From the webpage, http://www.acb.org/Magazine/2000/bf032000.html#bf10.
A NEW PATH TO ONLINE INDEPENDENCE MAY BE DAWNING!
by Penny Reeder

Imagine leaning back in your easy chair in front of the tube, wondering what
might be playing on Ted Turner's audio-described classic movie TV channel,
picking up your portable phone and dialing a number which connects you to
the "www.direct-tv" online web site. There, you browse through the listings
for
the evening and learn that the classic movie for this evening is your
spouse's favorite. So, using the same phone, you go to the online menu at
the web
page of your favorite Chinese restaurant, and you place an order for a
delectable dinner for two. Then, you go to "www.finewines.com" to see what
the daily
specials are, make a selection, place your order, and call your wife at her
office to tell her to hurry home for your date! While you wait for the
doorbell
to ring with delivery-persons from the Chinese restaurant and finewines.com
on the other side, you check out the progress of your financial investments
at "e- trade.com," and you visit your child's elementary school home page,
where you learn that his book report is due in three days and that he got an
A on his math test yesterday. You order some doggie treats for your faithful
pooch, and you check on the contents of your checking account and make a
deposit
into your savings. You register to vote in your state's upcoming primary
election, and you go to the NLS web page to read "Talking Book Topics." Keep
imagining
now. You have accomplished all this by just dialing your phone and listening
to the very pleasant synthesized voice of everypath, a telephone-accessed
Internet browser which allows you to access hundreds of informative World
Wide Web sites to find exactly the information you seek quickly and
efficiently,
without even turning on your personal computer. Imagine accessing the World
Wide Web with a tool that's as simple and intuitive as your telephone! All
of this may sound too good to be true, but it may be just around the corner!
On Thursday, January 6, 2000, Charlie Crawford and I met with
representatives
from a telephone-accessed web browser called everypath. Everypath is a
company based in Silicon Valley, Calif., which is developing a telephone
interface
to the World Wide Web. Unlike other service providers who have promised
similar telephone-based interfaces to the Internet, everypath seems to be
approaching
the mechanics of web access from a couple of interesting perspectives. They
are identifying organizations and companies who want to make their online
information
available to people who may not have the time or the wherewithal to access
it with computers. And they are attempting to identify the kinds of
information
that these sorts of consumers will want to access. Getting to the essential
information Their engineers have developed technology which can identify and
isolate the essential information which a visitor might want from a web
site, and present that information via a clear and understandable
synthesized "Real
(computer) Voice," which a user can access with voice or keypad commands on
a standard telephone! Joe Griffin, vice president of corporate development,
describes the product which his company can bring to a consumer as a kind of
"Reader's Digest" for every connected site. "We focus on the tasks that
people
want to accomplish, and on the information that pertains to those tasks," he
says. What kinds of information would visually impaired users like to
obtain?
When representatives from everypath went to visit the Federal Communications
Commission to find out exactly what technical specifications might apply to
them, the folks at the FCC told them, with a certain degree of enthusiasm,
that their product might be a natural fit for the needs of many Americans
with
disabilities -- especially people who are visually impaired. When everypath
asked how they could find out what visually impaired people might need, the
FCC sent them to Charlie Crawford and the American Council of the Blind! So,
they came to talk to ACB, to find out what kinds of web sites our members
might be interested in accessing. They demonstrated their system on an
ordinary speaker-phone in the ACB national office's conference room. In
response
to a voice command, the web browser connected to an "E-Trading" service, and
read the stock market quotations regarding a particular commodity. One of
everypath's chief engineers described an anticipated capability for buying,
selling, or getting more detailed information about particular stocks, and
he told us how one of their staff members recently purchased an airline
ticket from an E-fare site which she had accessed via everypath. Griffin
says that
the company anticipates establishing a connection with 200 web sites by the
end of the year. Already, everypath is working with an online stock-market
and trading site. They have talked to airlines and to department stores, and
to telecommunications service providers. They anticipate making their
voice-interfaced
dial-in service available via cellular phones, pagers, and other portable
telecommunications devices, some of which may still reside in the
imaginations
of their inventors. While the company is working with web content providers
now, its services will not be available to the general public until April
2000.
Stay tuned to "The Braille Forum" to find out where this exciting accessible
service may lead. We may be at the dawn of the kind of access to information
which visually impaired people have only dared to include on their wish
lists until now. *****


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