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September 10, 2008

Free Firefox 3.0 add-on aids visually impaired

LowBrowse uses speech and customisable fonts

Jon Brodkin

A new Firefox add-on has been launched which could make the internet more accessible to visually impaired web users

The add-on - LowBrowse - is the first program enabling people with moderate or severe vision loss to "both view web pages as the original web author intended and read the text on those pages tailored to their own visual needs," said program creator Lighthouse International.

Several pre-existing programs allow fully blind people to surf the web, by reading text and descriptions of images aloud to them. LowBrowse takes a slightly different approach with several features, described by Lighthouse as follows:

- Users can configure their preferences for font, text size, colour contrast and letter spacing, and have their preferences remain consistent for all web pages.
- Users can easily enlarge images simply by holding a button and wiggling the mouse.
- Users with severe low vision can augment LowBrowse's accessibility with speech output.
- Users can simultaneously view the web page as the web author intended it to be viewed and access the text (in a separate reading frame), enabling visually impaired users to have the same view of the page that able-sighted users see.

LowBrowse is available as a free download at the program's website. Firefox users who haven't upgraded to Version 3 must do so in order to use LowBrowse. It will also be available at addons.mozilla.org in coming weeks, Lighthouse says.

Based on open source technology, LowBrowse was developed by Lighthouse with a grant from the National Eye Institute.

Firefox 3.0 review

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