What?

Symbolyze is a prototype application that attempts to open a small window to the Web for users who cannot read textual content. It retrieves videos and images that are related to a string of symbols that represent objects and concepts.

Why?

Despite its phenomenal growth, the World Wide Web still only reaches 25% of the world's population. Over the next few years, this number will double as mobile and broadband technology reaches more and more people in the developing world.

However, a large proportion of those people will have little or no literacy. For them, viewing webpages in a browser will not be a feasible way of accessing content on the Web.

This prototype application seeks to demonstrate that a simple, text-free interface to the Web can be useful. It does not seek to create a fully functional application for general use. It is more of a proof-of-concept.

It is hoped that further research and development along this path will ultimately lead to a simple, general-purpose interface that would allow users with little or no literacy to use the Web.

How?

Symbolyze is a Flash application that retrieves content from the Web using the Google AJAX Search API. Picture symbols are from sclera.be.

Symbolyze is developed and maintained by Symmetri