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Updated: Feb 21, 2026

A Web Tool for Generating High Quality Machine-readable Biological Pathways
Published on: February 8, 2017
NavMol 3.0: enabling the representation of metabolic reactions by blind users
Yuri Binev1, Daniela Peixoto1, Florbela Pereira1
1LAQV-REQUIMTE, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal.
Summary:
The representation of metabolic reactions strongly relies on visualization, which is a major barrier for blind users. The NavMol software renders the communication and interpretation of molecular structures and reactions accessible by integrating chemoinformatics and assistive technology. NavMol 3.0 provides a molecular editor for metabolic reactions. The user can start with templates of reactions and build from such cores. Atom-to-atom mapping enables changes in the reactants to be reflected in the products (and vice-versa) and the reaction centres to be automatically identified. Blind users can easily interact with the software using the keyboard and text-to-speech technology.
Availability And Implementation:
NavMol 3.0 is free and open source under the GNU general public license (GPLv3), and can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/navmol as a JAR file.
Contact:
joao@airesdesousa.com.
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