The Internet: Where 20/20 Vision Isn’t Always Required

Most of us take for granted the fact that browsing the internet is usually a visual experience. Typical activities like reading texts, watching videos, and skimming slideshows require us to actively use our eyes.

For a number of seniors whose eyesight is a long way off from perfect 20/20 vision, interacting with the internet is a different sort of activity. A recent Gizmodo article entitled, “How Blind People See the Internet” explains the ways in which the visually impaired can utilize the web. Here is the rundown:

The most common and straightforward way for the visually impaired to use the internet is with a traditional browser and text-to-speech-software, like Microsoft Narrator for Windows users for VoiceOver for those with Mac OS. Yet, to say that blind users just “listen” to the internet isn’t really accurate. Those of us with perfectly fine eye-sight don’t just “read” the internet, we actively interact with the content onscreen. (Think of it this way: Having text-to-speech-software isn’t necessarily the same as listening to a book on tape.)

That’s where screen reading software comes into play. As Gizmodo explains, “it’s a simple parser, and it starts at the top. It combs through a website a lot like a web browser combs through HTML, except instead of rendering an IMG tag as an image, or an EM tag as italicized text, it converts them to sounds: a readout of the image description