Home Page Reader (Hpr) was a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...

, a self-voicing

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

designed for people who are blind. It was developed by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

from the work of Chieko Asakawa at IBM Japan. The screen reader met

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

(W3C) HTML 4.01 specifications,

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet. They are a set of re ...

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the Hpr mailing list that IBM ''does not have plans for any further updates of HPR'' and the software was subsequently withdrawn from sale by IBM in December 2006.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 Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

extension. The program also had a peer-support mailing list.Its archives were available at http://www.talklist.com/forms/ibm-hpr

Criticism

In summer 2002 a non-scientific study concluded that Hpr did not make any distinction between the built-in

keyboard shortcuts In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...

for entering different modes and the access keys available on websites. The research claimed that Hprs would do better to use links mode to cycle through a list.

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

Criticism

System requirements

Hardware

Software

References

External links