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February 16, 2008
by Paul Hamilton
3 Comments

Accessibar (Firefox Add-on)

I wish classroom educators were not so stuck on using Internet Explorer. Firefox is a superior web browser in almost every respect, and this is especially true for individuals with special needs. Kate Ahern recently mentioned another add-on for Firefox that offers a set of convenient tools to enhance accessibility.

accessibar.jpg

Accessibar is a toolbar that can be installed as an add-on for the Firefox browser with a set of tools to make the internet more accessible for people with special needs. Accessibar is especially useful for those with low vision. As with all toolbar icons in Firefox, the toolbar shown below can include text that names the function of the icon. All of the Accessibar functions can also be activated with keyboard shortcuts that can be configured by the user.

accessibar-ss-01.jpg

In the words of the toolbar’s developers, here’s what the Accessibar tools will do for you.

  • Web page fonts and background colors can be changed from a selecton of 70 colors on current session
  • Icons with configurable shortcut keys to increase and decrease Font size.
  • Line spacing can be increased or decreased to five different spacing settings incrementally.
  • All images (including Flash) displayed on a web page can be selected as being hiden or shown.
  • All changes made to web page display can be restored to original page settings by pressing “Restore Page“.
  • Changes made to the currently displayed web page persist until “Restore Page“ is selected.
  • Integrated Text To Speech reader. Reads out strings hovered over as well as focused elements.
  • Reader settings can be configured allowing the selection of the voice, volume, speaking rate, pitch, and voice range.
  • Toolbar functions have configurable Hotkeys (keyboard shortcuts).

I tested Accessibar’s text-to-speech function, and I found it to work reasonably well. It does an especially good job of reading links and buttons. As a sighted reader, however,I much prefer to use CLiCk,Speak for reading passages of text. I wonder if it might be the same for individuals with low vision if they are able to use Accessibar’s tools to enable them to see the web page effectively. I added the CLiCk,Speak buttons to the Accessibar toolbar. The only drawback is that there are no keyboard commands for the CLiCk,Speak buttons.