8 ms·

So I was ordering food from Door dash the other day. Being a blind person, I rely on a website to be coded well enough to present all of its content to me. So I

So I was ordering food from Door dash the other day. Being a blind person, I rely on a website to be coded well enough to present all of its content to me. So I'm using the down arrow, using NVDA, or Caps lock + Right Arrow on Voiceover for Mac, going through the items. And I noticed that some items were surely being skipped. And sure enough, when I went back and navigated with the Tab key, there they were, all the other drinks that McDonald's offers. I mean, it's better than on the iPhone, where DoorDash is so awful that it sucks Kaiju dung, but goodness I wish UX folks would just leave stuff alone, or shoot just ask people "Hey, is this what you want?" or "How can we actually improve this thing?" or "Hey, would this break things for you?" I think the only reason why it works so well on Android is because no one has messed with it yet. No, don't do it, please. I mean, Door dash is far from the only mess I've come across in my like 15 years using tech as a blind person, But some services, like InstaCart, Door dash, Uber, stuff like that, are a bit more important to be accessible than someone's cat picture gallery. I mean, I wouldn't mind awesome descriptions of cats either, don't get me wrong. And honestly, I don't know if the fault is with Voiceover and its rather bad web support, or NVDA, but I'm pretty sure it's Door dash. And it didn't used to do this. It used to be fine on web browsers on a computer. And now I gotta pull out the Android phone when I want o order food.

ramraj07 3y ago
What in your opinion are some of the best designed mobile apps for visually impaired people?
- devinprater 3y ago
  RedReader is the best Reddit client I've found on Android, Apple's Mail app is really nice, since it lets me navigate within a conversation to the next or previous message (wish Gmail did that), Mona is the best Mastodon client on iOS (I can favorite or reblog just by swiping left or right with three fingers. That's not even possible on Android because TalkBack's scrolling commands work on gesture position not on TalkBack focus position), Feeder is the best RSS reader on Android, Lire is great on iOS although I don't like having to clean up the article list after marking a few as read. Tusky on Android is a good app that uses accessibility actions. I love how in Google's clock app I can dismiss an alarm by using a volume button (while the device's screen is off, but once you hit the power button you have to find and double tap the dismiss button and hope the alarm sound is quieter than your TalkBack voice). I don't know how it is now, but when I was still using Instacart, if I'm in a list of food items and I wanted to add one to my cart, I could just swipe up and it'd be added. If I wanted to remove an item, I'd just swipe down and it'd be removed. That was refreshingly simple. There are a lot of games on iOS that are accessible, like DiceWorld, which is also pretty accessible on Android but doesn't have the nice-to-have features of iOS, like using the Magic Tap (double tap with two fingers) from anywhere on the screen to roll the dice. Android can't do that because its two finger double tap only works as the play/pause button on a headset, just playing/pausing media instead of a more general "make something happen" command in apps. Some more action-oriented games, like Mortal Kombat, are becoming more accessible. On iOS, since apps can define "direct touch interaction" areas of the screen, which makes VoiceOver ignore part of the screen so that a tap is passed directly to the app, rather than going through VoiceOver. Using this, one can attack and block instantly while in action parts of the game, with the game sending announcements through VoiceOver, like "swipe up" or "you win". Then, the screen changes, and direct touch area is deactivated, and VoiceOver control is reassurted, so that the player can navigate the interface. It shows really amazing promise for mobile gaming for the blind in the future. And Android doesn't have anything like the direct touch area, unless the app wants to declar itself an accessibility service, which I believe is how the TalkBack Braille keyboard does it from the code on Github. Of course that code is like 6 months behind the actual release and definitely behind the any betas they've released, but still useful for seeing how TalkBack does things. Of course, each user has differing knowledge of how their screen reader works. I find that many more Android users know more about TalkBack, since it has a built-in tutorial that turns on when TalkBack is launched. VoiceOver on iOS does not have a tutorial that teaches everything one can do, all the commands and such, so are usually unaware of things like image recognition, Braille Screen Input (typing in Braille on the phone screen), or all the commands possible (especially the rotor and using actions within apps).
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    Thank you for the insanely detailed write up, I'll look into all of them!
keyle 3y ago
A big part of my job is to make sure our applications are accessible. You wouldn't believe how, even though legally required to do so, I have to prove time and time again that further work needs to be done in order to make our application accessible. Please keep complaining out loud, I feel so many people are suffering in silence.
- abwizz 3y ago
  technologies to make information less accessible seem to be in high demand (drm anyone?)
  - devinprater 3y ago
    Oh yes. Several blind people have a Victor Reader or some such device that's a portable book player, basically, made for blind people. Amazon, of course, would never let their Kindle content onto that player, although Audible is okay for some reason. Kindle on Android still uses an instance of the Android speech engine to read books, and still won't continue reading while the screen is off, which is honestly one of the only good uses for spawning another speech engine and not using TalkBack to speak. Oh and Kindle for Mac's speech function is complete broken as of Ventura cause Apple changed a lot about the speech engine. I mean I know there's more on DRM than books, but that's what I've been dealing with for the past like year. Kindle has all the stuff I like though. sigh
    - dizhn 3y ago
      I am not sure if Librera HD is usable in terms of accessibility but it seems to handle text to speech pretty well when I tested it just now. It works with the screen turned off too. The software is available in F-droid without restriction.
- devinprater 3y ago
  Thank you so much. A lot of the time, in blind culture, a lot of people feel like developers are tired of hearing us. Others are like "well we should just be greatful for what we have." And sometimes I feel like a lot of feedback I give, either on social media or through dedicated feedback forms (Apple, Google), are just not seen or actioned by anyone, or got lost somewhere up the chain.
calderwoodra 3y ago
As someone who built many UIs at Google, the reason it works is because Google's UX teams take accessibility very seriously. At the OS level especially. As an anecdote, I was upgrading some outdated code for the dialpad in the phone app and we worked closely with some blind Googlers to understand how they place calls and make sure we weren't breaking it for them. Really interesting stuff.
- devinprater 3y ago
  Oh wow, that is really nice. I love how stable Android, and Android accessibility, is. No speech engine crashing while feeling around the home screen for no reason, Braille input (for the displays that are supported grumble grumble), is fast and clean and never slows down after like 20 words. Still trying to get into the TalkBack beta program though, since they're probably testing support for the display I own now. But anyway, thank you so much for working on this. Now if only Youtube supported accessibility actions instead of having buttons everywhere on each video widget in the list of videos.
pkulak 3y ago
Everything is overbuilt and over designed now. No one even uses native drop down menus anymore. I remember, years ago, selecting Oregon was _always_ tab, “o”, down, down, down. Now I have to figure out the bespoke widget that’s being drawn directly to the canvas, probably requiring a reach for the mouse, hopefully with a scroll wheel or you’re gonna be pecking at a tiny little scroll bar that may or may not even be there. Which is all to say; I hate it and I’m sighted.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  > Everything is overbuilt and over designed now. Yes and no. In a way it's the same problem we (engineering) has always had. That is, technical decisions are made based on (engineers') egos and not on the needs of the client / product. Those used to be mainly decisions that impacted hardware and/or backend. Now they mainfest on the frontend. UX and QA should be speaking up but either don't exist (in some products), don't have the experience, or don't have the juice / power to say "this is crap. Fix it." We have met the enemy and he/she/they is us.
  - abwizz 3y ago
    > UX and QA should be speaking up as long as only human subjective criteria have to be met, this is easily handled with marketing. </s> "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." -R. Feynman
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      Objectively speaking, entering the first character in a select should bring you to the first option with that letter. For example, a select of States or Countries. Yet, that's too often not the case anymore. That is, you have to scroll over the list. How does anyone - engineers included - believe that's not shite?
- devinprater 3y ago
  Oh yeah, those dropdowns, where it's just a text field but you can arrow through it like a dropdown. Except it'll say "<item> selected" or some such, and gives this long hint on how to use it. I believe [UberDuck](https://app.uberduck.ai/speak#mode=tts-basic&voice=zwf https://app.uberduck.ai/speak#mode=tts-basic&voice=zwf) still uses it. And we have this Attendance on Demand app we use to clock in and out at work, and it's pretty darn bad, with several buttons that have text labels beside the button instead of on the button, and don't even get me started about the calendar widget on there. I mean, you never know what component or framework or whatever will be used in an important product.
CJefferson 3y ago
Seeing as it seems (from my experience at least) an old-school, "HTML 3.0" website with no javascript and minimal markup (make sure all pictures get alt text) tend to work very well for accessibility, I personally think governments should just say all websites that are businesses have to either be accessible, or have an accessible version -- and that accessible version should be kept up to date. You can, and people do, make fairly fancy websites with Javascript that still work well (a blind friend told me Amazon is quite good, for example), but really this is the bare minimum. As a bonus, it will help all of us as we find ourselves getting less physically able as we age, even if we don't need the support right now.
- nosefurhairdo 3y ago
  Building rich web UI that conforms to accessibility guidelines is nontrivial. A single violation of a WCAG 2.1 success criterion is considered a failure to conform. For example, you can fail if any part of your UI doesn't handle reflow correctly on a 1280x1024px resolution at 400% zoom (equivalent to 320x256px). A government mandate requiring corporate-owned websites be made accessible would require a small army of auditors to enforce.
  - CJefferson 3y ago
    The rules might need tweaking, but honestly I have limited sympathy. There are standards on the building of my house, the gas, the electricity, the plumbing. They all have to be carefully followed. Why should computing, when provided by multi billion dollar businesses, be such a free for all in comparison?
wellanyway 3y ago
I wish accessibility included cognitive overload exhaustion. I am fucking tired of everything changing all the time for no reason whatsoever.

ramraj07 3y ago

What in your opinion are some of the best designed mobile apps for visually impaired people?

devinprater 3y ago
RedReader is the best Reddit client I've found on Android, Apple's Mail app is really nice, since it lets me navigate within a conversation to the next or previous message (wish Gmail did that), Mona is the best Mastodon client on iOS (I can favorite or reblog just by swiping left or right with three fingers. That's not even possible on Android because TalkBack's scrolling commands work on gesture position not on TalkBack focus position), Feeder is the best RSS reader on Android, Lire is great on iOS although I don't like having to clean up the article list after marking a few as read. Tusky on Android is a good app that uses accessibility actions. I love how in Google's clock app I can dismiss an alarm by using a volume button (while the device's screen is off, but once you hit the power button you have to find and double tap the dismiss button and hope the alarm sound is quieter than your TalkBack voice). I don't know how it is now, but when I was still using Instacart, if I'm in a list of food items and I wanted to add one to my cart, I could just swipe up and it'd be added. If I wanted to remove an item, I'd just swipe down and it'd be removed. That was refreshingly simple. There are a lot of games on iOS that are accessible, like DiceWorld, which is also pretty accessible on Android but doesn't have the nice-to-have features of iOS, like using the Magic Tap (double tap with two fingers) from anywhere on the screen to roll the dice. Android can't do that because its two finger double tap only works as the play/pause button on a headset, just playing/pausing media instead of a more general "make something happen" command in apps. Some more action-oriented games, like Mortal Kombat, are becoming more accessible. On iOS, since apps can define "direct touch interaction" areas of the screen, which makes VoiceOver ignore part of the screen so that a tap is passed directly to the app, rather than going through VoiceOver. Using this, one can attack and block instantly while in action parts of the game, with the game sending announcements through VoiceOver, like "swipe up" or "you win". Then, the screen changes, and direct touch area is deactivated, and VoiceOver control is reassurted, so that the player can navigate the interface. It shows really amazing promise for mobile gaming for the blind in the future. And Android doesn't have anything like the direct touch area, unless the app wants to declar itself an accessibility service, which I believe is how the TalkBack Braille keyboard does it from the code on Github. Of course that code is like 6 months behind the actual release and definitely behind the any betas they've released, but still useful for seeing how TalkBack does things. Of course, each user has differing knowledge of how their screen reader works. I find that many more Android users know more about TalkBack, since it has a built-in tutorial that turns on when TalkBack is launched. VoiceOver on iOS does not have a tutorial that teaches everything one can do, all the commands and such, so are usually unaware of things like image recognition, Braille Screen Input (typing in Braille on the phone screen), or all the commands possible (especially the rotor and using actions within apps).
- ramraj07 3y ago
  Thank you for the insanely detailed write up, I'll look into all of them!

keyle 3y ago

A big part of my job is to make sure our applications are accessible. You wouldn't believe how, even though legally required to do so, I have to prove time and time again that further work needs to be done in order to make our application accessible. Please keep complaining out loud, I feel so many people are suffering in silence.

abwizz 3y ago
technologies to make information less accessible seem to be in high demand (drm anyone?)
- devinprater 3y ago
  Oh yes. Several blind people have a Victor Reader or some such device that's a portable book player, basically, made for blind people. Amazon, of course, would never let their Kindle content onto that player, although Audible is okay for some reason. Kindle on Android still uses an instance of the Android speech engine to read books, and still won't continue reading while the screen is off, which is honestly one of the only good uses for spawning another speech engine and not using TalkBack to speak. Oh and Kindle for Mac's speech function is complete broken as of Ventura cause Apple changed a lot about the speech engine. I mean I know there's more on DRM than books, but that's what I've been dealing with for the past like year. Kindle has all the stuff I like though. sigh
  - dizhn 3y ago
    I am not sure if Librera HD is usable in terms of accessibility but it seems to handle text to speech pretty well when I tested it just now. It works with the screen turned off too. The software is available in F-droid without restriction.
devinprater 3y ago
Thank you so much. A lot of the time, in blind culture, a lot of people feel like developers are tired of hearing us. Others are like "well we should just be greatful for what we have." And sometimes I feel like a lot of feedback I give, either on social media or through dedicated feedback forms (Apple, Google), are just not seen or actioned by anyone, or got lost somewhere up the chain.

calderwoodra 3y ago

As someone who built many UIs at Google, the reason it works is because Google's UX teams take accessibility very seriously. At the OS level especially. As an anecdote, I was upgrading some outdated code for the dialpad in the phone app and we worked closely with some blind Googlers to understand how they place calls and make sure we weren't breaking it for them. Really interesting stuff.

devinprater 3y ago
Oh wow, that is really nice. I love how stable Android, and Android accessibility, is. No speech engine crashing while feeling around the home screen for no reason, Braille input (for the displays that are supported grumble grumble), is fast and clean and never slows down after like 20 words. Still trying to get into the TalkBack beta program though, since they're probably testing support for the display I own now. But anyway, thank you so much for working on this. Now if only Youtube supported accessibility actions instead of having buttons everywhere on each video widget in the list of videos.

pkulak 3y ago

Everything is overbuilt and over designed now. No one even uses native drop down menus anymore. I remember, years ago, selecting Oregon was _always_ tab, “o”, down, down, down. Now I have to figure out the bespoke widget that’s being drawn directly to the canvas, probably requiring a reach for the mouse, hopefully with a scroll wheel or you’re gonna be pecking at a tiny little scroll bar that may or may not even be there. Which is all to say; I hate it and I’m sighted.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
> Everything is overbuilt and over designed now. Yes and no. In a way it's the same problem we (engineering) has always had. That is, technical decisions are made based on (engineers') egos and not on the needs of the client / product. Those used to be mainly decisions that impacted hardware and/or backend. Now they mainfest on the frontend. UX and QA should be speaking up but either don't exist (in some products), don't have the experience, or don't have the juice / power to say "this is crap. Fix it." We have met the enemy and he/she/they is us.
- abwizz 3y ago
  > UX and QA should be speaking up as long as only human subjective criteria have to be met, this is easily handled with marketing. </s> "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." -R. Feynman
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    Objectively speaking, entering the first character in a select should bring you to the first option with that letter. For example, a select of States or Countries. Yet, that's too often not the case anymore. That is, you have to scroll over the list. How does anyone - engineers included - believe that's not shite?
devinprater 3y ago
Oh yeah, those dropdowns, where it's just a text field but you can arrow through it like a dropdown. Except it'll say "<item> selected" or some such, and gives this long hint on how to use it. I believe [UberDuck](https://app.uberduck.ai/speak#mode=tts-basic&voice=zwf https://app.uberduck.ai/speak#mode=tts-basic&voice=zwf) still uses it. And we have this Attendance on Demand app we use to clock in and out at work, and it's pretty darn bad, with several buttons that have text labels beside the button instead of on the button, and don't even get me started about the calendar widget on there. I mean, you never know what component or framework or whatever will be used in an important product.

CJefferson 3y ago

Seeing as it seems (from my experience at least) an old-school, "HTML 3.0" website with no javascript and minimal markup (make sure all pictures get alt text) tend to work very well for accessibility, I personally think governments should just say all websites that are businesses have to either be accessible, or have an accessible version -- and that accessible version should be kept up to date. You can, and people do, make fairly fancy websites with Javascript that still work well (a blind friend told me Amazon is quite good, for example), but really this is the bare minimum. As a bonus, it will help all of us as we find ourselves getting less physically able as we age, even if we don't need the support right now.

nosefurhairdo 3y ago
Building rich web UI that conforms to accessibility guidelines is nontrivial. A single violation of a WCAG 2.1 success criterion is considered a failure to conform. For example, you can fail if any part of your UI doesn't handle reflow correctly on a 1280x1024px resolution at 400% zoom (equivalent to 320x256px). A government mandate requiring corporate-owned websites be made accessible would require a small army of auditors to enforce.
- CJefferson 3y ago
  The rules might need tweaking, but honestly I have limited sympathy. There are standards on the building of my house, the gas, the electricity, the plumbing. They all have to be carefully followed. Why should computing, when provided by multi billion dollar businesses, be such a free for all in comparison?

wellanyway 3y ago

I wish accessibility included cognitive overload exhaustion. I am fucking tired of everything changing all the time for no reason whatsoever.