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Home Page Reader no more

• By Paul Crichton
• 15 Nov 06, 12:05 PM

Last week that they have no plans to continue the development of the in the future. HPR was initially launched in the 1990s, and was one of the first screen readers developed for use with the web.

So what is the likely impact of this news? Well, there are no statistics available to say how popular HPR is, but the smart money suggests that this news will have a minimal impact. This may well be the case, as HPR only works with the internet, and most people who need a also need one to be able to use their computer and the programs that run from it.

The demise of HPR is perhaps more likely to have a bigger impact on web designers. It provides a low cost entry point for developers who are interested in testing their websites for accessibility. , whilst it is the industry standard screen reader, is also prohibitively expensive for small businesses. For that if nothing else, HPR is a valuable resource.

You can argue that since JAWS is the screen reader that most people use, then there is no point testing with HPR. There is something to this, as commands are not the same - it requires different keystrokes in each program to pull up a list of links on a web page for example - but you still end up with a list of links. Even putting this to one side, you may, or more likely, may not be surprised to know that a lot of websites out there would benefit from having the webmaster sit down with HPR and just load a few pages to hear what it sounds like.

Hopefully, IBM will keep HPR available for download, even if it won鈥檛 be updated. And hopefully, web masters and developers will keep using it and finding it a useful tool in their attempts to make their websites more accessible.

IBM will be continuing to work on accessibility related projects. Currently, these include a screen reader for the operating system, as well as accessibility features and extensions for the browser.

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