The Early Stages of T&Browse: A Spoken Shared Internet Browser for the Blind

This paper introduces a shared Internet talking browser for the visually impaired called Talk & Browse (T&Browse) that allows a group of blind users to access Internet content and view the same HTML documents at the same time. Within the browsing session, the system allows two types of users: a sighted person (session supervisor) and blind users (session guided users). When the supervisor browses the Internet, the web pages he/she browses are then displayed on the guided users' computer screens via voice synthesis. T&Browse can be used within classroom settings where the supervisor is the instructor who can guide the users (students) through the Internet. Also, the supervisor can use the system remotely (i.e., the supervisor and the guided users need not to be placed in the same geographic area), thus promoting distance learning. To make it platform independent, T&Browse is implemented using Java.