Blind and visually impaired people will soon be able to surf the web on the go using WebAnywhere, a tool developed by the University of Washington that turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud web text on any computer with speakers or a headphone connection.

Free screen readers already exist, as so sophisticated commercial programs, however, these must all be installed on a machine before being used. WebAnywhere is the first accessibility tool hosted on the Internet – eliminating the need for it to be installed or downloaded onto a computer. It processes the text on an external server and then sends the audio file to play in the user’s web browser.

See a demonstration of how WebAnywhere works below:-