LYNX MEANS ACCESS TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB FOR THE BLIND
by Richard Seltzer
B&R Samizdat Express

The combination of  "adaptive technology" and the Internet opened the world
to many visually impaired people.  

Before, they were limited to audio tapes and Braille books, and books with
extra large type, all of which are difficult and expensive to produce. That
meant that only a small portion of the literature and information available
to everyone else was open to them. 

Then computer technology led to development of a variety of devices that can
turn plain ASCII text into voice or show it as extra large letters or even
provide Braille output.  And the Internet, through applications such as mail,
newsgroups, ftp and gopher, provided an almost inexhaustible supply of
information in plain text form. 

Many blind people became Internet gurus.  The Internet was the ultimate equal
opportunity global environment -- no one knows if you are blind or have three
feet tall or your skin is purple.  All that matters is your ideas and your
ability to express them and the respect and care that you show for others in
your dealings in this public arena. 

For the sighted, the coming of the World Wide Web and graphics browsers like
Mosaic and Netscape was a glorious revolution.  Suddenly, they could point
and click their way with ease from one end of the world to the other, without
bothering about complex addresses.  The world of the Internet became like a
CD-ROM (only slower), with information easily viewed and manipulated in a
Windows environment, and with the welcome addition of great color graphics,
the beginnings of video, and even audio.  Over the last year, it seems that
everyone has been scrambling to put up a Web server.  Great work is being
done.  But if the only way to get to it were with a graphics interface, the
blind would be locked out and consigned once again to the role of
second-class citizens. 

Fortunately, a handful of people at the University of Kansas in Lawrence,
Kansas, (Lou Montilli, Charles Rezac, and Michael Grobe) developed a
character-cell browser named Lynx, and made the code freely available over
the Internet.  According to Lynx Users Guide Version 2.3 
(http://www.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/Lynx_users_guide.html) "Lynx is a
fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running
cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g. vt100 terminals,
vt100 emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other "curses-oriented"
display).  It will display hypertext markup language (HTML) hypertext
documents containing links to files residing on the local system, as well as
files residing on remote systems running Gopher, HTTP, FTP, WAIS, and NNTP
servers.  Current versions of Lynx run on UNIX and VMS.  A DOS version is in
development."  

Simply put, Lynx delivers documents from the World Wide Web as plain ASCII
text characters.  This means that they can be "read" by the blind, as well as
people who are limited to character-cell (no graphics) access to the Internet. 

So there is a solution available for the blind, but lack of awareness limits
its usefulness.  Many blind people who could use this capability still do not
know that it is available.  And many people who now run or are building Web
sites seem to be unaware of the importance of Lynx, and are designing their
pages without taking into account that means of access.  In other words, many
exciting and interesting Web sites (such as HotWired -- produced by Wired
Magazine, and located at http://www.hotwired.com/) are so heavily dependent
on graphics that it's impossible to use Lynx there. 

If you know an Internet user who is blind, let them know about Lynx. 

If you know someone who is building a Web server, remind them that they
should design their pages with text-only alternatives  for maneuvering from
one place to the next and not depend on the user seeing icons and fancy
graphics. 

If you know someone who designs, or builds or sells Internet-related computer
products or on-line information services, remind them that if they or their
customers do business with the U.S. government they may at some time be
required to make their information accessible to the blind, and Lynx can help
them accomplish this. 

If you know someone who is involved in the further development of Web server
software and html authoring tools, encourage them to make it easy for the
creators of Web pages to see how their work will appear with a Lynx browser
as well as with the full graphics. 

And if you know someone who is involved in the further development of Lynx,
remind them how important that tool is for the blind and that they should
consult with blind users for advice on features they should include in future
versions. 

Lynx is currently available via anonymous FTP from:
	ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/lynx