26 March 2007

Web-based multimedia should be accessible for all users, regardless of disability, according to a visually-impaired researcher at IBM.

Chieko Asakawa, in an interview with Computerworld, said that the majority of websites do not offer content which is accessible for visually-impaired individuals, leading to her desire to bring multimedia to more people.

As a result, IBM created a new function which aims to work with screen readers and "describe" the action taking place on-screen.

"It's wonderful to be able to access video and animation on the net to broaden my horizon ... we are hoping that volunteers, content creators, developers and content providers show their interest in creating metadata," said Ms Asakawa.

However, the web expert said that it will still be a long time before visually-impaired web users are able to actively enjoy a multimedia web portal as much as other users.

IBM's tool gives users the ability to control the speed of video visual and sound data, and isolate and adjust volumes of different audio sources.

© Adfero Ltd

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