Online Eyesight for the Blind
From: Mobile Computing and Communications - August, 2000 - page 23
By: John Frederick Moore

The latest initiative to make the Web available everywhere includes making it
obtainable for one group that has been left behind in the online age: the
blind. The service, EveryWhere Office, enables users to browse the Web
without a screen, which could in turn open up the Internet to a larger and
more mobile business community. 

Developed by Chicago-based AirTrac, the EveryWhere Office portal provides
voice-activated access to scheduling, e-mail, and other information like stock
quotes, sports scores, and weather. The basic premise is that the blind or
otherwise visually impaired, being freed of their on-screen dependency, can
now take advantage of the Internet. 

EveryWhere Office does not provide voice access to the Web per se. Rather, a
user calls into AirTrac's service and chooses the features he or she wishes
to access. "Instead of going to Yahoo and going through all the various
links, you would say, 'Sport service, basketball,' and it would give you all
the latest scores," explains Josh Friend, AirTrac vice president of market
development. 

Though the visually impaired are among AirTrac's target audience, the company
is also focusing on mobile workers who spend so much of their time away from
the office that they're not always able to log on to the Internet through
their notebook computers. "More people are mobile," Friend adds. "As
technology increases and people are on the go, they want devices that are
able to do the same thing as their computers. The fastpace lifestyle is
driving this technology."  

Efforts like AirTrac's point the way toward squeezing all Web content onto a
phone. The VoiceXML Forum, an organization founded by AT&T, IBM, Lucent
Technologies and Motorola, is developing a standard to make Internet content
accessible by voice and phone, which means even greater access for the blind
and the terminally busy. Although that‘s not AirTrac's immediate focus, the
company does offer proprietary developer toolkits to Internet compaines so
they can voice-enable their sites. 

Friend says: "The Internet is great, but it's big and still not terribly user
friendly. You can't get a much simpler interface than voice."

http://www.airtrac.net/
http://flashcommerce.com/articles/00/03/06/165111070.shtml
http://www.voicexml.org/
http://www.att.com/technology/features/0006voicexml.html


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General Magic hails voice on the Web
From: InfoWorld - July, 10, 2000 - page 14

General Magic will offer hosting and professional services for magicTalk, its
voice platform for accessing the Internet. The company will also offer
magicTalk voice-enabled, telephony-based products and services, such as
VoiceXML websites. The magicTalk platform works with VoiceXLM to display Web
Information in digitized speech. 

http://www.genmagic.com/index.shtml
http://www.genmagic.com/solutions/insidegm_magichome.shtml