VocalSearch: supporting blind people to have access to the Web

The project we introduce in this paper is based on the conviction that IT can play an important role in the integration and social rehabilitation of people with sensory dysfunction, improving in particular their persona1 autonomy. Efforis towards Universal Accessibility to the Web conhasts with an excessive use of multimedia elements in Web pages, so that even sirnple activities, such as using a search engine, can be a barrier for visually impaired people. In this paper we present VocalSe@rch, a vocal meta-search engine designed and developed at the Italian National Research Council to allow these people to find and have access to Internet resources. The main functionalities of VocalSe@rch are: keyword search for blind users on the Internet,speak rate management, vocal on-line help, synthesis language selection, environmental personalization. auto software upgrade. pauselresume tool to intenupt and restart the synthesis process, sequential sentence synthesis thus allowing the user to navigate a text so s/he can listen or re-listen to specific words or phrases. The findings from a pilot evaluation study are also reported.