2 Quick Access to Dictionaries for Blind and Visually Impaired People

Abstract. Editors publish more and more electronic books on CDR or online. Generally, they use their own databases to create the web pages. But this pages are often not or badly adapted to visually impaired (frames, use of columns…). We propose a tool that use those databases to create accessible web pages for visually impaired readers. 1 A Solution for Quick Access to Dictionaries The access to dictionaries and encyclopedias is essential at school, university or work. Traditional techniques, like large print or embossed Braille, would result in many bulky volumes making quite uneasy their reading. A few years ago, the emergence of dictionaries on CD-ROM and more recently on the Web, provided new opportunities for the visually impaired to access dictionaries. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that some of these dictionaries are accessible with Screen Readers, the user interface has to be optimized for improving the reading process. The general trend in the publishing world is to build databases whose content is independent of the reading interface, using structured languages like XML (eXtensiv