Adding semantics in web-based digital libraries to support information seeking of blind people

Universal accessibility is one of the primary targets in the development of the World Wide Web (WWW), but unfortunately some groups of people have problems in accessing the WWW efficiently. Clearly, blind users are such a group that must deal firstly with the reading task of a web page. Secondly, because the WWW has turned into a highly interactive media and web pages are designed with sighted users in mind, blind users have to overcome the problem of inefficient within-web-page and across document browsing. This paper presents and discusses an ongoing research effort which aims to exploit the idea of semantic web for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the information seeking process of blind users. A set of tools are described which are used to semantically enrich web-based digital libraries and therefore make browsing of blind people more rational and therefore more efficient. Taken together the proposed tools (an ontology editor, an annotation tool and a specialized voice web browser) shape a methodology that could produce semantically enhanced web-based digital libraries, and could potentially make information seeking in the WWW easier for the blind people.