The use of information rich words and abridged language to orientate users to the World Wide Web

The work described in this paper was funded under the HEFCE initiative for widening access to higher education for disabled people (Zajicek and Powell, 1997). The problem of presenting the information content of graphical user interfaces using speech is addressed. Current provision in terms of Braille and speech screen readers tends to be unsatisfactory and makes no attempt to present information on the screen conceptually. This paper describes and evaluates the use of the helper application WebChat which presents a model of the information content of World Wide Web pages using speech. In particular it uses information rich words and 'abridged language' to present information. This is useful for visually impaired people and can be used to present World Wide Web pages over the telephone.