Monthly Archives: April 2012

ATbar and Marketplace Launched

ATbar logoATbar that was added to the REALISE site as an idea in 2011, has been rewritten to cope with English and Arabic languages thanks to Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Center). There is a standard Lite version and a build your own version. Plugins can be added to an empty ATbar to offer users a customisable approach to enhanced reading of accessible web pages.

The standard ATbar Lite is a bookmark that can be dragged to the browser toolbar (or added to favorites). It has a set collection of plugins. Fonts can be enlarged, their style changed with increased line spacing to aid readability.

There is a spell checker and dictionary. Text to speech for reading selected text uses a female Acapela voice in both languages. The use of Readability reduces clutter on a web page and word prediction comes thanks to AItype. It works with all plain text edit boxes.

The entire look and feel of an accessible web page can be changed to offer high contrast mode with linear text or just colour changes to the text and links. The toolbar colour can be changed. It is possible to reset pages and exit the toolbar at anytime. When a new web page is loaded the toolbar has to be relaunched.

To customise your own ATbar go to the marketplace and install the required plugins – the toolbar can be saved and used in a similar way to the Lite version.