USEFUL LINKS
This page includes links of organizations and companies in the Philippines and abroad which support not only the blind and visually impaired people, but some other disabilities in general.
Organizations that Related to Blindness
- Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability (APCD): It is a regional center on disability established in Bangkok, Thailand as a legacy of the Asia and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons 1993-2002, under joint collaboration of the Government of Japan and the Royal Thai Government. Its overall goal is to promote the empowerment of people with disabilities and a barrier-free society in developing countries in the Asia and Pacific Region.
- International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI): It is a global association of individuals and organizations that promotes equal access to appropriate education for all children and youth with visual impairment so that they may achieve their full potential.
- National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA): The National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) formerly known as the National Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons (NCWDP) is the national government agency mandated to formulate policies and coordinate the activities of all agencies, whether public or private, concerning disability issues and concerns. As such, the NCWDP is the lead agency tasked to steer the course of program development for persons with disabilities and the delivery of services to the sector.
- Resources for the Blind Inc. (RBI): A non-profit charitable organization which provides a full spectrum of services to blind persons nationwide. This involves counseling, rehabilitation, education, training, and it is active in preventing blindness and in restoring sight whenever possible.
- St. Nicholas' Home: A centre for the care and rehabilitation of children and adults with visual or multi-sensory handicap.
Screen Readers
- JAWS For WINDOWS: It is the world's most popular screen reader which developed for computer users whose vision loss prevents them from seeing screen content, JAWS reads aloud what's on the PC screen. It enables a user to work with Microsoft Office Suite, MSN Messenger, Corel WordPerfect, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox - and many more applications that are used on a regular basis on the job and in school.
- NVDA - NonVisual Desktop Access: It is the first completely free and open-source screen reader for the Windows Operating System. NVDA works with Windows XP and Vista and can be run directly off a USB thumb drive or CD. Currently, it can also be used in 11 different languages.
- System Access : It delivers full access to any computer running the Windows XP or later operating system. A user gets all the functionality of traditional screen readers and more, at a fraction of the price, and without the burden of extensive training. SA is intuitive and easy to use. With just a few basic commands a user can use popular applications such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook (including the calendar function), Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Adobe Reader (including forms filling), Skype, and many more.
- Thunder: Thunder is award-winning free screenreader talking software for blind and visually impaired people. Thunder is a reading aid and restores the ability to write, keep up to date with information, learning and work, while remaining within the mainstream of Society.
- WebAnywhere: It is a non-visual interface to the web that requires no new software to be downloaded or installed. It works right in the browser, which means you can access it from any computer, even heavily locked-down public computer terminals. WebAnywhere enables you to interact with the web in a similar way to how you may have used other screen readers, such as JAWS or Window-Eyes, before.
- Window-Eyes: It is nothing less than the most stable screen reader available on the market today. Featuring Windows 2000, Windows XP (Home, Professional, and Media Center), Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista (all 32-bit versions, including Vista Ultimate, Vista Home Premium, Vista Home Basic, Vista Business, and Vista Enterprise) compatibility, Window-Eyes puts a user in the hands of the most powerful screen reading software ever created.
Web Accessibility Tools
- Accessibility Color Wheel: This handy tool is useful to test the accessibility pairing between background color and text.
- Browsershots:Browsershots is a free online platform where you can test your web design in different browsers. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will automatically open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.
- Colour Contrast Analyser: It is provided to allow you to check the contrast of two colours using the W3C's colour contrast algorithm by specifying the colours directly.
- Google Analytics:Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a web site. After that, it gives information about how people found a specific web site and how they interact with that site.
- Graybit: It is an online accessibility testing tool designed to visually convert a full-color web page into a grayscale rendition for the purpose of visually testing the page's perceived contrast.
- Web Accessibility Toolbar:It contains many functions for examining discrete aspects of a web page's content and code. These can be used as an aid for manual checking of many of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines' Checkpoints. None of the toolbar functions listed will tell you whether a page conforms to a particular checkpoint, but they will help you in assessing conformance.
- WebVisum:It is a unique browser add on which greatly enhances web accessibility and empowers the blind and visually impaired community by putting the control in your hands! It has the following features such as: community driven tagging and page enhancements, automated and instant CAPTCHA image solving, built in helper functions for easier page navigation and less confusion, numerous under the hood page tweaks designed to help screen reader users, and visually Impaired users benefit from features such as high contrast page viewing, link and focus highlighting, and more.