BrowseAloud: the assistive technology for people with cognitive impairments

BrowseAloud is an assistive technology that is free for the end user. Websites pay a fee to enable BrowseAloud for users of their site. BrowseAloud is aimed at people with cognitive disabilities, mild to moderate vision impairments, people with low literacy and people with English as a Second Language. Of the 4 million people with a registered disability in Australia, half of them have dyslexia or specific learning or reading disabilities; by far the largest group of people with disabilities in Australia. In addition 6.2 million adults have low literacy levels and 3 million people have English as a Second Language. BrowseAloud has a number of features aimed at assisting these groups of people, in addition to the 300,000 people in Australia with mild to moderate vision impairments. These features include:

• Hover highlighting
• Text selection
• Translator
• Dictionary
• Screen masking
• MP3 maker
• Screen magnifier