There are, of course, many sites on the internet devoted to issues for the Visually Impaired. The most useful for covering all issues of blindness which I have found is the site for The American Foundation for the Blind, the organization set up by Helen Keller. This has a large number of links and references for people with varying degrees of blindness.
Another useful organization - perhaps the most politically active, too - is The American Council of the Blind. This organization describes itself as striving
to improve the well-being of all blind and visually impaired people by serving as a representative national organization of blind people and by elevating the social, economic and cultural levels of blind people.When I did this project I thought the most important element for me to research was to find information about the technology that those who are Visually Impaired use to access the internet. This search led to a number of interesting sites, including Opera, a web browser which comes out of Norway and which claims to be particularly suited for those who are visually impaired.
However, the best site for technology for the visually impaired which I have found (in the short amount of time I alotted for this search) is that of the ALVA Access Group, a company from Holland which makes the product "outSpoken", a web page reader.
What I found from looking at these sites was that although those who are visually impaired will most likely be using technology through which they can access web pages aurally some consideration should be given to those who have trouble seeing by building your web page with them in mind.
For instance, the background color of this page could be better. Try this perhaps?
| Anyway, this next page, built around one of our textbook's theme projects, the "Play It Loud" CD Shop, attempts to include some of these elements. | |