Digital library access for Chinese visually impaired

This paper describes our effort to make digital libraries (on the World Wide Web or in CD-ROMs) accessible to the Chinese visually impaired via a (Web) browser. The interface has an electromagnetic braille display for touch reading, as well as a bilingual English-Chinese text-to-speech system. The interface for navigating through the Web and the web pages is presented. Apart from web navigation, Chinese data entry is difficult even for the sighted users, due to the large Chinese character set. An advanced input method designed for the Chinese visually impaired is discussed. It enables the visually impaired to formulate both Boolean-type and natural language queries.