Phoenix Fritch
CS 160
13 April 2016
	There have been several significant developments in software that allow blind people to browse the web.  Text to speech translators can translate the elements of a webpage into verbal words that are read out from the computer.  The programs typically run through the coding of the webpage, and read out flavor text that is including with images, reads through paragraph tags, and uses the html elements in the coding for the page to verbally break down the page and distinguish banners and pictures from other full bodies of text.  Since the information that the reader wants is usually buried several lines deep in a website, the program starts by breaking down the contents of the page.  Instead of just diving in and reading every little word, it can tell you about the layout of the website.  The program will read out things like “three columns, two rows.”  Apple devices have been developed to boast powerful text to speech capabilities – something that caused them to take ground over blackberries and other smartphones that have since fallen into obscurity.  iPhones have given their vision-impaired users the ability to tap on a particular area (thanks to the smaller screen and touchscreen capabilites) and have the contents of that area read out to them (things like “camera app” or “text field”).  This does take a considerable amount of work on the programmers part, however, since proper code requires going the extra mile to make your code compatible with the text to speech programs.  The development of machine learning has also made text to speech programs better, because machine learning has given computers the ability to read written text and other less standard characters with ease.  Picture recognition and facial recognition are becoming more powerful as machine learning develops, and the ability of programs to translate from pictures, text, and banners to speech continues to improve with it.