I have never paid attention to how blind people live before, because THERE are no blind people around me. If someone mentions blind people to me, the first thing I think of is blind massage. I wonder if many people, like me, don’t know what blind people can do. They think they can only stay at home listening to the radio, sitting in the sun, having no entertainment and no work. Nowadays, with the rapid development of the Internet, everyone has a smartphone. My 74-year-old grandfather is using Tencent Video, watching news on Today’s Toutiao, and checking moments through wechat chat. The most interesting thing is that he doesn’t need to teach himself how to shop online. In many people’s mind, they think blind people can’t see, how can they get online? In fact, blind people can study, shop, entertain, communicate and even work on the Internet. Here’s an 8-minute video.

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  • Touch the screen to get focus
  • Read the screen and return focus information to the user
  • User action, focus feedback

All the smart hardware we use today can support this need.

  • VoiceOver is already built into all apple products. Users simply open VoiceOver and touch it to get voice prompts.
  • Android phones have Talkback built into them, which is similar to VoiceOver.
  • Windows system can download screen reading software, such as Yongde, Zhengdu, Sunshine, NVDA, etc. (what screen reading software can recommend?

With the support of these screen reading functions, we can use the phone from the perspective of the visually impaired to see if they are really convenient to use.

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Focus merging problem


Product, content, inventory: Picture + text content is a whole, but only the image and title can be read separately.

Content prompt question

Hot inventory: Focus on switching, but users don’t know this is a button that can be clicked to switch.

Distractable problem

After clicking inventory to change, read the inventory title after the switch, but it is still the inventory title before the switch. Switching this interaction results in a loss of focus. Now we can get back to the topic, what can we do as web developers? What we need to do is to have the support of these screen reading functions, so that the screen reading software can tell the user what it is and what it can do in a better way. To be more precise, it is to solve the above problems:

  • Divide your focus
  • Element semantematization
  • Optimize prompt content

For an Internet product, all users are equal. This is not to improve user experience for the visually impaired. These problems should be regarded as functional bugs of the product. Different technical implementation schemes, there are many kinds of web pages:

  • IOS native page
  • Android Native Page
  • The Web page
  • Weex and ReactNative pages

Some accessibility faQs and practice summaries are also available online, along with their respective accessibility programming guidelines:

  • IOS: The iOS Accessibility Programming Guide
  • Android: Accessibility Development Guide for Android
  • Web: Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG), WAI-ARIA Web Accessibility Specification
  • React: React barrier-free
  • ReactNative: ReactNative accessibility
  • Weex: Weex is accessible

In the above video, beauty Academy is using Rax programming WEEX page. After weeX barrier-free repair, the effect is like this:

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iOS

  • VoiceOver switches: Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> VoiceOver or Visual-VoiceOver.
  • Long press the Home button (setting required) to bring up Siri, say “VoiceOver” and Siri will display the entry.
  • Choose Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcuts and select VoiceOver. Press the Home button three times to quickly turn VoiceOver on/off.

Android Android phone Talkback entry is different, in the “Settings” to find “auxiliary functions” or “advanced functions”, in the subdirectory to find “Talkback” or “barrier-free” to open.

I wrote this article because I had a new understanding of the blind community and completely changed the previous concept that blind people can do a lot of things and do a lot of meaningful things. Second, we have a new understanding of the importance of information accessibility. If you can put yourself in other people’s shoes, you can probably understand the significance of information accessibility to the visually impaired. Web accessibility is not difficult, the difficulty is that web developers do not have the awareness of information accessibility, hope that more developers can understand information accessibility, improve the awareness of information accessibility. Finally, read these articles to learn more about the visually impaired

  • Report on The Basic Situation of Visually impaired Internet Users in China March 2016 PDF
  • With the rapid development of the Internet, how has the life of the blind changed?
  • How can a blind person shop on an iPhone?
  • The Internet has changed the lives of 6 million visually impaired people in China, but most Chinese Internet companies have forgotten them