Speech+Recognition

**Web 2.0 Accessibility**
Each of the major categories of disabilities requires certain types of adaptations in the design of the web content. Most of the time, these adaptations benefit nearly everyone, not just people with disabilities. Almost everyone benefits from helpful illustrations, properly-organized content and clear navigation.

**[|Visual]Blindness, low vision, color-blindness**

//The above information was copied from WebAIM//

**Auditory Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired**
Many people with visual impairments use software or hardware that presents auditory information that normally would be displayed graphically on a computer's screen. These technologies, along with other assistive devices, such as screen magnifiers and Braille displays, provide access to computer based resources including the Internet. This accessibility has a positive impact on the lives of adults with disabilities. Assistive auditory interfaces sometimes use a standard application, such as Microsoft Internet or Excel, in conjunction with a system wide screen reader such as JAWS, which speaks the elements of the computers interface aloud.@http://www.ncsu.edu/www/ncsu/design/sod5/cud

There is a growing list of speech recognition software that is aiding accessibility issues. One of the most popular of these tools is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon Naturally Speaking turns your voice into text three times faster than most people type with up to 99% accuracy. It works with the most common used desktop applications, including Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, AOL and more. Accessible features are, creating and editing documents or emails, opening and closing applications, controlling your mouse and entire desktop. Additional research is underway for further accessibility for the visually impaired, such as using different voice pitches to create different commands, and using naturally occurring sounds that would normally be associated with metaphorical aspects of the interfaces, these are just a few if the ideas that are being researched to help better aid the visually impaired Internet user.