Touchscreen Smartphones for People with Visual Impairments and Blindness

The majority of popular touchscreen phones include two built-in accessibility features for people with visual impairments: a screen magnifier and a screen reader. They also offer a simpler version of the software, that can be used by kids, elderly and disabled. But, are there phones that are directly designed only for visually impaired?

BlindShell Smartphone:

My intention is not to advertise on this blog, but I would like to present a great solution that I recently came across. I visited Blinden- und Sehbehinderteenverband Steiermarkt, where they friendly showed me the products they offer. Among other I had a chance to get hands on the BlindShell Smartphone. The phone is available in multiple languages and can be used solely via finger gestures. For the ones that are not completely blind the phone has a very simple interface, with large white font on black background. A person navigates with one or double click. For the ones that are more experienced users and are more technology savvy, there are many more advanced features. Even a web browser is already integrated.

Since I said that I do not want to use my blog as a promotion tool, I will not mention the price, but I need to say, that the smartphone is definitely affordable.
You can get more information on their website: https://www.blindshell.com/

WA Law Requirements in Austria

In Austria they are aware of the extreme importance of web accessibility and they adopted a web accessibility law, not only for the public sector but also private providers that started running on 1. 1. 2016.

On the following links there are more information about the law requirements. All websites are in German only:
Digitales Österreich: https://www.digitales.oesterreich.gv.at/barrierefreies-web-zugang-fur-alle
WKO: https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/Service/Unternehmensfuehrung--Finanzierung-und-Foerderungen/Unternehmensfuehrung/Strategie--Organisation-und-Marketing/Barrierefreiheit---Info-der-Wirtschaftskammern.html
Document from WKO: https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/service/t/Barrierefreie-Websites_Inhaltliche-Umsetzung_2015-06.pdf (From june 2015, but still worth reading)

Accessibility (outside of web) as a necessity

When thinking about web accessibility specific it is always good to acquire a broader understanding of the accessibility in general.

In Oxford Dictionary the noun "accessibility" has following meanings:

1.1) The quality of being easy to obtain or use.

1.2) The quality of being easily understood or appreciated.

1.3) The quality of being easily reached, entered, or used by people who have a disability.

What many do not understand is, that accessibility should not be an option, but necessity. In Universal Declaration of Human Rights is written that all human beings are born equal in rights. However a right to access something is often neglected.

People with disabilities, regardless of the severity of dissability, should be viewed as an equal part of the society. Everyone deserves to be as independent as possible. Especially those who are taking part in design of any kinds should always keep that fact in mind. With making any kinds of products, buildings, services, etc. accessible, people with dissabilities are offered this independence.

Nowadays it is quite clear and commonly understood worldwide, that buildings need to be accessible for people on wheelchairs. Almost every bigger store has a parking specially reserved for the disabled. Other groups of people with disabilities are still being considerably neglected.

Did you ever wonder how a bling person can use an ATM machine to withdraw money, how a blind person can use an elevator or how it is possible to order a ticket at a ticket machine? Those are just some of the daily struggles that people without dissabilities can not even imagine. There are slowly more and more products in the public space which are designed in a way that also a blind users can operate them, but they should become self-evident in the near future. Below are some good practice examples. 

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Elevator_panel_with_Braille.jpg)

(http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/more-than-80-posb-dbs/2422342.html)

(http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/braille-atm-e1288198244242.jpg)

Websites worth reading

In this blog post I present some of the websites that are worth reading if you want to get closer to the topic of web accessibility.

W3C - Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0:  https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

(only in German) Barrierefreiheit im Internet ... einfach erklärt: http://www.einfach-barrierefrei.net/start/willkommen.html

Website by Luke McGrath, an accessibility consultant and writer: https://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/

Accessible Culture: http://accessibleculture.org/

We are Colorblind: http://wearecolorblind.com/

International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (you can download publications from ICCHP 2016 for free): http://www.icchp.org/

European Comission: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/standards/accessibility/index_en.htm

Web Design for the Color Blind

Even though the colour blind people are not actually blind we can classify them into a group of vision impaired people. There are different types of colour blindness but in general those people are facing the inability or decreased ability to see colour or perceive colour differences under normal lighting conditions. This might lead to limited or incorrect perception of websites. The requirements for colour-blind-friendly websites are part of the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0” and point out the importance of colour blindness in the context of web design. 

8% of the male population and 0,5% of the female population are colour-blind. Unfortunately most of the websites do not take this into consideration and do not think about colour blindness when designing their websites. It is really important that at least the most crucial information on the website is designed in colour-blind-friendly way. This can easily be tested using colour contrast checkers, many of which are available for free. It is evident from the fact that there are simulations of two colour blindness types available in Photoshop that colour blindness is also becoming important part of a designer's work.

There are many different forms or types of colour blindness, some of them are quite common and some are rare, but we still have to consider all of them if we want to create accessible and well preserved design. An important facts is, that more than 99% of all colour-blind people can see colour. The assumption of seeing only black and white, which comes out of its name is therefore completely wrong. Colour-blind people are not actually colour blind but just colour deficient. The deficiency is different in each of the types which make colour-blind people part of different user (sub-) groups. Within all the different forms there are however also varieties in the severity of colour blindness. Usually the severity is divided into four categories: absolute, strong, moderate and slightly severity. Slight colour blindness may barely vary from the normal vision. 

One of the color blindness simulator pages :http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/

Great sources to learn about color blindness are:

http://wearecolorblind.com/

http://www.color-blindness.com/what-is-color-blindness/

Very interesting for designers (print or web), is the following link: https://designshack.net/articles/accessibility/tips-for-designing-for-colorblind-users/

Assistive Technologies

In this blog post I am going to present most common assistive technologies that are being commonly used by disabled.Below there are descriptions of the selected assistive technologies, which are copied from Berkeley: https://webaccess.berkeley.edu/resources/assistive-technology

• Screen readers: Software used by blind or visually impaired people to read the content of the computer screen. Examples include JAWS for Windows, NVDA, or Voiceover for Mac.

• Screen magnification software: Allow users to control the size of text and or graphics on the screen. Unlike using a zoom feature, these applications allow the user to have the ability to see the enlarged text in relation to the rest of the screen. This is done by emulating a handheld magnifier over the screen.

• Text readers: Software used by people with various forms of learning disabilities that affect their ability to read text. This software will read text with a synthesized voice and may have a highlighter to emphasize the word being spoken. These applications do not read things such as menus or types of elements - they only read the text.

• Speech input software: Provides people with difficulty in typing an alternate way to type text and also control the computer. Users can give the system some limited commands to perform mouse actions. Users can tell the system to click a link or a button or use a menu item. Examples would be Dragon Naturally Speaking for Windows or Mac. Please note both Windows and Mac have some speech recognition utilities, but they cannot be used to browse the web.

• Alternative input devices: Some users may not be able to use a mouse or keyboard to work on a computer. These people can use various forms of devices, such as:

• Head pointers: A stick or object mounted directly on the user’s head that can be used to push keys on the keyboard. This device is used by individuals who have no use of their hands.

• Motion tracking or eye tracking: This can include devices that watch a target or even the eyes of the user to interpret where the user wants to place the mouse pointer and moves it for the user.

• Single switch entry devices: These kinds of devices can be used with other alternative input devices or by themselves. These are typically used with on-screen keyboards. The on-screen keyboard has a cursor move across the keys, and when the key the user wants is in focus, the user will click the switch. This can also work on a webpage: the cursor can move through the webpage, and if the user wants a to click on a link or button when that link or button is in focus, the user can activate the switch.

Commonly used by the blind computer users is also Braille Display, which is electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters. It can be used alone or in combination with screen reader. There is a website in German language, that describes different assistive technologies and their use in detail, among everything else that there is to know about web accessibility. It is one of the best websites about web accessibility that I found so far: http://www.einfach-barrierefrei.net/verstehen/hilfsmittel

Why (not) developing accessible websites?

After listening to many web accesibility lectures or presentations and reading a lot of articles and posts I got an idea about the issues with accessible web development. There are a lot of missunderstandings that not only clients who want a website but also web designers and developers believe into. They simply do not see the benefit that they could get with an accessible website or they simply do not acknowledge the need for it at all. Following I will describe the most common misunderstandings for both clients and developers.

1.) Not understanding the term "Web Accessibility" 

There are a lot of people who never heard the term »Web Accessibility«. I was listening to one of the presentations at ICCHP 2016, where they presented some answers to a question, what do you think web accessibility means. There were a lot of people who simply thought that »accessibility« reffers to a certain website being »online« and ready for viewing, which means they think that a website is not accesible if for example they loose internet connection or a server breaks down.

Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers for people with disabilities. Making website accessible means, to make it accessible for people with dissabilities.

2.) There are not many disabled à FALSE!

The United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities states that "persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others"(http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/health/disability)

At the EU level, about 28% of women aged 16 and over declare an activity limitation compared to 23% of men of the same age group (http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1569&context=gladnetcollect).With the population aging, the group of disabled people is becoming larger and larger.  

3.) People with disabilities cannot use a computer à FALSE!

With the help of Assistive Technologies that provide greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, disabled can use a computer without problems, if the softwares are compatible with them. Therefore they can also browse the web without problems, if the websites are accessible. 

A lot of disabled use computers frequently in their daily life, some of them even professionaly. 

(Aditional reading: http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter03.html)

4.) It would not bring profit à FALSE!

Not only disabled gain from accessible websites. Usually the complete UX is improved, which means that everyone benefits from it. Not only that accessible websites are easier to interact with, they are also better optimized for the search engines. That means that people would like the page more and the page would be easier to find, which of course leads to more profit.

5.) Making website accessible is too complicated à FALSE!

Making a website accessible in the present day is relatively easy, since the guidelines for accessibility are described so well. If accessibility is kept in mind from the start it is easy to just add essential elements to code. Developers do not need any complicated knowledge, but just have to follow descriptions in the WCAG guidelines. 

6. ) It is expensive to make website accessible à FALSE!

Making a website accessible is not particularly expensive, especially if the accesibility is kept in mind right from the start of development. There is not much additional code that has to be written, so the costs should not be significally higher.  

7.) It is time consuming to make website accessible à FALSE!

Making a website accesible would not add a considerable amount of time to the development process. If developers think about accessibility from the first day they start with the development it would be just a few additional lines of code combined, which would not delay the developing process in any aspect.

8.) It will decrease the loading speed à FALSE!

The sites do not load any slower if they are accessible, since they do not require any additional content that would slow down the loading process. What is needed in the most cases are just simple HTML elements and some additional Javascript.