IBM Home Page Reader

      Home Page Reader
      IBM Home Page Reader icon.png
      HomePageReader Homepage.png
      Home Page Reader 3.0 rendering Wikipedia.
      Developer(s) IBM Special System Needs (SNS)
      Discontinued 3.04[1] / 2005; 8 years ago (2005)
      Development status Discontinued
      Operating system Windows 95/98/NT
      Platform Windows
      Available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish[3]
      Type Screen Reader
      Website Homepage (Archive.org)

      Home Page Reader (Hpr) was a computer program, a self-voicing web browser designed for people who are blind. It was developed by IBM from the work of Chieko Asakawa at IBM Japan.

      The screen reader met World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML 4.01 specifications, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.[4]

      In 2006, it was announced on the Hpr mailing list that IBM does not have plans for any further updates of HPR and the software was subsequently withdrawn from sale by IBM in December 2006.[5] IBM has given code to be used as a Firefox extension.[citation needed]

      It has been superseded by IBM Easy Web Browsing.

      The program also had a peer-support mailing list.[6][note 1]

      Criticism

      In summer 2002 a non-scientific study conducted that Hpr didn't make any distinction between the built in keyboard shortcuts for going in different modes and available access keys in websites. Although the researches claiming that Hprs mechanism actually would make more sense using links mode to cycle through a list.[7]

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      System requirements

      Hardware Requirements

      Hpr had the following hardware requirements:[2]

      • 166 MHz processor
      • 32 MB RAM Windows 95/98; 64 MB RAM for Windows NT
      • 14 MB hard disk space; 42 MB hard disk space for HPR and Netscape Communicator
      • SVGA (640 X 480, 256 colors) graphics
      • Windows compatible: modem (28.8 KBPS), sound card (16-bit), and CD ROM drive (quad-speed)
      • Integrated or separately attached numeric keypad

      Software Requirements

      Home Page Reader splash screen.

      Hpr had the following software requirements:[2]

      • Microsoft Windows 95,98 or NT 4.0
      • Internet service provider (ISP) connection
      • Netscape Navigator Version 3.01 or higher
      • For Home Page Mailer, Microsoft Personal Web Server, Version 4.02 required for Windows 95/98; Peer Web Services, Version 4.0 required for Windows NT
      • A mail program set up with preferences, or Microsoft Personal Web Server or Peer Web Services required for mailto: tags
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      References

      Notes
      1. ^ Its archives were available at http://www.talklist.com/forms/ibm-hpr
      References
      1. ^ "Home Page Reader Version 3 : Spectronics - Inclusive Learning Technologies". Retrieved 10 August 2010. 
      2. ^ a b c "IBM Home Page Reader". Retrieved 10 August 2010. 
      3. ^ "IBM relaunch browser for the blind". evolt.org. Retrieved 10 August 2010. 
      4. ^ "IBM Home Page Reader 3.04". IBM. 2007. Archived from the original on 3 April 2007. Retrieved 10 August 2010. 
      5. ^ faulkner, steve (November 7, 2006). "IBM Home Page Reader is Dead". AOL Ability. Archived from the original on 7 January 2007. Retrieved 10 August 2010. 
      6. ^ "BLIST: The Comprehensive Index of Blindness-Related Emailing Lists". June 20, 2002. Retrieved 10 August 2010. 
      7. ^ "Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it?". wats.ca. October 2006. Retrieved 7 January 2011. 
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      External links

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      Last modified on 15 March 2013, at 18:12