Programmer’s Log Programmers Writing Stuff – Garry Bodsworth

iPad Accessibility

So I took the company iPad on a weekend holiday to my parent's house. My ulterior motive was to find out whether it really was accessible, and by that I mean for people with audio and visual impairment.

My mother is registered as deafblind (contrary to what spell checkers will tell you it is all one word), this does not mean she is completely devoid of sight but it she has an extremely limited field of vision (for the specifics it is Usher Type 2 Retinitis Pigmentosa). Currently she uses a standard Windows PC with minimal changes from the default settings. There is also a big monitor, which is actually more of a detriment to someone who cannot see all of the monitor at once.

The first plus for her was the form factor. Most people moan it's too small or it isn't widescreen, but this was an item that could be viewed as a whole even taking into account a limited field of vision.

Most people say touchscreens don't work because of the lack of tactile feedback which some have said is required for blind people. This depends on your definition of blind, a person completely devoid of sight is actually a rare occurrence, most people who are registered blind have some degree of sight left and know how to make the most of it. She was able to type with ease on the keyboard. The limitations of the keyboard however though were the inability to set the contrast settings for it independently of the rest of the system (white on black is normally the choice for people with visual impairment). Also it would have been good if important items were highlighted in some way like "Go" or "Search" because otherwise you end up searching on the keyboard.

One of the most important aspects of a touchscreen is that it is not necessary for the cursor to be large, and also with visual impairment time is spent trying to find the cursor on the screen which is difficult with a large surface area.

The quality of the screen and its contrast was extremely good for someone with visual impairments. Clarity of viewing and also the viewing angles are extremely important in that respect.

And I haven't even got to the specific accessibility features available on the iPad which frankly knocks any competing product for six. You have the ability to view white on black, but this does a complete inversion meaning it looks like you are looking at a negative, but it's better than nothing.

The text-to-speech features are excellent with the quality of playback being listenable rather than annoying. You can use this on the ebooks, websites, the user interface. It does mean navigation is slightly more complex but being patient helps because the speech also gives you hints as to the action to perform next.

You also have the ability to switch the sound to mono, which will have every techie screaming, but it is very important for any auditory problems because then you get the same sound into both ears.

The ability to zoom in on pages is taken for granted by most phone users nowadays but this is another invaluable feature, and the ability to configure text size in iBooks is also as valuable.

Also the screen size would be great if only iPlayer worked on it yet (I realise we have a pre-ash cloud import so the official UK release is a little while away) with subtitles. In fact the content delivery would be extremely important, and I hope that providers will supply subtitles for their offerings.

With all the accessibility features it got me thinking that when it gets even more integrated you are talking about turn-by-turn navigation and general independence help thanks to location based APIs. A map would be a nightmare for someone with a narrow field of vision.

The most important aspect of all of this is that it is so well thought out and intuitive to use. It all clearly integrates with the system and creates a simple to use environment. The quality of the engineered components is second to none matching the quality of the software that will no doubt improve with subsequent revisions. As a developer I dread lock-in but there are simply no alternatives that are within five years of being close to competing, it does revolutionise computing for a swathe of the population.

When I saw how much the iPad was going to be in the UK I thought it was too rich for my blood and I would put off buying one for myself. But now I see how much it will be liberating for people with sensory impairment when configured correctly I have to put my thinking cap on again.