Less educated and visually impaired Ugandans will in future access information on the internet by talking through their mobile phones, a visiting British computer scientist has said.

"We will create voice applications where one does not have to read or write at all to access the internet but by speaking," said Mr Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, a technology used to access information through computers and mobile phones.

Presently, the only people in Uganda with the capacity to search the web are the literate and those without visual impairment because most phones and computers favour them.

Mr Berners-Lee said the voice applications will be developed besides the Short Messaging Service (SMS) functions that can make it possible for the disabled to exploit the opportunities that the internet presents.

The innovations will be created through the World Wide Web Foundation, a charity organisation that empowers people to access online content, which Mr Berners-Lee launched in Uganda in Kampala last week.

Speaking to journalists, Mr Berners-Lee said the move towards creating the new technology features aims at increasing web usage among 80 per cent of the world's population (about 6.7 billion people) who are lagging behind the 1.3 billion (20 per cent) who currently use it.

Executives of the Foundation have also been to Egypt and Kenya where similar technology innovations will be introduced.

According to Ms Rosemary Leith, the director of the foundation, the new innovations will be created for users in "the coming months," once the learning phase of the limitations hindering them from using the Web and internet has ended.

Since its launch in 1991, the Web has become an important channel for collaboration and interaction between individuals, governments and companies in the world, through computers, and recently mobile phones.

The Web Foundation, in partnership with local private sector and Non-Governmental Organisations, also plans to bridge the local digital content gap that was identified as a major threat to web use in Uganda.

Mr Nelson Gaggawala Wambuzi, the minister of state for trade said embracing Mr Berners-Lee's invention would boost the economy.