Web Adaptation Technology
Software that dynamically adapts Web pages to meet the needs of individuals with visual, motor, and print limitations.
Date Posted: August 23, 2005
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What is Web Adaptation Technology?
Web Adaptation Technology makes the Web easier to navigate and read for seniors, people with disabilities, and special-education students. This is accomplished by making transformations and adaptations, according to personal preferences, during Web browsing. Specifically, Web Adaptation Technology assists users by enabling them to magnify the contents on a Web page and adjust font, image, and page layout to improve readability. Web Adaptation Technology also enables selected text to be read aloud, using a "text-to-speech" feature, and eases the typing of people who have difficulty with a keyboard (such as those with tremors or arthritis or who are recovering from a stroke) in part by detecting these errors and automatically adjusting the keyboard sensitivity to accommodate the typing. Available in nine languages, this software is in use by nonprofit organizations and schools around the world.
How does it work? Web Adaptation Technology is designed to perform transformations and adaptations for the full Web, not merely a subset of Web pages, dynamically implementing these changes as users access unmodified Web content. These transformations are performed using a combination of approaches involving Document Object Model (DOM) manipulations, use of browser and operating system features, and background tasks. No changes are made to the source page. IBM's ViaVoice provides the text-to-speech engine for users who wish to have Web content read aloud.
Web Adaptation Technology is client software that works with Internet Explorer 5.5 or above. Users browse the Web with this browser as usual, after specifying their preferences for page presentation. In use by both novice and experienced users, the software allows preferences to be easily set through a unified interface designed to be intuitive and visually accessible.
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| | About the technology author(s):
Vicki Hanson, Ph.D., worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Language and Cognition at the Salk Institute and then as a research associate at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven before joining the IBM Research Division in 1986. She is active in the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) and currently serves as chairwoman of the ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS). She is an ACM Fellow.
Jonathan Brezin, Ph.D., served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina before joining IBM in 1983 to work on 801 minicomputer project.
After joining IBM in 1997, Susan Crayne co-designed and developed a tool for teaching math and science to middle-school students. Since 2000, she has been focusing her efforts on improving the accessibility of the Web.
John T. Richards, Ph.D., joined the IBM Research Division in 1978. He is a fellow of the ACM.
Cal Swart joined IBM in 1982. Mr. Swart has served in research and programming roles in numerous graphics, networking, K-12 Internet access, and Palm-programming projects. Most recently, he has been concentrating on Web accessibility and portal applications.
Shari Trewin, Ph.D., serves as co-editor of the "Universal Remote Console" suite of standards for remote control of devices and services, developed within the INCITS V2 standards committee.
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