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Firstly let me state clearly that I am the founder and Technical Director of Texthelp Systems, and also of the Browsealoud product and service.

Texthelp have been providing assistive technology for people with reading difficulties and cognitive difficulties since 1994.

About 5 years ago we were exploring the assistive technology marketplace outside of education which is our core market. We wanted to provide technology for home users - specifically users who were wanting to interact with E-Govt web sites.

Some public research is also available here ...
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/research/default.aspx

What we found was that :

1. The general public has a very low awareness of Assistive Technology.
2. There is a strong correlation between disability and lower earnings - lessening the ability to buy AT.
3. 19% of people in the UK read at the lowest level of literacy, and these people have the lowest earnings.

For these reasons we developed Browsealoud.
This allows citizens to use Assistive Technology for free on Government Websites.

It is improving access to E-Government websites for hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and world wide.

In response to your comment "
The simple answer is that Texthelp Systems could if they wanted develop their system to work on any site, and use the site's CSS to better read the page, but they probably make far too much money from encouraging web developers to make their sites Browsealoud-enabled."

We have done so. If people who use Browsealoud want to use our Assistive Technology on other sites we have a range of screen reading software that works with any accessible web site, and also helps read emails, Word Docs, PDF files etc.

We have 30 staff employed in our software development, software testing and technical support teams. If we did not charge for the software it could not be created or supported. I make no apology for running a successful company that helps people to read, and creates employment.

There are free pieces of software out there that do read web sites. Browsealoud differs in the following ways :

1. It has high quality voices ( unlike any other free AT ).
2. It is a single download for MSIE, Firefox and Adobe Reader support ( unlike any other free AT ).
3. It is certified for Windows ( unlike any other free AT ).
4. It has free telephone support (unlike any other free AT ).

Browsealoud is not a proprietary format - it is a piece of free assistive technology that works on the websites that subscribe to the service, and support the R&D efforts.

I would much prefer that you would research your articles before posting them. I am happy to speak with you at any time to discuss our technology and business.

Best Wishes,

Martin

Martin McKay - CTO & Founder - Texthelp Systems Ltd - www.texthelp.com

Thanks for the commercial break Martin, but I think you’re missing my point. Yes it may be free to use, but it’s not free to adopt. For instance, I have to pay your company should I wish to make my site readable under your system.

Now I understand your software may predate some of the standards we now take for granted, but I would argue that developers should be concentrating on developing for and with agreed standards.

By creating your own standard, you’re forking off from what the W3C has already set out, thereby creating a proprietary system. And yes Martin, that word is used correctly.

How about opening up your standards so that they can be applied to any site for free, then make your money from consultancy? I would actually have more respect for the business model if you reversed it. There are already products on the market that read and understand HTML as laid out under the agreed standards, so if people want that extra bit of functionality they can pay for your software.

Martin says "The general public has a very low awareness of Assistive Technology" as if that's relevant - of course the general publichas a low awareness, just as the general public has a low awareness of any technology; the point is, the people who have need to use at - & the people who help them - have a very high awareness of it. I think you'll find if you visit the computers of 90% of people who can't see the screen with their eyes they'll already have their own screen reading solution, so helping out those who don't know how to develop their website accessibly & thus forcing people with sight difficulties to download yet another piece of software thus increasing the difficulties faced by people with disabilities rather than decreasing them.

But it's a canny ploy by Browsealoud - if you're commissioning the developing of a site, you can either have it written into the contract that the developers follow accepted - and legal - standards of coding and accessibility at no extra charge by making the site readable whatever assistive technology the viewer is using, or you can pay the premium to have Browsealoud sitting on the server as well, whilst you and the end user doesn't really get an increase offered.

I have an interest in accessible web design and came across this site from a thread on accessifyforum.

I too would prefer if the Browsealoud model was free for sites to adopt: it would then make it easier for all of the rest of us to include Browsealoud on our sites.

However, I can see an argument for the model they are using. They are offering their software free to the end user - an end user that is likely to be disadvantaged in the first place - and instead expecting the site owner (which as their target audience appears to be large organisations - councils, police authorities etc) who will have the budgets to pay for it.

So it's free for those who use it; those who want to offer it have to pay. The disadvantage with this is that of course small businesses (and site owners without a budget, bloggers like myself) who would possibly like to offer this to their users can't.

And that in itself is a problem, because the more sites signed up to Browsealoud (or equivalent technology) the more benefit it will bring to the users.

However, what I think the previous commenter missed is that while these site-based text-to-speech (TTS) products won't particularly benefit those people who need a screen reader (as they will tend to have one anyway), it will benefit people with poorer literacy, people with dyslexia, people with milder vision impairments and people with english as a second language. It isn't always about vision per se.

Indeed Browsealoud is specifically not targeted at people with sight conditions as it requires a mouse. It is for people with literacy problems who can benefit from text-to-speech on parts of a page but don't need a full blown screenreader to read the entire page. It is free to these people - how wonderful. Other than signing up there is no work required to Browsealoud enable a site. Conforming to normal web standands obviously aids it but as you said we should be doing that anyway. The cost, isn't much in the grand scheme of things - certainly not compared to the development hours required to really make a site accessible. Its an easy way for us to help out a few people. It is precisely that business model that makes it attractive. Would it be nice if it was free to site owners too? Of course! But until someone altruistically produces and freeware/open source version it very reasonably aint gonna happen. James Developer of a site that uses Browsealoud.

Sorry JPB I disagree with one of your statements.

"The cost, isn't much in the grand scheme of things - certainly not compared to the development hours required to really make a site accessible."

If best practices are being used during website development the additional development hours needed to make the site accessible really aren't as much as people seem to make out.

Just found an open source alternative WebAnywhere.

No need for users to buy expensive software or websites to be locked into proprietary systems.

I'm not against proprietary software just don't feel quite comfortable about people making money for systems that take advantage of people's disabilities when there are already standards and methods available to do this free of charge.