IBM to launch an accessible browser known as A-Browser

IBM has announced that they will soon be releasing a new browser with the aim of targeting the visually impaired market.

The browser known as A-Browser was conceived by a blind employee, Dr Chieko Asakawa, from IBM’s research lab in Japan.

The browser is totally controllable from the keyboard and allows users to engage with multimedia content (currently targeting both Real Player and Windows Media Player) by using defined keyboard keys and therefore not relying on sight to see controls and using the mouse to click on them.

Video content can be further controlled by speeding it up or slowing it down and can also house an extra narration track that is inclujded in many films and TV programmes.

With over 160 million visually impaired users world wide there is a huge market to target and IBM could have made a very clever decision by targeting this area and its about time too.

Having developed countless accessible sights myself it becomes very frustrating when listening to sites in screen readers such as Jaws.  They sound long winded and are amazingly difficult to navigate and that’s from a developer’s point of view let alone somebody who has never visited the site before.

A-Browser could really be an incredible step in the right direction and should be applauded, and with the product due to be delivered later this year for free (hopefully) and open source IBM have truly made a bold move.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Browsers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.