Solutions & Tools

Most of the currently downloadable RtF solutions and tools are solutions that individuals or organizations brought with them to the project.  Check out the Areas of Activity to see what's in the pipeline.  Follow the links below to explore the existing solutions created by our partners and contributors that are ready-to-use today.

Built-in accessibility features

Many of the computer programs we use every day have helpful accessibility features built right in, but they can sometimes be hard to find. The link below will take you to resource pages that will walk you through setting up accessibility features for text magnification, closed captioning for videos, and many other options in everyday programs.

•  Instruction pages for existing Built-in Access Features in mainstream programs

Solutions from our partners and contributors

The solutions below were developed by individuals and organizations that are contributing time, code, or resources to the RtF effort. These programs can be used today free of charge.  Some of these projects are still active and will also be found among the RtF development projects.

For individuals with blindness, low-vision, or reading difficulties

These solutions turn traditional web content (and books) into a format that can be more easily understood by people who have blindness or low vision, or who prefer to have basic reading assistance. These projects may offer magnification and restructuring of web pages for easier viewing, text-to-speech computer reading of web pages, and additional tools for reading electronic books.

• Fire Vox - Developed by Charles L. Chen. Fire Vox is a plugin to Mozilla Firefox that provides text-to-speech, magnification, and other features for web content. This project is in continuing development. See the Fire Vox Project.
• AccessTomorrow - Developed by the Ideal Group AccessTomorrow is a portable and accessible browser (Fire Vox) that is bootable from a USB flash memory drive. This project is in continuing development as the AccessTomorrow Project.
• LowBrowse - Developed by Lighthouse International. Lowbrowse is a plugin to Mozilla Firefox that magnifies and visually simplifies web pages. This project is continuing development as the LowBrowse Project.
• WebAnywhere- Developed by the University of Washington's WebInSight group. WebAnywhere is a browser based screen reader-like program for Web content: a specialized, web-based browser that provides text-to-speech, navigation features, and simplified display of web pages. This project is continuing development under  the WebAnywhere project.
• Bookshare.org - Developed by Benetech. Bookshare.org is an online community that enables people with visual and other print disabilities to legally share scanned books. See the BookAnywhere project.
• TOHRU - Trace Online Hand Raising Utility. Developed by the Trace Center. A fully accessible online tool that facilitates participation in online teleconferences by allowing users to digitally "raise their hands" to signal that they would like to speak next. See the TOHRU project.

For individuals looking for assistance with reading skills

These solutions are ideal for people learning to read and write in their own or a new language, who have cognitive or learning disabilities, or who have reading difficulties for any reason.  If you are interested in helping others learn to read you should also check out this project.

• Route66 Literacy - Developed by Benetech and The Center for Literacy and Disability Studies (CLDS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Route66 is a web-based service that provides teaching resources and literacy instruction for persons (adolescents and adults) with developmental disabilities and/or those who are learning to speak, read, and write English. This project is continuing development within RtF as the Route66 Project.

 For web content developers

• Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT) - Developed by the Trace Center. PEAT is a tool for web developers to screen their videos and other content for flashing that could trigger epileptic seizures. This tool is a foundation for RtF's Epilepsy/Seizure prevention and Seizure risk detector project areas.
• Contrast Tool - commissioned by the Trace Center and developed by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium, this tool makes it easy to measure contrast on pages, parts of pages, or parts of images. This project is continuing development as the Contrast Tools Project.
• Audio Contrast Tool  - commissioned by the Trace Center and developed by David MacDonald and Audacity Programmers, this analysis was added to the Audacity Open Source tool to give web developers an easy method to determine the difference in volume between foreground speech and background noises. 
• CapScribe - An application for captioning and describing videos. A web-based version is now in development as the Capscribe Project.
• Fluid Components - reusable user interfaces that take the hard work out of supporting rich interaction in a Web application. These components and similar toolkits are being developed as the ATRC Toolkit Project.
• Eclipse Accessibility Tools Framework (ACTF) - a framework that serves as an extensible infrastructure upon which developers can build a variety of utilities that help to evaluate and enhance the accessibility of applications and content for people with disabilities.