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Help us to create the first web-mail interface for blind and visually impaired people
VoiceMyMail is a web-application, precisely the first ever completely accessible webmail interface for blind people that use assistive technology.
It let you log in to any webmail account from a single, simple and
all-round complete web interface.
- What's behind VoiceMyMail
- What do we need your help?
- No country for blind men
- VoiceMyMail takes care of you
- Nice body, but what about the motor?
- Donate and share
What's behind VoiceMyMail
First of all, passion. Passion for technology,
innovation, and for the easiest solutions to the hardest problems.
VoiceMyMail is primarily a need, not only for blind people, but for society.
It is a way to promote a new software and global services culture,
hoping that this will soon become the only possible way to conceive
the world of technology.
But what's behind VoiceMyMail is mostly people,
with their records and their ideas. These ideas are the real glue of
the innoviù team, a little company with great expectations. Often the
expectation measures with challenges that we, the people of innoviù,
consider worth fighting. This is why we turn to you, with the hope
that also the last obstacle separating us from the finish line, could
finally be overcomed.
A part of our team has been working for years
in the field of visual disability and faces everyday the problems and
the limits that we tried to explain as much as possible.
But there's one more limit, the most difficult
to overcome: our society dictates. Because when you're blind, you are not a disabled person just as soon as somebody shows it to you. And
VoiceMyMail was born to avoid it. With the contribution of everybody.
Here we are! Leonardo and Francesco, the VoiceMyMail founders.
The idea was born from the fortunate meeting of their specific experiences: Leonardo is an IT engineer, Francesco is an assistive technology and accessibility advisor expert. Two friends for one project.
Why do we need your help?
Because we are a hair's breadth away from the finish line. A demo version of VoiceMyMail is finally online, ready to show all of its value; totally accessible, absolutely universal, but not
fully global yet. It will be just if we raise resources enough to
guarantee the support to every worldwide-famous webmail provider and
the implementation of some essential features.
It's not an easy goal
and we sure know it, but it wasn't even obtaining a demo. And yet
VoiceMyMail exists, it works, and has already stood the most important test:
being used by blind people. Our most comforting result was certifying
that during the test, thanks to the ease of use, those people
couldn't distinguish between VoiceMyMail and a desktop software installed on
the personal computer.
Moreover, with your contribution we'll be able to seriously improve
VoiceMyMail's user experience, so that everybody can have an alternative to classical web-mails and make VoiceMyMail an actual option to the majors of the web mail services sector.
Here is VoiceMyMail's access door. You just have to insert the user name (domain included) and the password of your mail box to immediately log in to your account. The VoiceMyMail project was born to solve a big issue for visually disabled people, but you can take advantage of it, too. That's because the real accessible services are built for the needs of everybody.
PAY ATTENTION:
The demo run with Firefox 25 and latest (the only browser that supports totally ARIA protocol) and the screen readers Jaws 10 (and later) and NVDA.
You can now also try VoiceMyMail's demo. We blocked various features
and, as we're waiting for new, powerful enough servers to substain
the necessary traffic, it can be used just by a probationary e-mail
account. We hope that it is sufficient to get a sense of the work that has
been carried out and show its enormous potentialities.
No country for blind menHave you ever wondered how many times, in a day, you resort to technology?
10, 100, 1000 times? Don't you have any idea? This happens because when you commit to something, your inclination is to take it for granted.
So, just try to close your eyes and use your smartphone, your pc, your webmail account. It's so hard. Nonethless, plenty of people do it daily; people that, even without the faculty of sight, try to make the most of technology, often putting up unsatisfying results. However, technology isn't cruel or inappropriate: it's who produces innovation that doesn't plan it in an universal way.
That's why we created VoiceMyMail, our answer to an apparently expected, but still unlistened need: let everybody have total control of their webmail account.
WILL AT
LEAST THE BASIC SERVICES BE GUARANTEED?
Unfortunately not. We live in the society of information and of the
wild run to innovation, and there's no room for those who can't keep
up. The majors of IT that offer the most popular basic services, as
the web mail providers, don't offer barely adequate solutions to
visually disabled users. Ultimately, if you can't see, you can't use
the e-mail. Or at least, not like everybody else.
Nowadays, a visually disabled person is compelled to resort to
obsolete web mail clients to have the least possible features. We're
dealing with a leap behind of almost 20 years! Before Web 2.0, before
Web's spread. And we're not even considering aspects to whom a
traditional user can't absolutely renounce, like real-time
synchronization, the possibility of running a personal account from
various devices, the management of a shared address book and many
others.
VoiceMyMail takes care for you
That's why we think this is the right moment to give voice to our e-mail.
VoiceMyMail isn't another web mail service: it is a new service, conceived and realizes to break the sensorial barrier of e-mails. To fulfill it, we got to the bottom of the problem; we didn't try to interpretate the users' needs, but we listened personally to the people concerned: blind people.
Thanks to this approach we understood that, to be usable, you have to be global. How much more can you be global than offering a lonely web access to every e-mail box in the world? No need of installing anything, no complex configurations.
So, for a blind person, what are the advantages of VoiceMyMail compared to the other web-mails and the traditional e-mail clients?
You don't need to install it, as the other clients ask to. One could take it for granted, but even you should face long and muddled configuration sessions, if the only way to check the e-mails on your pc would be using a program. No web citizen could give up the comfort of the web mail ease, but the segment of people who are forced to. More, few people know that using a screen reader program requires a very stressful operative training, made of annoying key combinations and very long fluxes of operations, just to carry out outwardly simple actions like sending a message or downloading an attachment. Often a software update is enough to frustrate a years-long constant diligence!
You can log in to your web mail account from one only interface. VoiceMyMail will take care of selecting most suitable connector for your provider, leaving the user free to operate in total serenity. Logic structure, essential contents and no-frills!
There won't ever be advertising in VoiceMyMail, because we don't want leave place for information that could lead to confusion or make the contents less comprehensible. This is an accessibility rule that we chose to follow all the way.
It is simple to use and it reduces to the basics the number of necessary passages to complete the operations, a crucial thing for who can't use a mouse. For this reason we developped a new web surfing logic, that we named "MyMail Philosophy". It's founded on a capital principle resumed in the slogan/sentence "not more than three steps". Consult, write, answer, forward: everything in record time!
VoiceMyMail always knows how to help the user. In any moment you can avail of its "accessibility tools", like contextual menus (specific developped list of operative options), dynamic toolbars and hotkey practices. You are spoilt to choice to anything you need, making unnecessary the use of a mouse.
Nice body, but what about the motor?
When something works good for real, it doesn't
draw attentions. We left from this simple idea when we laid the
foundations for the engine of VoiceMyMail, and now its heart boasts
more than 5000 code lines!
VoiceMyMail's engine is named Tiche.js, like
Fortuna, the blind divinity par excellence; thanks to it, we came out
and create a web-application working better than a desktop software.
Simple recipe: ousting of all the preset behaviors of the browser,
evidence of the various operative possibilities for every step and
support for the user with clear state messages.
In this way we created a clean, tidy and
friendly environment, indispensable for who cannot see and incredibly
useful for who sees perfectly.
How can a web pag become something so advanced?
We put together Tiche.js and WAI-ARIA. ARIA means Accessible
Rich Internet Applications and
it is a way to "suggest" to screen readers the function of
the elements of a page. What about this: you take the right motor,
you give it the best gas and you will have the most reliable vehicle
in circulation!
The
result is that our system produces an additional layer of perfectly
integrated code, naked-eye imperceptible and priceless for who uses
the screen reader.
Donate and share!You can help us with a donation, but we also need your help to spread our project.
Share now this page with your network, like the Facebook page of the project and follow our updates in VoiceMyMail blog.