A speech-based web co-authoring platform for the blind

Abstract

Today, even in the presence of IT applications built for the blind, they are facing many problems. Either the applications are for individual’s use or if offer collaborative writing, they are not up to the mark. In the collaborative writing, for instance, in Microsoft Word Add-In and the Google Docs UI, the authors do not know about changes made in the document. Though the former facilitates this feature through adding comments in the document, but the dynamic actions, e.g. notifications (the user sign-in, editing the document, closing it) and communication option is yet to be considered. We describe a web application for the blind community to work on a shared document from different locations. Users are able to write, read, edit, and update the collaborative document in a controlled way. We aim to enhance the self-reliance among users and improve performance.