Home Page Reader was a computer program

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

, a self-voicing web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 designed for people who are blind

Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...

. It was developed by IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 from the work of Chieko Asakawa at IBM Japan.

The screen reader met World Wide Web Consortium

World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

 (W3C) HTML 4.01 specifications, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are part of a series of Web accessibility guidelines published by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative. They consist of a set of guidelines for making content accessible, primarily for disabled users, but also for all user agents, including highly limited...

 1.0 and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

In 2006, it was announced on the Hpr mailing list that IBM does not have plans for any further updates of HPR and the software was subsequently withdrawn from sale by IBM in December 2006. IBM has given code to be used as a Firefox extension.

It has been superseded by IBM Easy Web Browsing and Window Eyes.

The program also had a peer-support mailing list.It's archives were available at http://www.talklist.com/forms/ibm-hpr

Criticism

In summer 2002 a non-scientific study conducted that Hpr didn't make any distinction between the built in keyboard shortcuts for going in different modes and available access keys in websites. Although the researches claiming that Hprs mechanism actually would make more sense using links mode to cycle through a list.

Hardware Requirements

Hpr had the following hardware requirements:

• 166 MHz processor
• 32 MB RAM Windows 95/98; 64 MB RAM for Windows NT
• 14 MB hard disk space; 42 MB hard disk space for HPR and Netscape Communicator
• SVGA (640 X 480, 256 colors) graphics
• Windows compatible: modem (28.8 KBPS), sound card (16-bit), and CD ROM drive (quad-speed)
• Integrated or separately attached numeric keypad

Software Requirements

Hpr had the following software requirements:

• Microsoft Windows 95,98 or NT 4.0
• Internet service provider (ISP) connection
• Netscape Navigator Version 3.01 or higher
• For Home Page Mailer, Microsoft Personal Web Server, Version 4.02 required for Windows 95/98; Peer Web Services, Version 4.0 required for Windows NT
• A mail program set up with preferences, or Microsoft Personal Web Server or Peer Web Services required for mailto: tags

External links

• HomePage reader @ evolt.
• [ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/sns/hpr/ HPR ftp directory], IBM
• IBM Home Page Reader Keyboard Shortcuts, WebAIM
• IBM Home Page Reader Tutorial, WebAIM