Internet Surfing for the Blind

Digital divide has always been a barrier for blind people to access the Internet. W3C
Consortium has issued several guidelines for the past few years but, these guidelines only
guarantee the "technical readability" and do not ensure at all either the Web site is accessible
or not by blind people. Moreover, Web designers do not test their design with blind people in
mind. According to W3C, a successful Web site is the one that adapts to the needs and
preferences ofits audiences by customizing content to fit the users expressed desires within
the constrains of available hardware, software and bandwidth. In effort to maximizing the
ability ofusers to access information, services and resources, this document presents a Web
site for the blind, and to bring some importance view to the eye ofWeb designers in order to
create universally accessible Web site especially for the blind. It is intended to solve the
Internet accessibility problems faced by this community in Malaysia. The approach is
obtained by combining design features needed to develop an accessible Web site and a screen
reader as an assistive technology (AT) used by the blind. The former technology is especially
suited for text based Web site, while the later allow to support multimedia nature of today
Web environment. The evaluation scenarios have shown that users responded well and
behave as expected while navigate through the Web site.