Michelle Gallaher is Director of The Social Science, a company focused on social media strategy. Here she talks about social media inclusion for people with vision and hearing impairments.
I recently ‘friended’ someone on Facebook who is vision impaired.
Vision impaired (and hearing impaired) people are a part of my family, friendship and professional network so it was surprising that I had not considered until now, how people with hearing or vision impairment could access social media.
How was my Facebook friend going to share in my funny photographs and the fascinating articles that I post?
I wondered if social media networks were excluding people with vision and hearing impairment, further isolating and alienating – or were they in fact bringing the world closer, blending it better, offering more insight and access?
Many years ago I left behind my allied health career as an Orthoptist working in low vision clinics and eye outpatient departments of major hospitals. These days I’m a social media entrepreneur. Because of this friend request, I began researching social media technologies and their ability (or disability) to ensure access for all. Forgive me is this blog is largely vision focused – though I’m sure people with sensory disabilities may find this useful, if not interesting.
Social media is increasingly image focused. Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest present some especially difficult challenges for vision impaired users, equally YouTube and Skype for hearing impaired users. Images are a particularly important part of the social media experience, and it is rare that photos get described or come with a voiceover.
A fascinating study was published in March 2014 by Shaomei Wu and Lada Adamic investigating how many vision impaired people used Facebook and how they used the platform to connect.
The study found that visually impaired users are sharing as much content on Facebook as others.
In addition to posting more status updates, vision impaired users of Facebook also upload a significant number of their own photos and images. Brilliant – I cant wait to see the photo’s my vision impaired friend is going to post now that I’ve introduced him to Facebook.
Photography Apps designed for people with vision impairment such as TapTapSee and VizWiz to enhance their Facebook experience are fantastic. I uploaded them to my phone and started experimenting.
My desktop research also discovered that many more people access Facebook through additional text-to-speech tools and screen magnification programs. And tens of thousands of others—people who are hearing impaired, or can’t use computer keyboards or mice or touch screens—use the social network in ways that most of its 1.3 billion users do not. They use closed captioning, mouth-controlled joysticks, and other tools—some built into Facebook, some that plug into Facebook from the outside.
As I’ve worked in the innovation technology sector for over 20 year I was intensely curious to see what type of development process was in place within social media organisations like Facebook and Twitter to ensure accessibility and an inclusive user philosophy.
The Facebook Accessibility Team at Facebook in California is an integral part of the development process with software engineers and internal UX (user experience) groups ensuring that new tools and functions allow access for all. Follow their Facebook page to learn about the development pathway and how they integrate innovation with users with varying abilities. This is an excellent page, well worth following on technology updates with Facebook and how people with disabilities are able to use them.
Through this Facebook page I learnt of more basic Apps and technologies that are assisting people to use multiple social platforms. One of the most used technologies is Apple Voiceover, an iPhone app that converts text to spoken words and Talkback for Android users
I’m now a convert to Apple voiceover – there are so many ways this clever App can make my life easier and I’m not vision impaired.
TapTapSee is a mobile camera application designed specifically for visually impaired iOS users. The app utilizes the iDevice’s camera and VoiceOver functions to photograph objects and identify them out loud. Photo’s can also be shared directly to Facebook and Twitter.
What’s clear to me in this research journey is that there is precious little written about the user experience with social media, vision and hearing impairment and the development of new interactive social technologies.
Considering social media is here to stay and is now a vital part of our personal and professional communication systems, recognising that we have a large community of vision impaired and hearing impaired people and that as we live longer, with chronic disease and survive more trauma often with acquired sensory disabilities, its vital that we ensure technology links us all in this connected world.
I love the connection on Instagram with my youngest nephew who posts an image every day capturing the fabulous and funny minutiae of his life through his child-like lens. My nephew doesn’t type much in the captions yet and I adore making sense (or sometimes not) of his choice of subject matter. It gives us a lot to talk and laugh about when we are together. Now I’ve introduced some of these clever Apps making the interaction even more fun and curious for the two of us. TapTapSee turns out to be a very funny tool for a little kid providing some very big laughs and a few unexpected surprises as he stalks his family with a camera that tells him things and then shares it to social media. Hilarious!
The Facebook accessibility team wants your feedback on user experiences