A Tool for Adapting Visual Interfaces to Blind People

A graphical user interface generally uses standard components such as windows, menus, edit boxes, list boxes... offering improvements in human-computer interaction exploiting the abilities of sighted users. So, blind people using this kind of interfaces cannot profit from these advantages. That is why these interfaces should be adapted for them. This can be done either by using a standard method for all the application screens or by individualising the adaptation of each application. This makes it possible to optimise the manipulation of interfaces by blind people but it is complicated because there are many versions of the any one product and it is often necessary to readapt them. The new approach is to make the adaptation simple and easy through an authoring system which adapts visual interfaces. The behaviour of the interfaces can be altered according to different situations, even those which were not foreseen. This system can modify completely or partially the visual interface by adjusting it for the visually handicapped using a database of rules and rebuilding it as a multimodal interface.