In August, Eyenews had reported that Google search engine aims to make web search more accessible to visually impaired people. A.O.L., Yahoo! and other search engines are now following the same suit.

A.O.L., a unit of Time Warner Incorporated, will soon update A.O.L. web mail to make it more screen-reader friendly. The revisions, which will be under way by the end of the year, will eliminate the need for users with screen readers, to switch to a separate text-only page.

While designing its new home page, Yahoo! considered ways to make it more accessible to blind users. For example, carving the site into a greater number of headings such as ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Sports’ makes it easier for a visually impaired browser to navigate the site.

The new products and awareness appear to be making a difference. Eric Brinkman, 19, said he used to have to reformat nearly every page he arrived at so that it could work with his screen reader. Now, he finds that extra step unnecessary, and he has also uncovered new tricks and shortcut keys for navigating around sites, such as Wikipedia.org, Google.com and Amazon.com.

New tools for internet developers has encouraged further improvements across a broad range of sites. Microsoft Corporation has recently released U.I. Automation, developer technologies that will make it easier for screen readers to translate robust Web applications. The technologies will allow screen readers to convey information to users such as how many new messages are in their in boxes without reading off each message individually and to find all the links on the page quickly and alert the browser to the mails that they have already visited.

The new Web services coincide with revision of U.S. federal Web accessibility standards and renewed legal efforts to get accessibility guidelines more widely adopted.