Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Is it a silly idea? (self.Blind)
submitted 9y ago by deadcaribou
This is probably a silly question, but I was curious why I couldn't find a service that fixes the most common web accessibility problems for screen reader users?
I was thinking specifically about a web proxy server sitting between the user's PC and the server, that would fix and enhance html code on the fly, even before it is interpreted by the screen reader on the client machine.
With a large enough community of paying users, wouldn't such a service be able to address common pain points like solving captcha, fixing particularly bad html, making popular hard-to-access websites accessible without installing scripts? Or even augmenting web pages (adding summaries, image descriptions when needed, enabling users to leave notes on webpages for the community).
Anyway, I'm sure others have explored this idea before; what do you think are the reasons why it doesn't exist?
jage9 1 points
Silly idea? NOt at all. Financially viable? That's a bit more iffy. Closest thing we have now is $1 which is a Firefox plugin that is mostly used for CAPTCHA solving. It does a bit of the community labeling like you mentioned but this part isn't that utilized. There certainly is opportunities for making the web a more accessible place though.
romanj35 1 points
I'm not completely sure but I believe that a primary reason why this is done is because it's a function that's supposed to be done by safari, explorer, chrome, and firefox. It's not primarily done FOR visual impairment, but my understanding of the 'browser' is that it is supposed to break down, for lack of better terms, web-code and redisplay it on your screen after filtering your browsers settings, anti-virus settings, and anything else like add-ons and application/tools you've set into place.
My limited understanding of html-5 and .php is that the coding for text-to-speech is already there.
What it sounds like you're talking about is an audio description service for webpages. Before you can get to that point windows for sure, and I'm not sure about Macs but I'm 100 percent sure for windows, needs what I jokingly call 'mouse-over'. You know how when you put your finger on the screen of a mobile device it reads aloud what's there? If windows was to focus on that kind of accessability function your a.d. service might not be necessary.
My limited understanding of html-5 and .php is that the coding for text-to-speech is already there.
What it sounds like you're talking about is an audio description service for webpages. Before you can get to that point windows for sure, and I'm not sure about Macs but I'm 100 percent sure for windows, needs what I jokingly call 'mouse-over'. You know how when you put your finger on the screen of a mobile device it reads aloud what's there? If windows was to focus on that kind of accessability function your a.d. service might not be necessary.
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