2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

easily interpret text, making the AT products increasingly effective for people with
vision disabilities (Lemmetty, 2004).
Improvements in computing for people with vision disabilities played a vital
role in supporting new educational opportunities by providing access to educational
materials previously inaccessible such as information in libraries where books were
scanned and converted into electronic text. The conversion of written material into
electronic text meant that the text could either be read aloud, or the colours and font
could be manipulated to make it easier to see for people with low vision. When
‘experimental’ became ‘everyday’, these products also became more affordable to
educational institutions and individuals. Consequently, at the close of the 1980s,
people with vision disabilities were getting unprecedented access to education, an
unexpected spin-off of this evolving computing technology. In essence, the impact
of computing technologies provided additional hope for people with vision
disabilities. The development of ETAs led to the development of AT products that
not only provided translation services for text output but also emerged as a
significant factor in allowing blind and vision impaired people unprecedented access
to education and improved information access.
2.4 Overcoming the difficulties of the graphical user
interface
The Apple Macintosh in 1984 was the first commercially successful computer using
a Graphical User Interface (GUI) (Sanford, 2004). The GUI, which was initially
developed by Xerox in 1973 (Carlson, Burgess, & Miller, 1996), led to a
fundamental change in how computers were used. For the general population, the
GUI was a major step forward in personal computing for the visual representation of
data and its ability to perform multiple tasks at once heralded a new era of access to
computers for the home user. However, for people who were blind or vision
impaired, the change posed serious problems. The GUI format meant that many
accessibility tools for people with vision disabilities previously available in text-
based computing no longer worked and no replacements were available. Essentially,
the use of graphics to represent information rendered most existing AT devices,
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