Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Difficulties using the internet when visually impaired or blind? (self.Blind)
submitted by RedditScout99
Hello everyone, this is my first post in this reddit community. I am a doctorate student and for my project, I am developing a version of the refreshable braille display technology for a small fraction of the price. In my research, I am trying to understand how to best use this technology to make the internet easier to use for visually impaired and blind users. I intend to complement rather than replace the way they navigate the internet.
For the time being, I am concerned mostly in trying to decrease the instances of disorientation while navigating the internet. By disorientation I mean the following three points. #1 It might be hard to understand and remember the structure of a webpage. #2 That one might be unable to tell where he is located relative to this structure (for example what heading one currently is located on, and how far from the end of the page one is). #3 When one is presented with a link, it might be hard to estimate its destination, if you click it, in which heading of this page will you land, or would it be a different page from the same website or an external webpage.
Maybe some of you are willing to share your experiences in the comments for the following questions:
\#1 What method do you use to access the internet ( for example voice over, or braille display and mozilla, or jaws) and what was the most challenging part of learning to navigate the internet as a visually impaired user?
\#2 Do you often feel disoriented when navigating your most visited pages? How about when trying to find new websites on the internet?
\#3 Do you think a small device that you could touch whenever you want to let you know where you are located on the page, or where you would land after following a link would be useful for you?
\#4 What other information might make your internet navigation a little easier?
If there’s something else that you think might be important or useful, just share it with me, it will be very valuable to guide my research, or just to know if you think I am going in the right direction. I would really appreciate all your feedback.
Disclaimer: Any exchange from this post is to be considered informal, I have no right to directly use this information in my research, trace any information back to a particular user, or anything like that. If I want to do something like that, I would have to go through a long process of approval with the ethics committee of my research center and anyone officially participating would have to receive a full description of the project and sign an informed consent.
For the time being, I am concerned mostly in trying to decrease the instances of disorientation while navigating the internet. By disorientation I mean the following three points. #1 It might be hard to understand and remember the structure of a webpage. #2 That one might be unable to tell where he is located relative to this structure (for example what heading one currently is located on, and how far from the end of the page one is). #3 When one is presented with a link, it might be hard to estimate its destination, if you click it, in which heading of this page will you land, or would it be a different page from the same website or an external webpage.
Maybe some of you are willing to share your experiences in the comments for the following questions:
\#1 What method do you use to access the internet ( for example voice over, or braille display and mozilla, or jaws) and what was the most challenging part of learning to navigate the internet as a visually impaired user?
\#2 Do you often feel disoriented when navigating your most visited pages? How about when trying to find new websites on the internet?
\#3 Do you think a small device that you could touch whenever you want to let you know where you are located on the page, or where you would land after following a link would be useful for you?
\#4 What other information might make your internet navigation a little easier?
If there’s something else that you think might be important or useful, just share it with me, it will be very valuable to guide my research, or just to know if you think I am going in the right direction. I would really appreciate all your feedback.
Disclaimer: Any exchange from this post is to be considered informal, I have no right to directly use this information in my research, trace any information back to a particular user, or anything like that. If I want to do something like that, I would have to go through a long process of approval with the ethics committee of my research center and anyone officially participating would have to receive a full description of the project and sign an informed consent.
BenandGracie 5 points 3y ago
If you are making a braille display like technology, you should focus on making a display. Leave the details to the screen reader.
Most of the problems you are trying to solve are not problems when you know how to use a screen reader.
Most of the problems you are trying to solve are not problems when you know how to use a screen reader.
gumbygirly 2 points 3y ago
This.
You are trying to solve problems that aren’t problems.
You are trying to solve problems that aren’t problems.
RedditScout99 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
I see, sometimes when reading about this kind of topics in scientific articles the authors might make the problem sound like it affect everyone and its very urgent. In part, that is why I wanted to ask for input here in reddit.
By the way, what do you think might make your internet browsing experience easier or faster?
By the way, what do you think might make your internet browsing experience easier or faster?
gumbygirly 2 points 3y ago
Better training and awareness of accessibility criteria, impairments, implications, and solutions by web developers, web designers, and content creators. In my experience most accessibility issues arise from poor programming that does not communicate well with assistive technology.
Despite WCAG 2.0 AA being the current legal standard in the US, it is very rarely fully implemented even by major colleges and corporations without legal action.
Despite WCAG 2.0 AA being the current legal standard in the US, it is very rarely fully implemented even by major colleges and corporations without legal action.
bradley22 2 points 3y ago
I agree.
Helping is great but we can do all of this with shortcuts and reading our manuals that come with the screen readers.
Helping is great but we can do all of this with shortcuts and reading our manuals that come with the screen readers.
RedditScout99 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Thanks for your advice, I started reading some screen readers manuals after reading your comment. I wonder if screen readers for mobile devices are as useful as the desktop computer software, being less input options for keyboard shortcuts.
bradley22 2 points 3y ago
They are.
They have gestures, but they do the same thing.
They have gestures, but they do the same thing.
RedditScout99 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Thanks for your input!
If loosing track of your location on the page is not an issue, what do you think might be useful for you to make internet browsing a little easier?
It might seem that I am going all over the place, but I want to consider the future use of the display technology from the early stages of design. I think that it might make the final prototype more adequate for the tasks to come.
If loosing track of your location on the page is not an issue, what do you think might be useful for you to make internet browsing a little easier?
It might seem that I am going all over the place, but I want to consider the future use of the display technology from the early stages of design. I think that it might make the final prototype more adequate for the tasks to come.
BenandGracie 2 points 3y ago
Do you understand what a braille display does? They link to the screen reader, and display the text in braille. You are reenvinting the wheel. You should focus on the display technology and leave the browsing part to the existing screen readers.
FeelingCeiling 2 points 3y ago
I mainly navigate the web (not the internet for crying out loud) using Google Chrome on Windows and Safari on iOS. I run NVDA on Windows. I have enough knowledge of my operating system and screen reader to get around the problems you just described without any other hardware or software.
RedditScout99 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
I appreciate your input, I've gone back to the drawing board to change my research into a more relevant problem thanks to the feedback of all of the respondents.
Duriello 2 points 3y ago
1. I'm mostly a VoiceOver speech-synthesizer user on MacOS and iOS, but also use speech-synthesis with NVDA on Windows. My biggest issue browsing websites beyond the obvious lack of accessibility of some sites is that there's usually a huge learning curve before I can use them efficiently.
2. I don't think orientation is a problem I face a lot as I don't really need to visualize the content, only to understand its logic and memorize its hierarchy, but I find it annoying having to learn the strategies to navigate different websites, so I restrict my web browsing to Reddit, Google, and Apple's developer website. This is not too different from when I had sight, but obviously back then I felt comfortable with more sites than I do feel now. For example: forums other than reddit's old layout tend to be hard to navigate due to having so much stuff to skip through and lacking landmarks such as headings..
3. The Trackpad Commander on MacOS does the opposite of that; it fills the Trackpad with the contents of a view (a visual element that can be interacted with on MacOS), stretching it if necessary, and allows us to learn the layout by announcing items at any given position relative to the Trackpad's dimensions, kind alike a touch-screen on a phone or Windows PC except for the stretching. A device that could both what the Trackpad Commander already does AND allow me to feel the contents of the screen, at the very least the outlines of the views on MacOS, would be amazing, but I don't think that building such a device would be feasible, especially at a low cost. Also, with VoiceOver at least, I can tell where a link will learn by pressing Control+Option+Shift+U.
4. The only information-related issue I have with VoiceOver is the lack of an optical character recognizer on the Mac. There's one on iOS which even attempts to describe symbols and the contents of images, but sadly it there's no Mac counterpart, or at least I haven't learned how to activate it yet.
2. I don't think orientation is a problem I face a lot as I don't really need to visualize the content, only to understand its logic and memorize its hierarchy, but I find it annoying having to learn the strategies to navigate different websites, so I restrict my web browsing to Reddit, Google, and Apple's developer website. This is not too different from when I had sight, but obviously back then I felt comfortable with more sites than I do feel now. For example: forums other than reddit's old layout tend to be hard to navigate due to having so much stuff to skip through and lacking landmarks such as headings..
3. The Trackpad Commander on MacOS does the opposite of that; it fills the Trackpad with the contents of a view (a visual element that can be interacted with on MacOS), stretching it if necessary, and allows us to learn the layout by announcing items at any given position relative to the Trackpad's dimensions, kind alike a touch-screen on a phone or Windows PC except for the stretching. A device that could both what the Trackpad Commander already does AND allow me to feel the contents of the screen, at the very least the outlines of the views on MacOS, would be amazing, but I don't think that building such a device would be feasible, especially at a low cost. Also, with VoiceOver at least, I can tell where a link will learn by pressing Control+Option+Shift+U.
4. The only information-related issue I have with VoiceOver is the lack of an optical character recognizer on the Mac. There's one on iOS which even attempts to describe symbols and the contents of images, but sadly it there's no Mac counterpart, or at least I haven't learned how to activate it yet.
RedditScout99 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Thanks for sharing all of this with me.
In terms of accessibility of a website, I know that there are currently some efforts to use artificial intelligence to capture the code of a webpage, then analyze it to create a more accessible version for your local browser. Its technically like having a novice developer adding proper html tags to badly designed websites. It seems far from being usable right now, but some of the results seem promising for the future.
If the learning curve for a new site is an issue, perhaps that might be a good consideration for my research.
Also, I really like your idea for the trackpad with tactile output. I agree, for now it might not be feasible to do, specially for a reasonable price. But when tactile output technology becomes cheaper it might be possible. Although, I do not know when this might happen.
In terms of accessibility of a website, I know that there are currently some efforts to use artificial intelligence to capture the code of a webpage, then analyze it to create a more accessible version for your local browser. Its technically like having a novice developer adding proper html tags to badly designed websites. It seems far from being usable right now, but some of the results seem promising for the future.
If the learning curve for a new site is an issue, perhaps that might be a good consideration for my research.
Also, I really like your idea for the trackpad with tactile output. I agree, for now it might not be feasible to do, specially for a reasonable price. But when tactile output technology becomes cheaper it might be possible. Although, I do not know when this might happen.
RedditScout99 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Also, does anyone navigates the internet using a smart phone browser? It would seem to me that having less keys would make less shortcuts available, hence make the task less practical than in a desktop computer.
Perhaps a low cost, and small braille display for a smart phone that would feel like a slightly bulkier phone case might make some sense to improve the interaction with the phone. Also the braille keyboard could be modified a little to allow for one hand operation. Lets say you interact with your smartphone as usual with the right hand, but with the left hand you could type some characters or read a few braille cells.
As you can see I am still getting familiarized with the technology available and the way its used, so any input is very appreciated!
Perhaps a low cost, and small braille display for a smart phone that would feel like a slightly bulkier phone case might make some sense to improve the interaction with the phone. Also the braille keyboard could be modified a little to allow for one hand operation. Lets say you interact with your smartphone as usual with the right hand, but with the left hand you could type some characters or read a few braille cells.
As you can see I am still getting familiarized with the technology available and the way its used, so any input is very appreciated!
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