Social Lives
Author: Emma Smith, Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute Member and Post-Doctoral Researcher; recipient of the prestigious Marie Sklowdowska Curie Actions Individual Fellowship
Our lives are increasingly digital. From the moment we wake up in the morning, to before we go to bed, we are connected. A recent report from the BBC suggests people are spending, on average, a third of their waking hours on mobile apps. Even in lower income contexts, 30-50% of people have been reported to be connected to mobile ‘smart’ devices. Those of us living in higher income contexts, like Ireland, are also connected in other ways – through smart watches and health tracking devices like the Oura ring, smart homes, our cars, and of course our computers. The reality is that it is becoming more and more difficult to escape a digital world.
Considering the fact that 15% of the global population lives with a disability, and that recent estimates suggest that 1 in 3 people in the world require the use of assistive products, including glasses, in day to day life, it is critical that we consider the accessibility of the digital products in our lives. More and more, manufacturers are beginning to understand the need to build in accessible features – understanding the huge market share that either requires them today or will in the future. Furthermore, many of the features that we have come to accept as commonplace started as features to make technology more accessible. For example, text to speech software has been used for decades to allow people with visual impairments to navigate digital technologies and to give a voice to people who cannot speak. Today, digital assistants like Siri read our texts aloud to us while we are driving, and Alexa reads us the news or the weather.
Mainstreaming accessible features is critical for improving access to the world for everyone. Having these features built into your existing systems means that if, or perhaps more accurately when, you need them, they will be there for you just by changing a setting. Most of us probably don’t even realize they are there in the background.
Let’s take Apple’s phone and tablet operating system (iOS) as an example. Most of you probably did not know that it has a Switch Control feature which allows you to connect a single button to control the entire interface. If you had a spinal cord injury, or another condition causing paralysis, you would still be able to access most, if not all, of the features on your phone (with a little training), even if all you could do was blink your eyes or move your head. Before 2015, when iOS introduced Switch Control, this capacity was limited to very expensive and complex systems which were designed specifically for people with disabilities – certainly not built into a device that almost a billion people carry in their pockets. Apple is not unique in this – other operating systems like Android and Windows have done the same.
This is just one of the many accessible features that you likely have sitting in your pocket. Your phone likely has the capacity to connect to hearing aids, or to change contrast, size, and colour of the text on your screen. There are features to change how you interact with the screen based on specific kinds of touch, and to connect peripheral devices. You can turn on audio descriptions of visual content and set a light to blink every time your phone rings in case you don’t hear it (or – like me – have it on silent).
These features are not a panacea for accessibility challenges, and there are certainly drawbacks to them. They may not be as customizable as more dedicated software and accessible devices were in days gone by. They may not allow you to access the device in all the ways you would if you were interacting with a touch screen using your fingers. For example, zooming in on photos is notoriously challenging without being able to use two fingers for zoom and pinch, as it requires substantially more actions when using switch or voice control than a simpler tap.
There are still many challenges – many (most) websites remain inaccessible. While there are web accessibility standards for public facing websites in the EU, the average website that someone will encounter still has a multitude of challenges. We are still struggling to get alternative text (also known as equivalent text) descriptions on to visual images online. While Twitter and other social media companies have added alternative text description options to their interfaces, most people don’t know these exist – or fail to use them if they do. Although YouTube has captioning available, it takes extra effort to set up when you are uploading a video, and is not always very accurate, particularly when captioning people who don’t speak clearly, or speak with an accent. But did you know data suggests 85% of people on Facebook watching videos watch them without sound ? Captioning isn’t just about accessibility, it is useful for a vast majority of the population. While Zoom also allows captioning, there are frequent errors, and people with visual impairments still do not have a way to have a description of what is displayed on the screen in front of them if someone is sharing the screen.
Achieving a truly accessible digital world is difficult. It requires commitment – both from the manufacturers and developers of both hardware and software, but also from their users – you and I. As new technologies emerge, so too will new accessibility needs – this is an ongoing process we must all contribute to. Not all of us may need or use these features today, but most of us will one day, and it’s on all of us to work to making a more accessible digital world.