COURSE: ICT & DEVELOPMENT

Impact of Assistive Technologies on

the Visually Impaired: A Case Study
Aswin Vijayan, Gayathri Devi, Ruban Jacob, Sachin K Sunny, Sona Prabhakaran and N P Subheesh
5/10/2014

The objective of this project was to undertake a review of the Project on Development of
Assistive Technology for Visually Impaired that is based in IIT Madras. The project is under
Professor Hema Murthy of Computer Science Department. We also attempted to understand
the reach of the Project to the intended targets through the annual summer training camp for
the visually impaired held in IIT Madras campus.
The team conducted open ended face-to-face interviews with Professor Hema, the head of the
Project, and Mr. Nagarajan who is a beneficiary of the project as well as one of the current
instructors in the summer camp, who also helps in the lab as a technical assistant. We also
referred to existing literature on Assistive Technologies intended to aid the Visually
Impaired. We drew upon websites and newspaper reports to obtain information relevant for
our project.
The framework of analysis that we have employed in this project report is borrowed from an
article by Abinwi Nchise et al. titled The Challenge of Taking Baby Steps Preliminary
Insights into Telemedicine Adoption in Rwanda. We have adapted the framework in a way
relevant to our analysis. The structure based on the measurement of technological readiness,
organizational readiness and governmental readiness of the project studied is followed
closely.
The report starts off with an introductory section that throws light on the technical details and
definitions often used in any literature on Assistive Technologies for the Visually Impaired.
This is followed by a detailed study of the technologies employed in the project that is
reviewed. A detailed summary of our interactions with Professor Hema and Mr. Nagarajan is
included. We also outline a few details about Darshini, an NGO that played a crucial part in
the initiation of the Assistive Technologies Project. The experience of Arun Balaji, a first
year student in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Department, in his

encounter with Assistive Technologies is included in order to provide an in-depth

understanding of the scope and necessity of this Project. The report concludes with our
analysis and the suggestions that we have come up with.
We acknowledge the help of everyone who assisted us in successfully completing this
project. We express our gratitude to Professor Hema Murthy, Professor Sreenarayan
Seshasayee, Mr. Nagarajan and Arun Balaji for graciously granting us some of their valuable
time and for contributing towards the project. We would also like to thank Professor John
Bosco Lourdusamy for his patient guidance.
Definitions of Assistive Technology Devices and Services
Let us start with definition of technology from Oxford Dictionary: (1) The science or study
of the practical or industrial arts, (2) applied science, (3) a method, process, etc. for handling
a specific technical problem. Interestingly, none of these definitions says anything about a
device; instead the emphasis is on the application of knowledge. From this important
concept, we shall use the term assistive technology to refer to a broad range of devices,
services, strategies, and practices that are conceived and applied to address the problems
faced by individuals who have disabilities.
International ISO-9999 Standard defines assistive technology as any product, instrument,
equipment or technical system used by a disabled person, made specially or existing on the
market, aimed to prevent, compensate, relieve or neutralize the deficiency, the inability or the
handicap.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) offers clear definitions of assistive
technology devices and services. The term assistive technology device means any item,
piece of equipment, or product system (whether acquired off the shelf, modified, or

customized) that is used to increase, maintain or improve the functional capability of an

individual with disability. IDEA defines the term assistive technology service as any service
that directly assists an individual with a disability in the selection, acquisition, or use of an
assistive technology device.
These definitions have several important components. First, these include commercial,
modified, and customized devices covering an extremely wide range of applications. Second,
these emphasize functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Finally, the emphasis
on individual persons with disabilities underscores the importance of treating each
application of technology as a unique circumstance.
Types of Assistive Technologies
In this section we present a characterization of assistive technologies from several points of
view.
Low to high technology: AT may be organized into a system of low-tech, medium-tech and
high-tech tools and strategies that match a persons needs, abilities and tasks. Learners/
teachers/parents pick and choose from the system the appropriate tools for the situation. A
Continuum from No/Low Tech to High Tech is represented in the diagram.

Ass istiv e
Technology

No/Low
Tech

*Simple
*Little Maintenance
*Limited/No Electronics

Mid Tech

*Some Maintenance
*Some training
*More Electronics

High Tech

*Complex Electronics
*More training
*More Maintenance

Fig.1: Continuum from No/Low Tech to High Tech

Here we often describe inexpensive devices that are simple to make and easy to obtain as
"low" technology and devices that are expensive, more difficult to make, and harder to obtain
as "high" technology. Examples of low technology devices are simple pencil and paper
communication boards, modified eating utensils, and simple splints. Wheelchairs, electronic
communication devices, and computers are examples of high technology devices.
Hard and soft technologies: Hard technologies are readily available components that can be
purchased and assembled into assistive technology systems. This includes everything from
simple mouth sticks to computers and software. The main distinguishing feature of hard
technologies is that they are tangible. On the other hand, soft technologies are the human
areas of decision making, strategies, training, concept formation, and so on. Soft technologies
are difficult to acquire because they are highly dependent on human knowledge rather than
tangible objects.
Minimal to maximal technology: Assistive technologies are specified and designed to meet a
continuum of needs. At one extreme are devices that provide some assistance or augment the
individual's ability to perform a task. At the other extreme are assistive technologies that
replace significant amounts of ability to generate functional outcomes. Minimal technologies
generally augment rather than replace function.
Commercial to custom technology: We use the term commercially available to refer to
devices that are mass produced. When an individual's needs for assistive technology cannot
be met with a commercial device, we attempt to use special devices that are mass produced
and commercially available for persons with disabilities. When no commercial device or
modification is appropriate, it is necessary to design one specifically for the task at hand. This
approach results in a custom device.

Literature Review
The power of AT as an enabler in the lives of persons with disabilities is reported in many
papers (Abner & Lahm, 2002). Yet the literature reports that visually impaired people are
underutilizing the AT available to them (Wong & Cohen, 2011). Alper and Raharinirina
(2006), in a comprehensive review of the literature on AT, concluded that individuals with
disabilities are not fully benefiting from the use of AT in home, school and community
settings. The researchers identified key shortcomings in the awareness, integration and
education of professionals of AT in school settings. Other areas of concern included
inadequate support and services for training for parents and lack of partnerships and
collaboration among teachers, families, service providers and researchers.
Tzovaras et al. (2002) discussed the development and test of a virtual reality training system
that combines haptic and sound information in an innovative way in order to help visually
impaired people. In another study, Takagi et al. (2002) reported the development of an
accessibility transcoding system to make web pages accessible for blind people. This system
had the ability to transcode complete pages on annotated sites into accessible pages without
changing the original pages.
Asakawa et al. (2002) described auditory and tactile interfaces to represent visual effects nonvisually for blind users, allowing intuitive recognition of visual content that appears on the
web. Their research examined how visual effects could be recognized by blind subjects using
the senses of hearing and touch, aiming at integrating the results into a practical system in the
future. The researchers designed auditory and tactile interfaces for web exploring by blind
people. The results of the research showed that the auditory interface was more useful for
intuitive recognition, while the tactile interface was useful for information requiring
concentration.

Technology used in the Project

Technology is a great boon to mankind, especially for the disabled. Technology has already
enhanced the lives of many disabled persons enabling them to interact with the world in
which we all live in. Assistive Technologies for the blind have advanced a lot over the years
and has a large scope for improvement. These help the partially or fully blind persons interact
more effectively with others and also help them in executing their day-to-day chores. Some
of the Technologies that have been widely used are discussed in detail in the following
session.
J.A.W.S (Job Access With Speech) is a screen reading software developed by the Freedom
Scientific group for visually disabled persons. Screen reading software reads aloud
everything on computer screens, including text, pull-down menus, icons, dialog boxes, and
web pages. Screen readers run simultaneously with the computer's operating system and
applications. It supports around 17 languages right now. Only a small training session is
required for the user to get acquainted with the software. The main issue with this software is
that the American or British accented English is really difficult to understand for Indian
users. Also there are certain licensing issues involved in the acquisition of the software.
Some other Assistive Technologies that are widely used are:
Screen Magnifiers- Screen magnification software is used by people with visual impairments
to access information on computer screens. The software enlarges information on the screen
by incremental factors (2x, 3x up to 20x magnification). Screen magnification programs run
simultaneously with the computer's operating system and applications. Most screen
magnification programs have the flexibility to magnify the full screen, parts of the screen, or
a magnifying glass view of the area around the cursor or pointer. These programs also allow
for inverted colors, enhanced pointer viewing, and tracking options.

Optical Character Recognition Systems or Optical Character Readers- These combine a

software and scanner to read aloud any printed text. Textbook pages, class handouts, and tests
can be scanned in and then read aloud by a machine or software installed in a computer.
These are also known as Scan/Read systems.
Portable Notetakers- Lightweight, portable notetakers provide speech output without a visual
display and can be connected to printers and computers for printing and uploading text.
Braille keyboards and refreshable Braille displays are available for Braille users. A
QWERTY keyboard version is available for people who prefer touch-typing.
Braille Display- A refreshable braille display or braille terminal is an electro-mechanical
device for displaying braille characters, usually by means of round-tipped pins raised through
holes in a flat surface. Blind computer users, who cannot use a computer monitor, use it to
read text output. These help people who are well versed in Braille.
Audio Books- Some books are available to be used as Audio Books. This is important
because it helps a person to read or enjoy a book even if he does not have access to Optical
Character Readers. LibriVox is a free online public domain that provides its users access to
Audio Books.
Nowadays more and more applications and softwares available in computers and mobile
handsets have a voice over feature which helps visually challenged people. People essentially
design softwares and applications in such a way that they are able to cater to the needs of a
large group of people including the visually challenged.
Currently, the visually challenged people are instructed in Braille during their primary school
education. Braille books are available for this matter. But when it comes to higher education,
they are left with no choice but to follow the normal texts and references just because of the

huge variety of courses offered in higher education levels. So it is important for them to
employ the use of Assistive Technologies so that they are almost at a level playing field as
others when it comes to education.
India accounts for about 20% of the worlds blind population. Hence the importance of
developing technologies suited for the Indian scenario is really important. While designing
the technologies to help the visually challenged people the problems faced by them has to be
taken into account. Visually challenged people should be made an integral part of the product
design process so that their concerns dont go unnoticed.
This is exactly what Professor Hema and her team has achieved in the last few years. They
designed Screen Readers with various Indian accented English languages among other
languages in India. There were six Indian languages at the beginning of the project. Right
now they have about 19 languages including different versions of English. Instead of just
adding small sounds together to create words and thus sentences, Professor Hemas Team has
been able to give the sound and feel of Indian languages by a large data set that they have
acquired over the years. The data sets that they have collected have been collected from
various sources including Educational lectures, various videos hosted on the internet, etc.
The future of Assistive Technologies holds great prospect. The future technologies will
include, but not limited to, Speech Recognition Softwares & Gesture-to-Speech Convertors.
The data acquisition for these technologies is a huge challenge but it is not impossible. The
enthusiasm shown by the visually challenged volunteers who become a part of the product
development process increases the enthusiasm levels of the other members of the group as
well. They together develop products that empower people and create a difference in their
lives, however small it is. They believe that the products and technologies that deliver
changes the world, even if it is a single persons world.

Interview with Dr. Hema Murthy

Dr. Hema Murthy is a professor of Computer Science Department of IIT Madras. Her
research areas include speech processing, speech synthesis and recognition, network traffic
analysis and modelling etc. We met up with her to get to know more about the association of
our institute with assistive technologies for the visually challenged.
Dr. Hema was approached by an organization called Darshini which is an initiative by retired
school teachers which provides educational facilities to visually challenged students. Darshini
approached Dr. Hema with the issue of developing computer based educational aids for the
visually challenged. The primary difficulty faced by Darshini was understanding the
problems faced by the visually challenged from the point of view of a normal person. In
addition to that there was a difficulty in comprehending the accent in the existing software,
which usually used American or British English. When approached with these problems Dr.
Hema and her associates were able to provide them with the following solutions:

Text to speech screen reader in English

Beta testing of new technologies on the visually challenged and thus getting to know
their effectiveness

13 different versions of English. Eg : Tamil accented English

Another project that was initiated under Dr. Hemas guidance is the summer training program
for the visually challenged held in IIT. It is a corporate responsibility that a minimum number
of disabled are to be employed by every firm and so many visually challenged have been
employed by different firms. But because of lack of user friendly technologies for the
visually challenged, they are usually left without any work thereby leading to wastage of
much needed human potential. In order to train the visually challenged to put their skills to

proper use and to be as competent as others, a summer training program was started under Dr.
Hemas guidance in 2009.
The summer training program dealt with training the visually challenged in various screen
reading software like JAWS, NVDA etc. Dr. Hema was able to get the Department of
Information Technology, Government of India to fund the whole program.
Dr. Sriram Kalyanaraman, a visually challenged IIT Madras alumnus who put assistive
technologies to good use to break the boundaries and become successful conducted the
sessions in the first two years. Later, Dr. Nagarajan who was a trainee during the first two
years of the summer program took over.
The IIT Madras administration was initially reluctant to buy the necessary software for
assisting the visually challenged because of doubts in its effectiveness. But, once Dr. Hema
was able to convince them of its effectiveness the administration was totally on board the
project. Since then the administration has been very helpful in the smooth functioning of the
summer program. The IITM administration provides accommodation at reduced rates for the
visually challenged attending the summer program.
Other than the aforementioned projects, Dr. Hema had put forward a proposal to conduct
online board examinations. According to Dr. Hema, the online exam and evaluation system if
implemented will reduce the stress faced by students by providing them the flexibility to take
exams whenever they are ready. With the integration of Indian language screen readers, voice
based testing can be done for the visually challenged students in the board examinations.
Interactions with Mr. Nagarajan
Prof. Nagarajan is a Lecturer in Nandanam College. He has been an active project associate
of Text to Speech project undertaken by Prof. Hema Murthy of IIT Madras. He is currently

the president of College Students and Graduates Association of the Blind also an activist. He
is visually impaired and completed his primary and secondary education using Braille from a
village in Madurai. In spite the visually disability he has a Masters Degree in English
Literature and was the university topper for Master of Philosophy. He came to Chennai to
have a better access to the assistive technologies which were otherwise inaccessible in the
rural areas.
During the initial days of college he used the trial version of JAWS; but was faced with many
difficulties. One of the major issues was that of navigation. Formatting, editing, changing,
increasing or decreasing the speed of the voice was not possible.
He has been using assistive technology since his college days. He is visually impaired and
finished his primary and secondary education using Braille. Moreover, the inability to
comprehend the American accent which had robotic voice made the application less user
friendly. That is when the need for a local language interface was realized; wherein, a manual
voice would replace the robotic voice. This application supported only Unicode nullifying the
functionality of any other format on the computer.
During his interactions with Hema Murthy who is a speech technologist in IIT Madras, they
came up with a proposal to develop a similar app in vernacular languages. This proposal was
then sent to the Department of Information Technology, Government of India. The Text to
Speech (T2S) project was designed to address the already mentioned issues in hand. The
project started off with six Indian languages and the robotic voice was replaced by vernacular
languages. The developmental stage of the project was met with many challenges. One of the
most prominent concerns was the inability to understand English with Brtish or American
accent. Hence, it was decided that a regional blend would be given to Indian English which
would curb the problem of incomprehensibility.

Though the project started off with six vernacular languages, currently there are thirteen
languages in Text to Speech project. Successful implementation of complete manual voice
synthesis with moderate speed has made it a bigger project. The project bagged first position
in General Electronics in Shaastra 2012. This encouraged them to integrate the same
application in android since almost everybody has access to android phone these days.
The dissemination of this project also took the shape of summer training program wherein a
bunch of students with visually disability were trained to use the application in IIT Madras.
The summer training happens over a period of two months when IIT Madras is closed for
summer vacations. The students are provided accommodation within the campus at a
subsidised rate and the remaining amount is paid by a NGO named Darshini. The agenda of
the training is to equip the visually challenged students with the computer and existing
assistive technology. According to Nagarajan problems with the training problem is that two
month is not adequate. When asked about follow ups, he mentioned that students have access
to his phone number and email ID and that students are constantly in touch with him. Though
Nagarajan is an active user of assistive technology, he is of the opinion that the students must
be exposed to assistive technology only in college and that they must clear their early
education in Braille.
He is also an active social worker. He is currently fighting of the lack of reservation in
government jobs for blinds..Despite the government having promised visually challenged
graduates employment opportunities through reservation, most blind people havent been
able to land those jobs. As per rules the government has said that 1 per cent of the public
sector jobs will be reserved for the blind, but that hasnt seen it implemented. When they
talk about equality, they should also create opportunities, said Nagarajan, President of the
Association.

He pointed out that in 2012; the government provided jobs for 20,000 school teachers, but
among them only 20 blind graduates received appointment orders instead of the reserved
200. Nagarajan went on to add that even the 3000 posts that have been allotted for visuallyimpaired teachers in government-aided colleges have not been filled yet.
The association also pressed some of their long-standing demands such as the decrease of the
graduate pass percentage to 40 per cent from 55, to provide 350 visually impaired graduates
an opportunity to teach history and English and to provide them 5 per cent reservation in TET
exams. No one is able to carry forward our demands to the Chief Minister, which is why we
are hopeful of meeting her and explaining our problems to her, he added.
Darshini: Sight through Sound
Darshini is a charitable trust run by Adyar Exnora Womens Guild aimed at the welfare and
rehabilitation of the visually challenged students of Chennai. The Guild was established in
1992 to aid other organizations working for the empowerment of the disabled. Darshini was
an offshoot of the guild, registered in 2000 and dedicated to the cause of visually impaired
college students in the city. Mrs. Padma Narasimhan is the founder President of the Guild and
the Managing Trustee of Darshini. The organization is constituted by retired professors and
school teachers. Their motto is Sight through sound.
The activities of the organization involve provision of aids for education and medical care of
the target population. These include development of audio books, rendering assistance with
particular projects in college and financial assistance to the needy. Darshini conducts regular
check-ups to make sure that the health of the students is taken care of. They conduct regular
workshops and competitions aiming at the personality development of these students. Spoken
English training sessions and field visits are organized regularly. Mr. Nagarajan is one of
their alumni.

One among Us
Arun Balaji is a first year student enrolled for the Integrated Masters program in the
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in IIT Madras. He suffers from partial
blindness. He is able to make out figures of people, colors and magnified text kept close to
his face. He completed his school education in regular State Boards. While he had occasional
assistance from teachers, family and friends, he had not resorted to the use of Braille books
which are available for school students but not at college levels.
Arun, being a brilliant student and a hard worker, managed to complete the first semester
well with some help from his classmates. In the second semester, one of the core courses that
he had to enroll was IT Lab which involves learning the basics of Microsoft Excel. As Arun
had never used a computer before, he was thrown off guard. Professor Sreenarayan
Seshasayee, who handles this course, was helpless initially. He had requested the Department
administration to provide JAWS software foreseeing such possibilities. Yet this was not
available in the initial part of the semester and Arun had to miss the first two evaluation
processes. Professor Seshasayye approached Professor John Bosco Lourdsamy, who
introduced the former to Mr. Nagarajan. Arun met up with Mr. Nagarajan. Mr. Nagarajan
installed JAWS in Aruns laptop and gave him some rudimentary instructions. As he had not
received any formal instruction in the use of the software, he worked on the instructions by
Mr. Nagarajan and gained an understanding of the basics. He is being continuously
encouraged and aided by his classmates, especially Sannihit Bathula, in attaining mastery of
this software. By the time of submission of this report, Arun would have given his end
semester examination for IT Lab course.

Analysis
In this project, we have adopted the structure of The Challenge of Taking Baby StepsPreliminary Insights in Telemedicine Adoption in Rwanda by Abinwi Nchise et al. We have
reviewed and examined- technological readiness, organizational readiness and government
readiness of the project undertaken by Prof. Hema Moorthy.
Technological Readiness
The assistive technologies available for blind people have gone through massive
technological changes. The project undertaken Prof. Hema Moorthy used JAWS (Job Access
With Speech) and tried to implement these technological innovations for the benefit of the
visually blind Indians. She has successfully made JAWS accessible for the Indians by
developing the software in 13 Indian languages. The project had faced several technological
challenges, mainly accent issues. JAWS, though, was a very handy software, it was run in US
accent which made in difficult for the Indian users. So, Prof. Hema had to restructure the
software and use a trial and error method with the help of blind people speaking different
languages to see the usability. While browsing, the links with http etc became difficult to
convert to the local languages by the screen readers.
Mr. Nagarajan, in his early stages if getting acquainted with the technologies available,
started using DAISY consortium; a group that has developed an international standard for
digital books, which includes making, exchange, and use of digital books for the visually
impaired. It is free access to people. The other technological advancements that comes handy
to the visually impaired are

Screen readers- it is a voice output screen reading software and this is portable.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) - this software helps in reading what is being
displayed on the screen.

Smart phones- these days the smart phones have voice output system, navigation
using maps and many other highly improved technologies assisting the visually
impaired.

Portable Scanners- the new technology offers the blind people the capacity to scan the
printed text and save it in the computer or read it back.

Even though there are high technologies available for the visually impaired to make their life
easy and better, most of them are very expensive and hence inaccessible for them. Also, the
availability of open source technologies is very limited. Therefore, the poor blind people are
left with few options.
Organizational Readiness
Prof. Hema Moorthys team was supported by the Indian Institute of Technology of Madras.
They conducted a summer camp for the visually impaired students during the summer
vacations to introduce them to the software developed by Prof. Hemas team.
Accommodation for these students is provided by IIT Madras and Prof. Anand, who was the
Director of IITM when the project was introduced, gave all his support and insisted that the
students are given accommodation with rents at reduced rates.
Darshini, an NGO run by women have also offered their help in organizing the summer
camps and other help regarding the same.

Government Readiness
The central government has also been a great support and bearer of all the economic burden
of this project. The project under Hema Moorthy has been funded by the Information
Technology Department, Government of India.
Analysis
We could find certain drawbacks with the project conducted.

Language divide: the users of the new technology have many problems with US
accented software. It had the output of a very mechanical voice and hence the users
did not feel comfortable using it. Prof. Hema said that it is difficult to make software
in local languages as they require so much data for so little output. And this is why
they could develop the software only for 13 Indian languages as of now.

Rural Urban divide: the summer class conducted by Mr.Nagarajan has students from
different parts of Tamil Nadu. The students come from rural parts as well. The
problem arises when the newly installed software has some issues which cannot be
repaired by technologically unaware people. So, every time there is some problem
with the software, the students from the rural areas have to come to Chennai to get it
repaired.

Gender divide: we could find that the number of girls attending the summer camp is
less compared to the boys. Prof. Hema informed that the ratio of girls and boys is upto
1:10. This has been overlooked.

Suggestions
Portable note taker could be a good option especially for the students. This can be carried
around and if necessary they can take down notes and it will be saved automatically. Another
option would be SIRI, used in iphones. The technology used in Apple phones are very handy
for visually impaired but the problem is it is expensive. We suggest that more NGOs like
Darhsini should come up to the front to help the people who need a hand to make their lives
similar to ours. They should help in developing low and high end technology which is not
expensive and can be accessible for all. Rural urban divide should be taken into
consideration. Computer repair hubs need to be installed in rural areas so that it becomes
more helpful for the students. The organization and the camp organizers should keep an open
eye and make sure that there are more women participants. This project can be called
successful, only if it reaches wide across without any gender or regional or any other barriers.
Lastly, new technologies are helpful but it should be introduced from primary school levels
with Braille system. It shouldnt be introduced by overlooking the Braille, as it is inevitable
for primary education. It is also important to not to make the visually impaired too dependent
of the technologies as it may lead to the loss of their innate skills. These days, more blind
people are getting graduated. The government should give more focus on their reservation
and increase the number of seats provided for the blinds. Other steps are to be taken by the
government in providing employment that is suitable for them. They should be empowered
so that they become compatible to do any other job.

References
1. Abner, G. H., & Lahm, E. A. (2002): Implementation of assistive technology with
students who are visually impaired: Teachers readiness, Journal of Visual
Impairment and Blindness.
2. Wong, M. E., & Cohen, L. (2011): School, family and other influences on assistive
technology use: Access and challenges for special school students with visual
impairments in Singapore, British Journal of Visual Impairment.
3. Alper, S., & Raharinirina, S. (2006): Assistive technology for individuals with
disabilities: A review and synthesis of the literature, Journal of Special Education
Technology.
4. Tzovaras, D., Nikolakis, G., Fergadis, G., Malasiotis, S. and Stavrakis, M. (2002):
Design and implementation of virtual environments training of the visually impaired,
Assets 2002: International ACM SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies.
5. Takagi, H., Asakawa, C., Fukuda, K. and Maeda, J. (2002): Site-wide annotation:
reconstructing existing pages to be accessible, Assets 2002: International ACM
SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies.

Web References:
i.

Individuals with Disabilities Act: http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/idea.pdf

ii.

UNESCO Press Conference on Inclusive Technologies for Persons with Disabilities:

http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/070326_Disabilities.doc.htm