Web Options for Everyone

I must admit, I’m a bit of a web-addict. I love the fact that I have instant access to just about whatever information I might want, at whatever time I want to get to it. 2 in the morning and can’t sleep? Browse eMusic for new tunes - perhaps a little Mozart will help. Looking for a one-handed keyboard? Abledata has plenty. Want to re-read Pride and Prejudice for the 47th time, or finally get through all of War and Peace? A quick download from Project Gutenberg.

There are some exciting new ways to get in and around the Web if you have a disability. There are many fine, full-featured products that work beautifully for Web browsing, such as JAWS or Kurzweil. This article will focus on free resources, however. Let’s face it - students have no money!

Firefox Browser

One of the things I really love about Firefox is the ability to customize exactly what you want it to do; a fantastic lesson in the value of open-source programming. To make it even more fun, FireFox Add-Ins work on both Windows and Mac platforms; everyone is invited to play!Themes such as the HiVisGnome Big give you high contrast, large icons and fonts to make browsing easier.

The real excitement comes with Extensions. Think of these as new tools to add to the menus or toolbar - stuff the original developer didn’t think to add. Here’s a few that work around accessibility issues:

• Accessibility Toolbar from the Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility. Use it for quick access to a high-contrast stylesheet or to pull out lists of frames, headers or links for fast navigation. Web developers take note - there are tools here to make designing accessible pages much, much easier. Has both toolbar icons and menu options, making keyboard accessibility to the features quick and easy.
• Accessibar has very simple, visible toolbar options to control page view. Want a different background color? Two clicks. Increase font size with one click, and one more to increase space between the lines (a huge help for visual processing learning disabilities). There’s even a free text-to-speech reader built in, so you can have it read the content of the page to you.
• FireVox is a screenreader extension for FireFox. Because it works with the live page, it reads dynamic content reasonably well. The highlighting feature is helpful for users with low vision or dyslexia.

Internet Explorer

• Explorer has some customization options that make it more workable for users with disabilities. These include custom style sheets and toolbar customizations. Customizations are available in both the Windows and Mac versions, although they vary a little between platforms.