100 points to know about...
Digital accessibility

Assistive technology for reading issues

• Screen Readers

Screen readers are software programs which allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer.

To figure out how a screen reader works, you can watch this explanatory video by UCSF Documents & Media Photography :

In order to ensure that screen readers operate optimally, the content or web page must follow accessibility rules, especially the use of alternative text to help users with visual or certain cognitive disabilities perceive the content and function of the images.

Examples of open-source Screen Readers : NVDA (Windows) / Apple VoiceOver (OS X) / ORCA (Linux) / WebAnywhere (All OSs, Web browsers) / Spoken Web (Internet Explorer) / ChromeVox (Google Chrome)

• Braille display

A Braille display allows reading digital information using fingers. It can be connected to a computer or any other device. The Braille display gets the text currently highlighted on the screen and then the screen reader translates the text in Braille and the device displays it on its Braille cells. Each cell has metal or nylon pins to create Braille dots. Braille displays are refreshable. The presence of alternative text is also very important to ensure optimum performance of these tools.

Example of inexpensive Braille Display : The Orbit Reader 20

Here is a demo of The Orbit Reader which may help you figure out how a Braille display works :

• Screen Magnifier

Screen Magnifiers are applications which allow users to control the size of text and or graphics on the screen. They allow the user to have the ability to see the enlarged text in relation to the rest of the screen. This is done by emulating a handheld magnifier over the screen.

Example of free Screen Magnifiers : DesktopZoom (Windows), Magnifying Glass, Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable

• Optical character recognition

Optical character recognition (OCR) reads aloud text from images and pictures. You can use OCR by taking photos of worksheets and paper documents, and even objects like street signs. They can also scan documents in. OCR can read words from pictures on web pages (such as image files, like JPG). OCR uses computer-generated voices.

Example of free or freemium OCR : SimpleOCR / Photo Scan / Free OCR Windows App

• Reading support software

There are many support tools which provide help by adjusting web content in real time according to the individual users needs. These tools can be web extensions or pieces of software users can install on their computer. These tools allow every user to see a personalized version of any existing web page or digital document. The main support features that can be found are typography (such as fonts designed for dyslexia), layout, colors, or Easy Reading translation.

Example of free reading support software : Orange Confort +

Assistive technology for hearing disabilities

• Automatic and live closed captioning software

Captioning softwares show any form of speech as captions for deaf and hard of hearing persons. Captions are words displayed on a television, computer, mobile device, or movie screen that describe the audio or sound portion of a program or video. To be captionned, programs need to have a script. There are also live captioning tools which can be very useful for deaf people in many situations such as visioconference, live digital contents, or programs without a script. This kind of software generates real-time captions, generally combining the expertise of live stenographs with artificial intelligence.

Examples of free or freemimum Captioning Software : Ava Live Transcription

In order to figure out how automatic and live closed captioning software can work, watch this Ava Live Transcription tutorial :

• Sign language recognition software

Sign language translation (SLT) aims to interpret sign video sequences into text-based natural language sentences.

Example of sign language recognition software : SignAll (US)

• Automatic sign language production

Automated Sign Language Production is the automatic translation from a spoken language to a sign language, based on a system which is capable of producing sign videos from spoken language sentences. This technique is still evolving and many solutions appear and improve these days.

• Example of automatic sign language production : Keia (FR)