WebbIE
Encyclopedia
WebbIE is a freeware
web browser
designed for screen reader
users. It re-presents web pages as text with a caret, allowing users to use their existing screen reader or assistive technology to read it, but is not self-voicing, unlike (for example) Home Page Reader
.
. It was first released in 2002 and has been under development and release since. It is often bundled with the LookOUT screen reader and Thunder screen reader.
control to fetch and parse web pages into the W3C DOM
and MSHTML DOM. It then iterates through the DOM creating a text re-presentation. The implications of this include:
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
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 screen reader
Screen reader
A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen . This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device...
users. It re-presents web pages as text with a caret, allowing users to use their existing screen reader or assistive technology to read it, but is not self-voicing, unlike (for example) Home Page Reader
Home Page Reader
Home Page Reader was a computer program, a self-voicing web browser designed for people who are blind. It was developed by IBM from the work of Chieko Asakawa at IBM Japan....
.
History
WebbIE was developed as a student project at the Department of Computation at UMISTUMIST
The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research...
. It was first released in 2002 and has been under development and release since. It is often bundled with the LookOUT screen reader and Thunder screen reader.
Technology
WebbIE uses the Microsoft WebBrowser ActiveXActiveX
ActiveX is a framework for defining reusable software components in a programming language-independent way. Software applications can then be composed from one or more of these components in order to provide their functionality....
control to fetch and parse web pages into the W3C DOM
Document Object Model
The Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...
and MSHTML DOM. It then iterates through the DOM creating a text re-presentation. The implications of this include:
- There is a delay between the WebBrowser control rendering the web page for sighted people and presenting the DOM to WebbIE to process. WebbIE can only access the DOM when all images and other embedded content have been rendered, which for some slow or media-heavy sites can take time.
- The text re-presentation is divorced from the underlying DOM, so realtime updates to the DOM (e.g. AjaxAjax (programming)Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
writes) may fail to be re-presented.