We’ve had a long-standing interest in making computers and the web more accessible to visually-impaired people. Back in 1986 we published an article about this in BYTE magazine . Most efforts in this area, like our own early ones, have centered on to making computers and the web more accessible to blind people. Coming from a vision science background, though, we have believed that it’s equally important to address accessibility for those with low vision. In some ways this is more of a challenge than enhancing access for blind people, because those with low vision benefit most from presentation formats that are customized to their specific needs, and because of the huge range of magnifications required to accommodate the spectrum of users with low vision. In our work on text legibility, described elsewhere on this site, we’ve spent a lot of time studying typography, color contrast, and other aspects of presentation that make things more accessible to those with both normal and low vision. We developed software to allow users to adjust font parameters while viewing text in real time , a method of chunked text presentation to allow those with macular field defects to read with improved efficiency , and an accessible web browser implementation described below:
Several years ago, while at Lighthouse International, and with funding from the National Eye Institute we developed a free extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser, that is designed specifically for users with low vision, and accommodates a very broad range of visual capabilities. There were fancier, more feature-rich accessibility programs, but they were costly, challenging to learn, and they generally run on only a single operating system platform. LowBrowse, on the other hand, was a simple program that allows users to view all text in their preferred font at their preferred size, and in their preferred colors and using the elicited sequential presentation method of text display, which we believe is a more efficient reading interface for many visually-impaired readers , especially those with central visual field defects. The LowBrowse extension ran on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. To read more about LowBrowse or to install it, see our LowBrowse Installation and Documentation page.
When it was first released in 2008-2009, LowBrowse received a great deal of media attention, with articles discussing it in scores of publications, some with very wide circulation, including InformationWeek, NetworkWorld (with podcast), and the Wall Street Journal. The online version of the Wall Street Journal article also included a video (shown below) about LowBrowse™, and was on that day (September 9, 2008) the “most emailed” article on the WSJ.com web site!
Knoblauch, K., & Arditi, A. (1994). Choosing color contrasts in low vision: Practical recommendations. In A. C. Kooijman, P. L. Looijestijn, J. A. Guelling, & G. van der Wildt (Eds.), Low vision: Research and new developments in rehabilitation (pp. 199–203). IOS Press. Download
Arditi, A., & Knoblauch, K. (1996). Effective color contrast and low vision. Functional Assessment of Low Vision. Mosbys Optometric Problem-Solving Series, USA: St. Louis–Mosby-Year Book, Inc, 129–135. Download
Arditi, A. (1999). Effective color contrast: designing for people with partial sight and color deficiencies. Lighthouse International. Download
Arditi, A. (1999). Making text legible. Lighthouse International.Download
