BBC NEWS | Technology | IBM helps blind 'see' web video

From BBC News - Technology

Big Blue will soon launch a multimedia browser designed to make audio and video content accessible to people with vision impairments. Codenamed the Accessibility Browser, the tool is designed to provide computer users with visual impairments the same control over multimedia content that sighted people have when using a mouse.

The new browser is the creation of Dr. Chieko Asakawa, a blind employee at IBM's research laboratory in Tokyo. Dr Asakawa was becoming increasingly frustrated by the amount of web content that she was unable to access. For the time being, she and her team are concentrating on content that is compatible with Real Player and Windows Media Player.

• WebAIM has good information on the current state of Media Player Accessibility.
• The National Center for Accessible Media [NCAM] has Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the WebDesign Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web.
• NCAM is also home to MagPIE - an authoring tool for making Web- and CD-ROM-based multimedia materials accessible.