Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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If you live around San Francisco, please come participate in a Google User Experience study! (self.Blind)
submitted by chanberrysauce
A friend of mine who works for Google is looking for people with vision impairments to participate in a study. Here's a message from her:
At Google, we are focusing heavily on making our products accessible for users who are visually-impaired. We are currently organizing a study for users with significant visual impairment to get feedback on the accessibility of our products. This feedback is invaluable so that we can continue to make our products better for users all over the world.
We have a study coming up tomorrow (September 15), consisting of a 30 minute visit to our San Francisco office. If you are interested in participating, please click on the link $1. We then will get in touch directly with users who look like a good fit for the study. Please feel free to forward the link to others who may be interested, or have them contact me directly at brynatsai@google.com or 650-495-7588 for more information.
Thank you!
Edit: For people who aren't around SF or Mountain View, you can give comments on Google products here! https://www.google.com/accessibility/get-in-touch.html
At Google, we are focusing heavily on making our products accessible for users who are visually-impaired. We are currently organizing a study for users with significant visual impairment to get feedback on the accessibility of our products. This feedback is invaluable so that we can continue to make our products better for users all over the world.
We have a study coming up tomorrow (September 15), consisting of a 30 minute visit to our San Francisco office. If you are interested in participating, please click on the link $1. We then will get in touch directly with users who look like a good fit for the study. Please feel free to forward the link to others who may be interested, or have them contact me directly at brynatsai@google.com or 650-495-7588 for more information.
Thank you!
Edit: For people who aren't around SF or Mountain View, you can give comments on Google products here! https://www.google.com/accessibility/get-in-touch.html
Nighthawk321 3 points 6y ago
I really hope there are people in this sub who live in San Fransisco. Google needs to step up their game.
-shacklebolt- 2 points 6y ago
I've used Android from 2.1 (back when you needed a physical keypad and a physical D-pad to functionally use the device) all the way up to my current Android devices (phone, tablet) that run up to 5.1.1. I'm probably calling it quits when I upgrade.
The touch navigation on my phone is just terrible, I'm constantly accidentally activating things when scrolling through menus, and the lack of ability to disable talkback interactions with the virtual keyboard (necessitating weird long presses for each key which is painstakingly slow) has me at my limit.
I started using Android being really enthusiastic about the changes that were being made and the progress that pointed to a comprehensive accessibility solution that actually worked coming around. I love the customization ability on my phone, I love being able to install Eloquence TTS on my phone (and this is the one reason I've been hesitant to switch) but after years of using it I still struggle with the accessibility "features" and their implementation.
On the other hand, I picked up my boyfriend's iPhone/iPad, looked up how to enable voiceover, and pretty much figured out how to basically use it in about 15 minutes. I can type quickly, it's easy for me to find what I'm looking for and only activate that thing, and the whole experience is so much better. I'm now faster when intermittently using someone else's iPhone than I am using the Android phones I've owned for 6 or 7 years, and that's pretty damning.
(And if you have useful vision, the magnifier on the iphone is better too. The zoom "controller" makes it similar to using a computer magnifier for faster scanning of long text, and the magnifier is easy to keep consistently open and closed when you want it.)
At many steps throughout this process, I've asked myself "has Google actually ASKED a blind person what makes sense?" I'm glad to see that they're asking, and I hope that they can actually hear the answers.
The touch navigation on my phone is just terrible, I'm constantly accidentally activating things when scrolling through menus, and the lack of ability to disable talkback interactions with the virtual keyboard (necessitating weird long presses for each key which is painstakingly slow) has me at my limit.
I started using Android being really enthusiastic about the changes that were being made and the progress that pointed to a comprehensive accessibility solution that actually worked coming around. I love the customization ability on my phone, I love being able to install Eloquence TTS on my phone (and this is the one reason I've been hesitant to switch) but after years of using it I still struggle with the accessibility "features" and their implementation.
On the other hand, I picked up my boyfriend's iPhone/iPad, looked up how to enable voiceover, and pretty much figured out how to basically use it in about 15 minutes. I can type quickly, it's easy for me to find what I'm looking for and only activate that thing, and the whole experience is so much better. I'm now faster when intermittently using someone else's iPhone than I am using the Android phones I've owned for 6 or 7 years, and that's pretty damning.
(And if you have useful vision, the magnifier on the iphone is better too. The zoom "controller" makes it similar to using a computer magnifier for faster scanning of long text, and the magnifier is easy to keep consistently open and closed when you want it.)
At many steps throughout this process, I've asked myself "has Google actually ASKED a blind person what makes sense?" I'm glad to see that they're asking, and I hope that they can actually hear the answers.
Marconius 1 points 6y ago
I live in San Francisco and will be more than happy to do this, however I'm leaving for a trip to Toronto tomorrow and I won't have any time for the study. Google talk back and Samsung voice assistant have always felt engineered to me, while VoiceOver has felt designed. There's a big difference between the two, and android definitely has a very long way to go to get up to the level that voiceover has accomplished. Honestly though, I wish they would focus their attention more on making Google Drive/docs/sheets accessible to voiceover on the desktop, definitely a much higher priority than talkback.
chanberrysauce [OP] 1 points 6y ago
They're always running studies on different products, so I'm sure they'll do some on drive/docs/sheets at some point! I'll try to see if my friend can give out a link for you to sign up to be considered for future studies :)
KillerLag 1 points 6y ago
Welcome to Toronto! (I'm from Toronto ;) ) Just in time to enjoy the nicer weather
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