WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Web based screen readers

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jun 19, 2013 8:57AM

I have been working a bit with iWebReader from Ivona
http://www.iwebreader.com/

It is pretty decent actually.
I am in very two minds about these solutions.
On the one hand they are great in that they serve a large group of
users that fall in-between assistive technology user and the "regular"
users, i.e. people who are older, get tired reading long texts,
dyslexic users etc. who cannot or will not use A.T. This group has
often been a bit ignored and is on the fringes of the internet user
community.

On the other hand I am worried that some people see this is as
satisfying web a11y requirements, and by setting it up, they do not
have to deal with all the complexities of implementing an accessible
website.
So I make absolutely sure that any recommendation for implementing one
of these solutions includes the fact that this is a nice enhnacement
but in no way replaces the basica accessibility requirements, or
reduces them in any way.
finally, I am not affiliated with iWebReader, or any other
server-based solution, so do not take this as an advertisement of any
kind. I believe it is a pretty decent product based on my experience
helping implement it with a few companies, but that's all.
Cheers
-B

On 6/18/13, Bronwyn Lapham < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I'm also aware of an offering in this area called ReadSpeaker (link to
> readspeaker.com <http://www.readspeaker.com/>;). I'm not entirely sure how
> it works, but I believe it uses server-side text-to-speech. The
> controller, which I'm pretty sure used to be Flash and not keyboard
> accessible, now seems to work really well.
>
> hope that helps
>
> Bronwyn Lapham
>
>
>