Open Challenges of Blind People using Smartphones

TL;DR

This paper investigates the diverse challenges faced by blind smartphone users through multiple studies, analyzing user experiences and online forums to identify key issues and suggest future research directions.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive set of challenges faced by blind users, validated through diverse methods and large-scale forum analysis, highlighting overlooked issues.

Findings

Identified and validated key smartphone challenges for blind users.

Analyzed large-scale online forums to uncover common issues.

Prioritized a corpus of challenges for future research.

Abstract

Blind people face significant challenges when using smartphones. The focus on improving non-visual mobile accessibility has been at the level of touchscreen access. Our research investigates the challenges faced by blind people in their everyday usage of mobile phones. In this paper, we present a set of studies performed with the target population, novices and experts, using a variety of methods, targeted at identifying and verifying challenges; and coping mechanisms. Through a multiple methods approach we identify and validate challenges locally with a diverse set of user expertise and devices, and at scale through the analyses of the largest Android and iOS dedicate forums for blind people. We contribute with a prioritized corpus of smartphone challenges for blind people, and a discussion on a set of directions for future research that tackle the open and often overlooked challenges.