Developing Multi-modal Interfaces for Visually Impaired People to Access the Internet

This paper describes the work being carried out at the Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB) on improving visually impaired people’s access to information on the Internet. In particular, the project is focused on problems that visually impaired people have on navigating and reading information from Web pages. These problems will be addressed by using a multi-modal approach of combining visual, audio and haptic technologies. The first prototype of these interfaces has been developed based on the results of the user requirements capture conducted with visually impaired people. This paper will present a review of the current technology to assist visually impaired people to access the Internet and also the users’ comments on this technology. As a result of the user feedback, the paper will present a prototype multi-modal interface and discuss the issues that should be considered when designing such interfaces.