The near-ubiquity of web access enables you to check in for a flight before you leave your hotel; pursue new business opportunities from the local Internet café; or read email on a friend's laptop to gauge reaction to everything from a business proposal to your date last night.  If you use non-standard software to access the web, however, it may not be as easy.  At the University of Washington, our WebAnywhere Project is seeking to provide web access on any computer for free.

Few computers have screen readers or magnification software installed, and web access on most computers therefore requires new software to be downloaded or installed.  Further compounding the problem, most public computers also prevent users from running or installing new software for security reasons (a screen reader enabling your access is difficult to distinguish automatically from a key logger stealing your passwords).

WebAnywhere provides a non-visual interface to the web and requires no new software to be run or installed.  To access it, users just visit the WebAnywhere web page (http://wa.cs.washington.edu/) in any web browser on any operating system, and WebAnywhere will begin speaking.

It provides an interface to web content similar to that of typical screen reading programs, including useful shortcut keys for navigating through content.

WebAnywhere was inspired by the growing popularity of web-based applications.  Email, word processing, and database management programs are quickly making the leap from the desktop to the web where they can be accessed from anywhere and from any computer available.  WebAnywhere is built using many of the same, standard technologies, which helps it operate on most computers.

To make the system usable without the installation of new software, text-to-speech conversion is done on a remote server and sent back to the client as MP3 files.  The system looks ahead in documents that are being read and predicts what users are likely to read next so that the

MP3 representation can be retrieved in advance for quick playback.

We have released an initial version of the system that is available to the public and that you can try by visiting http://wa.cs.washington.edu/ from any computer.  This system provides basic access to most web content.  You can already use it to browse most web sites, including your web-based email.

WebAnywhere was designed to fit a very specific need –web access on computers that are locked-down to prevent running new software on them.  Other free software might be appropriate if you are able to run new software on your machine.  

We do not expect WebAnywhere to replace the screen readers that you already use in the short-term  because it does not make applications on the desktop accessible.  But for those unable to afford a pricey screen reader or those accessing the web from a computer that is not their own, it might be a useful alternative.  WebAnywhere also looks to the near future when more of our applications do not reside on our own desktops, but on the web, where, like WebAnywhere, they can be accessed and used from anywhere.

As we continue WebAnywhere's development, we hope to improve the robustness of the system to new kinds of web content, and add features that users have come to expect, such as more keyboard shortcuts, additional control over voices, and other custom preferences.

This is an exciting time for access technology.  Software is improving in dramatic ways, and free, community-driven alternatives are becoming viable.  Please visit WebAnywhere and send us your feedback.