UEFI BIOS Accessibility for the Visually Impaired

TL;DR

This paper explores making UEFI BIOS environments accessible to visually impaired users by developing a screen reader prototype that interacts with audio hardware, aiming to improve accessibility in pre-OS settings.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to enhance BIOS accessibility for the visually impaired by creating a functional screen reader prototype for UEFI systems.

Findings

Prototype successfully accesses audio hardware in UEFI systems.

Demonstrates potential for accessible BIOS environments.

Lays groundwork for further development in BIOS accessibility.

Abstract

People with some kind of disability face a high level of difficulty for everyday tasks because, in many cases, accessibility was not considered necessary when the task or process was designed. An example of this scenario is a computer's BIOS configuration screens, which do not consider the specific needs, such as screen readers, of visually impaired people. This paper proposes the idea that it is possible to make the pre-operating system environment accessible to visually impaired people. We report our work-in-progress in creating a screen reader prototype, accessing audio cards compatible with the High Definition Audio specification in systems running UEFI compliant firmware.