WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader for the web. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card. Visit wa.cs.washington.edu to access WebAnywhere directly. And, it's completely FREE to use!
WebAnywhere will run on any machine, even heavily locked-down public terminals, regardless of what operating system it is running and regardless of what browsers are installed. WebAnywhere does not seek to replace existing screen readers - it has some big limitations, namely that it will not provide access to desktop applications like word processors or spreadsheets.
Please read our WebAnywhere Paper for more information about the system.
We released the initial version of WebAnywhere in July 2008, and it's recently received a lot of attention! Despite some minor hiccups, WebAnywhere has thus far survived the onslaught of visitors relatively unscathed.
Most visitors will likely prefer the latest and greatest version of WebAnywhere - the WebAnywhere Beta Release. This release adds highlighting and other features that might be useful for low-vision users or others for whom both hearing and seeing the content can be helpful.
If the beta release doesn't work for you as expected, you can also still access the original Alpha Release.
Below is a video introduction to WebAnywhere hosted on YouTube. If you prefer an audio-only version of this content, you can listen to the Audio Description of WebAnywhere.
WebAnywhere is an open source project. Please visit this page if you'd like to contribute to the development of WebAnywhere or would like to host WebAnywhere on your own server. Together we can help make WebAnywhere better satisfy the needs of its diverse users.
Please send email to webinsight@cs.washington.edu with questions or to receive announcements about the system.
