessibility
standards for use with software like screen readers.

“Accessible web sites are the wave of the future and the right thing to do,”
Spitzer said in a statement following the settlement. “We applaud these
companies for taking responsible and proper steps to make their web sites
accessible to the blind and visually impaired. We urge all companies who
have not done so to follow their lead.”

IBM has a tool in its emerging technologies alphaWorks Web site called aDesigner,
a tool that lets Web site developers test their sites to see if they abide
by accessibility standards.

A 30-day trial of the Home Page Reader 3.02 is available here. Current Home
Page Reader customers can download a 30-day trial of the latest version
also.

The software is only compatible on the Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating
system platforms.