Introduction
Internet surfing for the
blind: a prototype
Alfred Loo
Ming-te Lu and
Chris Bloor
The authors
Alfred Loo is Assistant Professor and Ming-te Lu is Chair
Professor, both at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Chris Bloor is in the Department of Computing and
Information Systems, University of Sunderland,
Sunderland, UK.
Keywords
Internet, Blind people, Computer applications
Abstract
The right of blind people to access the Internet is simply
ignored in many countries because Web pages have been
designed for normal people. As a result, many blind people
are not enjoying the benefits of the Internet and the
improvement in the quality of life that Internet use can
bring. In order for visually impaired persons to surf the
Internet, it is necessary to develop a special human-
computer interface (HCI) system. This paper presents the
design of a Web project for the blind. The aim of this
research is to develop a new HCI model and an associated
computer system for visually impaired people so that they
can browse the World Wide Web via Internet. An
assessment of the potential of a wide range of
applications and their impact are also presented.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
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The Electronic Library
Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2003 · pp. 576-586
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640470310509135
576
It is estimated that there are 54 million people
in the United States with a disability. The
Congress of United States enacted the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in
1990 and passed amendments in subsequent
years that “prohibit discrimination on the
basis of disability in employment, programs
and services provided by state and local
governments, goods and services provided by
private companies, and in commercial
facilities”[1].
Web sites and pages are also covered under
the ADA. The US Access Board also issues
standards (Access Board, 2000) for electronic
and information technology covered by
section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
Amendments of 1998. However, many
visually impaired people still have access
problems with most Web sites (Waddell,
1999). The reason for this phenomenon is
simple – many Web page designers do not test
the accessibility of their designs with disabled
persons in mind. The accessibility problem
has grown significantly (Marquand, 2000)
because more business and government
agencies are relying on the Internet to disperse
information and services.
As it is difficult to define accessibility, the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has
outlined an accessibility guideline document
in its Web site (W3C, 1999) to help Web
designers. Although this document is quite
bulky (34 pages), the idea is quite straight
forward. If information is conveyed through
colour, sound, or image, an alternative
description should be placed in the html file.
The alternative description can then be read
by a “Screen Reader” for people with
disabilities. Row and column headings should
be used to give direction to users if tables are
used in the Web pages.
This document recommends 14 guidelines
and 105 checkpoints. These checkpoints are
classified into three priority levels.
Conformance Level “A” will be awarded to
Web pages which satisfy all priority 1
checkpoints. Conformance Level “Double-A”
will be given to Web pages which satisfy all
priority 1 and 2 checkpoints. Conformance
Level “Triple-A” is the highest level. A Web
page must satisfy all the priority checkpoints
in order to be awarded “Triple-A”
conformance.
It is quite time-consuming to validate all
105 checkpoints for each Web page.
 Internet surfing for the blind: a prototype
Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor
Automatic validation tools do exist and are
generally fast and convenient, but they cannot
validate all accessibility issues. Human review
is still required to ensure a Web pages’
conformance. The W3C thus recommends
both automatic validation and human review.
Among the available automatic validation
tools, Bobby is one of most well known
software packages[2].
Bobby was developed by a non-profit
organization called the Center for Applied
Special Technology (CAST). Users can
submit a Web page to Bobby by typing the
URL of the page at CAST’s Web site. Bobby
can then examine the page and report
accessibility problems. This method will only
check one page at a time in order to keep the
server available to all. A downloadable version
of Bobby, which can check Web pages in a
whole Web site in batch mode, is also
available. A Web designer earns the right to
display a Bobby icon on his/her Web page if it
passes the Bobby test.
Even with the protection of ADA and
availability of automatic tools, recent
accessibility studies (Jackson-Sanborn et al.,
2001) using Bobby show that the majority of
the US-based Web sites do not meet the Web
Content Accessibility Guideline[3] (Waddell,
1999). In many developing countries, the lack
of access to the Internet for disabled persons is
even worse. People with disabilities in these
countries are not protected by laws similar to
ADA in the US. The access problem is simply
ignored by Web designers as they do not
believe that they should make the Web sites
accessible to people with disabilities. It is even
more urgent to find a solution in these
countries.
Many governments realize the importance
of Internet and the benefits it can bring to
their populations. These governments have
invested heavily to promote the use of the
Internet. However, blind persons cannot
receive benefits from these investments as
they cannot see the information presented via
Internet on a computer screen. It is practically
impossible for them to use the Internet as they
cannot position the cursor to a particular
location on the screen using the mouse.
This paper presents a new human-computer
interface (HCI) designed to solve the Internet
accessibility problems encountered by the
blind people. This project is supported by the
Quality Education Fund of Hong Kong SAR
Government. English “screen reader”
programs for blind people are already on the
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market, but an efficient Chinese-language
screen reader for Web browsing is not
available yet. Hong Kong-based Web sites
routinely contain both Chinese and English
characters on the same Web page, making a
screen reader for this market more difficult to
develop. This new (HCI) can deal with mixed
language content and can be used by very
young and old segments of the population as
well as by visually impaired people.
Background information
The Internet is the most well known
component (Kalakota and Whinston, 1996)
of the Information Superhighway network
infrastructure which spans several continents
and is the backbone of electronic commerce.
Indeed, Internet use is expanding faster than
any other communication technology in
history and has the potential to significantly
impact the major portion of the population in
any society. The Internet’s ability to transmit
multimedia content overcoming time and
space constraints has created exciting and
unforeseen opportunities in commerce,
communication, education, science, politics,
international relations, and many other fields.
The Internet has played a major role in
stimulating the global economy and has a
profound impact on the quality of life for its
users. However, a digital divide exists. People
with disabilities are often left out of this
Internet revolution.
In the early stages of Internet, only text
information was available on the Internet.
The text LineMode Browser (Walsh, 1996) in
1991 was quite different from the Web
navigation tools that we know at present. It
did not support the mouse or graphics and
was difficult to use. The first multimedia
browser (MOSAIC) to boast a user-friendly
graphical user interface (GUI) was released in
1993. MOSAIC was considered to be a
breakthrough software product as it advanced
the World Wide Web into a multimedia
system. At present, the Internet can deliver
text, video, sound, human speech and
graphics. The mouse and hypermedia are
employed to make it easy to navigate the
Internet and search for information. The
latest Web browsers, Netscape Navigator and
Microsoft Internet Explorer, have further
improved on the functions of MOSAIC and
use similar technologies. Although the mouse
and hypermedia are great interface tools for
 Internet surfing for the blind: a prototype
Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor
“normal” people, ironically they create barrier
for visually impaired persons to access the
Internet. At present, there are many new
applications for the Internet such as Internet
banking, Internet shopping, Internet voting,
Internet telephone and Internet television.
Internet is also being used for education and
for seeking employment. However, visually
impaired persons are not able to obtain the
full benefits of Internet because it is nearly
impossible for them to navigate the Internet
with the existing browsers. Thus, new HCIs
need to be developed to enable them to enjoy
the benefits of the Internet.
HCI
Research in HCIs, an important area of
software design, has been very active and
references abound. However, most research
has been based on the assumption that the
user possesses normal eyesight. Research
work on access tools for blind people is
lacking. For example, visual design is often
stressed in the design of HCIs with the
objective of providing visual attributes that
contribute valuable impressions and
communicate important cues to a user.
Various approaches have been suggested, and
technologies developed, via which visually
impaired persons can access the Internet and
surf the Web. These approaches and their
limitations are presented in the following
sections.
Text browsers
To avoid problems of using the mouse and
hypermedia, most visually impaired persons
use text-based Web browsers (e.g. Lynx) that
will ignore graphics on Web pages and allows
the use of the keyboard to activate hyperlinks.
However, since many Web designers only test
their designs on popular browsers such as
Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,
they often use features that are not supported
by text browsers; blind users often have
problems accessing such Web sites. Text
browsers cannot completely solve the
problems of Internet surfing for the blind.
Screen readers
Speech synthesis technology (Allen et al.,
1981; Suen, 1981) has been available since
the late 1970s. “Screen readers” (LinuxUser,
2000) were developed in 1980s and blind
people can now access most text-based
computer displays using speech generated by
screen readers (Meyers and Schreier, 1991).
However, simply reading the text and
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converting it to human speech will not solve
Internet navigation problems for blind people.
First of all, screen reading is usually done in a
batch mode. A real time mode is required for
Internet navigation. In addition, “reading
aloud” every item on a Web page and asking
the user to make subsequent choices
constitutes a heavy burden on a human’s
short-term memory (Zetie, 1995) making it a
poor HCI technique. Also, most “text
reading” programs work independently and
cannot interact with popular Web browsers
such as Internet Explorer and Netscape. In
order to activate the next Web page, the user
still needs to point to a specific hypertext link
and click the mouse, an action which is nearly
impossible for a visually impaired person.
Innovative methods must be developed if
visually impaired people are to have
uninhibited access to the Internet.
Braille printout and Braille devices
Thirty years back, the output of computer
systems was primarily conveyed to humans via
paper printout. As blind computer users
cannot read ordinary paper, they had to read
computer output by touching paper specially
indented with a pattern of raised dots called
“Braille” (Blenkhorn and Evans, 1988;
Lightowler, 1994). This technology was
named after its inventor, Louis Braille. He was
a blind Frenchman and his blindness was
caused by an accident in his childhood. Braille
is not the only reading and writing system for
the blind, but it was considered to be the best
according to several independent studies
(Keeler, 1986). Throughout the years, his
system has been adopted by many countries
all over world. Over 600,000 books,
newspapers and magazines are printed in
Braille every year. However, it is much more
expensive than ordinary computer printout
and a special printer is required.
A Braille device (CSUN’95, 1995; Kay,
1984; Leventhal et al., 1991) is another
alternate output device for the blind. A small
part of the image of a computer screen can be
generated on the device; a visually impaired
person can read it quickly by touching the
device and does not have to wait for the
generation of the Braille paper. However,
Braille devices are very expensive. A typical
device costs about US$6,000 while the cost of
a Pentium-based computer is only US$1,000.
People with disabilities generally have far
lower incomes than other citizens (National
Council on Disabilities, 2001). Most visually
 Internet surfing for the blind: a prototype
Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor
impaired computer users cannot afford to buy
a Braille device. A cheaper and more reliable
output method for the blind is necessary. The
speech option meets these criteria and thus it
is chosen as the major navigation method for
this project.
Advantages of the knowledge-based
approach
The knowledge-based screen reader system
provides many advantages for the system as it
can be extended by adding to/replacing its
knowledge base for a variety of applications.
For example, the interface system can be
modified so that visually impaired persons
will be able to use other popular programs
such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. by
changing the knowledge base of the resident
program.
VocalSurf: an Internet surfing tool for
the blind
A HCI system especially designed for Internet
surfing by visually impaired people was
developed as part of a project funded by the
Quality Education Fund (QEF) of Hong Kong.
The key objective of the project was to produce
a prototype to assist blind people to understand
the contents of Web pages through speech and,
using simple keyboard instructions, to interact
with the various components of a Web page.
The design of the prototype and its
components are presented below.
Design of the prototype
As the overview of the system (Figure 1)
shows, the basis of the system is that resident
programs read HTML pages downloaded via
Web browser, and with the help of dictionary
files and knowledge bases produce human
speech. The human speech is used by visually
impaired persons to guide their interaction
with the browser. They in turn can provide
their input through the use of special input
device or a regular keyboard that generates
emulated mouse.
Specifically, the resident programs have the
following functions:
.
interaction with the Internet browser,
.
selectively reading part of the text in Web
pages and producing human speech, and
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.
receiving signals from special input unit
and emulating a corresponding mouse
signal to the browser.
Components of the system
As shown in Figure 2, the resident programs
of the HCI system consist of the following
modules.
.
Input handler. This module accepts input
signals from the input device and passes
the signals to the user interface unit.
.
User interface. This module takes input
messages from the input handler module
and interprets the signals with the help of
an inference engine. It then sends the
signal to the mouse emulator.
.
Inference engine. The inference engine gets
rules from the Internet browser and
HTML knowledge bases. It matches an
input signal against the corresponding
“mouse click” if action from the browser
is necessary. It also selects sentences/
words and pass them to the “voice
synthesizer” module.
.
Voice synthesizer. The voice synthesizer
generates human speech by matching
selected words/sentences on the Web page
with those in dictionaries and wave tables.
.
Mouse emulator. The mouse emulator
module emulates a corresponding mouse
signal and passes it to the Web server.
Development of the prototype
The prototype of this project was called
VocalSurf. It was designed to operate on any
Internet-ready personal computer using
Microsoft Windows 95/98 as a single
application program after installation. The
hard disk capacity required is 128 MB. Users
interacted with VocalSurf using speech and
keyboard. Users typed in simple instructions
and VocalSurf read back specified Web page
content to the users. In other words,
VocalSurf was designed as a WWW surfing
tool for blind or visually impaired individuals.
Technologies applied
To make VocalSurf functional, the following
technologies were employed, in addition to
object oriented programming techniques.
.
Microsoft sound application
programming interface (SAPI)
. Sound wave manipulation
.
Component object modelling (COM).
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Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2003 · 576-586

Figure 1 Overview of the new system

Figure 2 Components of the resident programs

Microsoft SAPI technology was the core available from Microsoft, sound wave
technology applied in VocalSurf ’s English manipulation using audio compression
speech engine construction. In constructing techniques and COM technologies were
the Cantonese speech component of adopted to simulate a SAPI for a Cantonese
VocalSurf, since SAPI for Cantonese is not speech engine. Rapid application
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Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2003 · 576-586

development was adopted in software Table I Control keys for the system
development to facilitate continuous
Key combination Function
prototyping.
CTRL Focus on URL input
SHIFT B Begin reading
Mechanisms implemented SHIFT S Stop reading
Figure 3 shows the overall architecture of the SHIFT L List the current ten hyperlinks
sound engine. SHIFT = Move on to the next
End-users interaction with VocalSurf by ten hyperlinks
means of user interface using the keyboard SHIFT - Return to the previous ten
and control keys are summarized in Table I. hyperlinks
Messages are then carried forward to the SHIFT 0...9 Select a particular hyperlink in
VocalSurf Sound Engine, which parses the the current ten hyperlink listing
requested Web page for meaningful content. (if the current ten hyperlink
The engine also determines if the reading listing is from 11 to
content is Chinese or English. English content 20, 0 will be 20,
is directed to an API wrapper for SAPI to 1 will be 11, 2
process. If the content is Chinese, every word will be 12, etc.)
will be matched against a database for the Backspace Go back
corresponding wave compressed files. When ALT ! Go to a page ahead
processing by either Database-WAV or SAPI is of the current page
complete, the VocalSurf sound engine
produces the audio output.
Classes and objects in the sound engine are Internal testing of VocalSurf consisted of three
described in Figure 4. The most important phases: unit testing, module testing and
class in Figure 4 is the “PlaySound” which system testing. Internal testing was carried out
produces human voice. Its components are by our research staff while the user testing was
described in Figure 5. conducted by our research partner – users
from the Hong Kong Blind Union. During
Testing unit testing, each event or function of
The strategies adopted in testing VocalSurf VocalSurf was tested. In module testing,
included internal testing and user testing. VocalSurf was grouped into three modules:

Figure 3 Sound engine

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Figure 4 Classes in the sound engine

Figure 5 Components of “PlaySound” class

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Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor
user interface, engine and API wrapper. Each
module was tested repeatedly for errors.
Finally, during system testing, VocalSurf was
functioned as a complete, self-sufficient Web
browsing tool and was stress-tested by
repeatedly processing files with large amounts
of text.
Blind users of VocalSurf were involved in
the user testing of each prototype. In addition
to assessing the accuracy and reliability of the
system, users’ comments on usability (such as
the speed of the human speech output) were
also collected. Comments and suggestions
from blind users were used as input for the
next prototype cycle. The authors went
through four cycles of prototype development
in this project.
Constraints and future improvement
We have successfully developed a prototype
which can produce human voice by reading
Web pages. It can also read a text file which
consists of a mixture of English and Chinese
characters. Due to funding constraints, there
are still some limitations in this prototype.
However, these limitations can be addressed
easily if we receive more resources in the
future. The limitations at this moment are:
.
the readable text volume;
.
the variation of sound; and
.
the control in reading.
The following paragraphs provide further
elaboration of those constraints.
Figure 6 The outlook of VocalSurf for users with normal eyesight
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.
Readable text volume. The maximum
amount of text VocalSurf is able to
process after HTML tag and non-text
object parsing is 4,500 bytes. Any Web
page with a text amount over that limit
will incur variable-overflow error.
.
Sound variation. A single Chinese
character may have two or more different
pronunciations (and meanings) which are
distinguished, by sighted readers, from
context and usage in the sentence.
VocalSurf is not yet capable of detecting
the required alternations in
pronunciation. As for the intonation and
the option of varying the output sounds
according to the “speaker’s” gender and
age, VocalSurf does not support any
changes in this aspect either.
.
Reading control. If the user needs to stop
while VocalSurf is reading, (s)he is allowed
to do so. However, VocalSurf cannot
restart reading at the point it stopped
earlier, or repeat what it has just read.
Potential applications
Although this prototype has been developed
for blind people, it can also be used by people
with normal eyesight. The system will also
accept normal mouse signals as an ordinary
Internet browser. The operations are similar
to Internet Explorer as in Figure 6. Potential
 Internet surfing for the blind: a prototype
Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor
applications for these kind of users are
discussed in the following sections.
For young children
Children under nine years of age generally
have problems accessing the Internet as they
do not yet possess a large vocabulary.
Although they may have normal vision and a
large spoken vocabulary, they cannot read
many words on the Web pages. However, with
the help of our VocalSurf prototype, young
children can surf the Internet as they can
understand the contents of Web pages via
human speech. The system may find
Figure 7 Component of translation module
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applications in kindergartens and primary
schools.
Translation of Web pages
Many high school students in non-English
speaking countries are not able to maximise
the use of the WWW due to their limited
knowledge of English (the vast majority of
WWW pages are in English). By
incorporating a “translation” module with
Chinese and English knowledge databases
(Figure 7), the proposed system can translate
content from English to Chinese (or any other
language) first and then convert to spoken
Chinese (or any other language) words. Thus,
 Internet surfing for the blind: a prototype
Alfred Loo, Ming-te Lu and Chris Bloor
the system could also be used by secondary
school students, regardless of their eyesight.
The proposed system could open up a new
world on the World Wide Web for any
non-English speaking population.
For older persons
A large percentage of older people in many
developing countries are illiterate and thus
cannot use the Internet. Even for literate older
people, screen reading for long periods of time
is very tiring. Older people could also benefit
from the proposed system.
Hands-free browsing
If the input handler module is replaced with a
voice recognition module in the system,
people with disabilities in their hands would
be able to use the system for Web browsing
(Figure 8). This change would also benefit
normal people who want to access the Web
when their hands are tied up doing something
else.
Many people listen to music or radio
broadcasts using a personal stereo while, for
example, waiting for buses/trains. With the
latest technologies, network computers can be
Figure 8 System with voice recognition
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built as small as a walkman. Incorporating the
knowledge-based HCI system described
above into such a small network computer
would enable Web browsing while travelling
or commuting.
Conclusion
Visually impaired persons and the blind can
derive great benefit from VocalSurf. It will
make them independent users of the WWW,
and consequently enhance their
independence as members of wider society.
Maximising the use of their computers as
portals to the Internet and its myriad services
will improve their opportunities in education
and their access to information, vastly
improving their quality of life.
An HCI system such as VocalSurf would
also broaden the profile of the Web-using
population, enabling more children and
elderly people to become Internet users in the
future. A knowledge-based HCI system such
as VocalSurf could have a substantial impact
on reducing the “Digital Divide”, and in
addition could broaden and deepen markets
for Internet services.
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Notes Lightowler, S. (1994), “Programming for the blind – times

1 Available at: www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/publicat.htm</
URLbreak
2 Available at: www.cast.org/bobby
3 Available at: www.w3.org/WAI/GL
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of Microcomputer Application, Vol. 18, pp. 313-17.
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www.interntlawyer.com/ada.htm

Biographies
Alfred Loo works in the Department of Information Systems, Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
His research interests include Peer-to-peer technologies and distributed processing. He can be
contacted at: Alfred@ln.edu.hk
Ming-te Lu is Chair Professor of the Department of Information Systems and Chief
Information Officer, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His research interests include e-
commerce and IT issues in developing economies. He can be contacted at: lumt@ln.edu.hk
Chris Bloor is a Principal Lecturer in Computing at the University of Sunderland, UK. His
research interests include computing for people with disabilities and accessibility issues. He can
be contacted at: Chris.Bloor@sunderland.ac.uk

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