Custom summary views for screen reader

Abstract

A screen reader software product feature referred to as a custom summary view, or custom summary, has been developed. The custom summary feature solves the major problem faced by blind users when working with large sets of data. That problem occurs as a result of an inefficiency of gleaning important data from within these larger sets. The custom summary provides the ability to gather such data into a summary that can be navigated easily. This ease of navigation greatly levels the playing field in the competitive workplace for blind workers and students alike. Also taught is a feature, referred to as a multiple region support, which allows users to define blocks of contiguous cells containing data as 'regions' when a document such as a spreadsheet is displayed by a screen reader. Regions can either be named by the user or be defined simply by the top left and bottom right cell addresses that represent the boundaries of the block of contiguous cells containing data.