Web Anywhere

Web Anywhere is a non-visual interface that allows visually impaired people to browse the web from any computer. It is completely web-based and requires no download, so it really enables access from any computer, regardless of its operating system.

I think this website and its software is amazing and it kind of blows me away that this kind of program exists and that it's totally free and relatively easy to use. It has a basic set of keyboard commands that it supports, and it just needs a soundcard and speakers/headphones to work. I used Web Anywhere to read my blog, and even though I think the technology is awesome I don't totally love it. So I'm just going to share a list of Pros and Cons about it.

Pros:

• Free
• No software to download
• Relatively easy to use
• Works on any computer & operating system
• Enables the web, email etc from anywhere
• The Beta version highlights the spoken text, and it generates it in a large font at the top of the browser page--which would be a plus for someone who isn't totally blind and would benefit from both seeing and hearing the text at the same time.

Cons: 

• Users wouldn't know the commands at first so they'd have to have help to get started.
• The audible speech is a challenge to understand. I tried it in both the Alpha and Beta versions and it was challenging in both. In fact I closed my eyes to listen and found that if I couldn't follow along in the text with my eyes, I couldn't understand over half of what was being said. Although perhaps that would get easier over time?
• The audible speech doesn't always read things correctly--it doesn't always recognize commas, etc so there aren't pauses sometimes where there should be, which makes things more difficult to understand. Though this seemed to work slightly better in the Beta version.
• It's limited to just web-browsing applications. So it can't help with word processing or other types of basic computer tasks.

I do think that if I needed this program I would use it and it would make web browsing, emailing, etc. much easier to do. If the basic commands were memorized it would definitely be easy to use, but I had to constantly go back and forth between looking at the commands and trying to read/listen to my website through the program. So obviously training is necessary in order to make the most of this program and its features. And the challenge for me in trying to understand what was being said by the speech feature was very, very frustrating. Maybe that's just me, I don't know. But I think it would be nice to have a choice of voices to choose from, because maybe an alternate voice would be easier to understand. I do think though that my blog was accessible through this software for a visually impaired person. Not sure they'd want to read it, but they could. ;)