Symbol browsers for people with Learning Difficulties

Software that helps people with learning disabilities use the web

introduction

Many people with learning difficulties find the complexity of lots of websites makes them hard to understand and makes it difficult for them to find what they want.

While people who create websites should keep the language and navigation as simple as possible and add easy to recognise icons to help people with learning difficulties, this might not always be enough to make the page understandable.

A new technology called Symbol browsers can help by simplifying the content of a page to make in easy to understand to people with learning difficulties by converting text to easily recognised symbols.

An example Symbol browser is Communicate: Webwide by Widget (it used to be known as ' Webwise' ) which helps people with learning difficulties in two ways:

Non-readers can access information using only symbols
For those with some text knowledge, the symbols act as a reminder for the words that are not immediately recognised.

Widget's Communicate: Webwide symbol browser