Review: Browse The Web With LowBrowse

It's called LowBrowse, and it uses a two-pane approach to display the page as it exists, and magnifies portions of the page the user is interested in.

Why is that so important? With sites paying greater attention to layout, visual aesthetics, and grouped navigation, being able to see how the site is organized simplifies the process of finding information. Existing programs -- Web browsers, screen readers, and magnifiers -- help the visually impaired surf the Web, but they don't let people with moderate or severe low vision view the site as designed. Those products may reformat the page or strip out the layout entirely.

LowBrowse opens up a reader pane at the top of each browser window. The size of the pane can be set to personal preference. Once the size of the pane, the font color, font size, and font type has been set, it applies to any Web site. Set it up once and you are good to go. Point the mouse at a bit of text on the Website, and LowBrowse re-renders the text at the preset size and font in the reader pane. Links appear as blue in the reader pane.

The reader pane can also be toggled to accept input, such as in a text box or a field. LowBrowse automatically masks characters in password fields to maintain security.

This isn't just magnification, which most browsers already support. It strips out the background from the text, and displays it in the preferred font. Reviewers selected Verdana, so regardless of what the site itself used, all the text appeared in the reader pane in Verdana font. If users wanted to see what the page (with backgrounds and other objects) looked like, they just had to glance at the main window.

It can also display images in three different zoom sizes. When it can't figure out how to handle something, the reader pane is blank.

LowBrowse is not its own browser, but a FireFox addon. It can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux. Underlying differences between the Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms mean there are minor differences in how the plugin behaves. For example, LowBrowse's keyboard commands require an "accelerator" key in addition to the Alt-key and the actual letter for the command. The accelerator key is the "Ctrl" key for Windows and Linux users; "Command" for OS X users.

Some hardware vendors have mapped the Ctrl-Alt combination to bring up their own applications and menus. If they conflict with LowBrowse's commands, there is an option to remap the browser's commands.

LowBrowse worked for surfing news sites, performing searches, and reading blogs. The reader pane can be toggled on and off depending on the site, which is handy. The pane worked just fine with multiple tabs, as well.

Users can use LowBrowse's speech feature instead of reading the text in the reader frame. It works the same way: hover the mouse over the original text and LowBrowser will read it aloud. Point the mouse to a different section and it will immediately switch to the new text. There is no need to wait for the previous sentence to complete. This helps with skimming through a site.

There were some quirks. During configuration, users have to use the + and " key to adjust parameters such as font size, or to scroll through options, like color scheme. This is the only time the + and " key is used. Thankfully, the numeric keypad can be used for this.

LowBrowse depends on the mouse and not the keyboard to know what to display in the reader pane. The reader pane shows the part of the document that is under the mouse cursor. To view a different part of the document, or the next line, the user needs to move the mouse. Hitting the up or down arrow does not move the text to the next line. For some sites, LowBrowse was able to treat a block of text as one section, and display multi-lines, as long as the user pressed the left- and right-arrow keys to scroll through. For other sections, this was not possible at all. When the left- and right- arrows would scroll through a text seemed a little arbitrary and not consistent. This seemed a little too difficult to get used to.

LowBrowse is still limited in what it can do. It currently has no support for Flash or other embedded objects, like screencasts and video from YouTube. There is also no integration for history and bookmarks with LowBrowse. LowBrowse had trouble reading HTML-text emails in Gmail and Yahoo!, rendering the text as gibberish. This wasn't consistent, however, which was frustrating. If a message couldn't be read, switching to a different message, and then back, sometimes fixed the problem. But again, not always.

LowBrowse also could not read the news headlines under Yahoo! Classic, but had no trouble in the new Yahoo! Mail. Conversely, it had trouble rendering text from the new version of Gmail, but no trouble seeing individual emails and subject lines in the old version.

Having LowBrowse as a Firefox 3-only plugin seems a little problematic for a few reasons. It shuts out users who are using FireFox 2. Upgrading is not always an option, as there are several Websites and Web applications that currently do not work under FireFox 3. It also shuts out users using Internet Explorer, or Opera, as well as sites that work correctly only under Internet Explorer (Many government-based browsers are guilty of this).

LowBrowse was developed by Lighthouse International, an advocate for the visually impaired based in New York City, under a grant from the National Eye Institute. The download link is on the LightHouse International Website. It is also available from addons.mozilla.org, but only as an "experimental" plugin, requiring users to login before downloading.

The FireFox-LowBrowse combination is currently not in a position to become the defacto browser for the visually impaired. Other third-party browsers or using screen readers will remain the default way to access the Web, but it is a nice companion tool to have in case seeing the Web page in its entirety is necessary.