Electronic text and visually impaired users: standards & the move toward Universal Accessibility

Abstract

Visually impaired users of electronic texts face a number of barriers to accessibility, from the degree of vision or learning disability to their familiarity with braille or ability to use hardware and software. Screen readers, braille embossers, OCR technology, and standard data formats like DAISY can all be used to make electronic text accessible for almost all visually impaired users. Ultimately by standardizing accessible formats, sighted and non-sighted users will all be able to read the same texts via the modality (vision, hearing, touch) of their choice.