The Information Highway and the Blind

Spectrum | 03.02.2009 | 04:30

The Information Highway and the Blind

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Braille Palm Reader

Languages aren’t just spoken, but are also written down in forms ranging from poems and novels to newspapers and instruction manuals. For blind people, accessing these written forms of communication can present an enormous hurdle.

This is because the written word has to be translated into Braille or spoken onto an audio tape, all of which takes time and money. But the combination of screen reading software for computers and the large amounts of information available on the Internet is now opening up written language to blind people. Even though the software is continually improving, however, bad web design is still making it difficult for the blind to fully use the information highway. Kate Hairsine reports.