Utah State University Professor Norman Coombs is one of more than a million visually impaired computer users who have found new freedom through the Internet. Thousands of newspapers, magazines, and books on the World Wide Web allow access to visually impaired users. One site that Professor Coombs found had all of the works of William Shakespeare. He downloaded all of Shakespeare's works and saved them to disks.
Many blind users use software called screen readers to access computers.
The software audibly reads the text that is on the computer screen. Because of this technology, visually impaired users can finally do things that sited users take for granted. Unfortunately, the World Wide Web is not the nirvana it appears to be for the visually impaired. Because of the way many web sites are designed, their content is completely inaccessible to screen readers. The first is the organization of the site and the second is the use of images without some form of alternative text.