Home Page Reader (HPR) was a computer program, a self-voicing web browser designed for people who are blind. It was developed by IBM from the work of Chieko Asakawa at IBM Japan.
HPR was introduced in 1998 for the Windows 95 operating system. The major innovation of HPR was that it directly used the HTML content of the web page to build its model of the content, allowing it to more flexibly handle interactions important for the Web, such as navigating content that scrolled off the screen, navigating between different frames, and interacting with form fields. The common way that screen readers attempted to work at the time was by directly "reading the screen."
The screen reader met World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML 4.01 specifications, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
In 2006, it was announced on the HPR mailing list that IBM "does not have plans for any further updates of HPR" and the software was subsequently withdrawn from sale by IBM in December 2006. IBM has given code to be used as a Firefox extension.
The program also had a peer-support mailing list.Its archives were available at http://www.talklist.com/forms/ibm-hpr
System requirements
Hardware HPR had the following hardware requirements: 166 MHz processor 32 MB RAM Windows 95/98; 64 MB RAM for Windows NT 14 MB hard disk space; 42 MB hard disk space for HPR and Netscape Communicator SVGA (640 X 480, 256 colors) graphics Windows-compatible: modem (28.8 Kbps), sound card (16-bit), and CD ROM drive (quad-speed) Integrated or separately attached numeric keypad
Software
HPR had the following software requirements: Microsoft Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0 Internet service provider (ISP) connection Netscape Navigator Version 3.01 or higher For Home Page Mailer, Microsoft Personal Web Server, Version 4.02 required for Windows 95/98; Peer Web Services, Version 4.0 required for Windows NT A mail program set up with preferences, or Microsoft Personal Web Server or Peer Web Services required for mailto: tags
References Notes
References
External links
HomePage reader @ evolt. , IBM IBM Home Page Reader Keyboard Shortcuts, WebAIM IBM Home Page Reader Tutorial, WebAIM