BLACK....a website for blinds ???

NGOs are taking a great initiative towards the overall development of the society. Hats off to all of them who organize such kind of events. I opened a magazine I saw many topics like 'blood donation camp', 'saving lives', 'the road to literacy', 'helping hands', 'victoria memorial school for the blind', 'drishti'. And here I stopped. A idea which came in my mind while I was doing my graduation flashed back. BLACK…A website for the blind … Can technology enable a blind web browsing experience?

The W.H.O. estimated that in 2002 there were 161 million visually impaired people in the world, of whom 124 million had low vision and 37 million were blind. 30% of the total blind community use computers. Why don't we provide a interactive website which will provide the complete information about the world what they unable to see. Why don't we provide the entertainment stuffs to give a smile in their face? We can make BLACK as a complete web-portal for the blinds, whatever they needs in their daily-life.

Many applications are available in the market, intended for people who are blind or have low vision. For example- JAWS (screen reader) from Freedom Scientific corporation, Oralux audio Linux distribution, VoiceOver for Macintosh OS by Apple, Microsoft's Accessibility Wizard & Magnifier for partial vision.

We can implement the applications available in the market, or we can use the reader what normal blind people use to access the computer. The reader is a keyboard with a series of pins that move up and down, sending the contents in Braille to the fingertips of the person using the machine. A partially-sighted person can read larger print displays, provided there is a clear distinction between the type and the background (eg black on white).And if we include any audio dialogue on websites (not just music), we will also need to make sure a written alternative is clearly available for those partially-sighted with hearing difficulties.