Smartphones and Accessibility
My name is Yenny, and I am an android smartphone user.
I remember a time in my early teen years when I was shamed by a fellow classmate for not having a smartphone. I tried rationalizing that I didn’t need one because I already had a computer at home and didn’t need to have another one to carry around with me.
I tried to fight it as long as I could but it seems that today’s world has been overrun by technology and everywhere we look we see smartphones being used by everyone on every possible occasion. Children while on vacation with their parents, couples on dates, parents hypnotizing and silencing their toddlers.
It’s not surprising that smartphones have become such an addiction, it provides tools to make our lives easier, to communicate with the world, to answer our questions readily, to entertain us and give us the instant gratification we so crave and now feel entitled to.
Smartphones have become so personalized and adaptable that everyone has joined in on this movement, even me, and though it is a love hate relationship, there are a few things I do appreciate about having such a device on hand.
An amazing camera that I can control manually, a very simple and easy to use device, a lot of freedom and part of me just wanted to rebel against the cult of Apple. Not to say that Apple doesn’t make great products, it was simply a personal choice to go against the popular vote.
It was recently brought to my attention that there are many people in the world that would have a difficult time using a smartphone due to disabilities. It’s something I naively never thought about before. This prompted me to go through my phone settings and the number of accessibility options for vision, hearing, dexterity and interaction gave me an eye opening experience.
Whether you’re setting these up for yourself or for someone else, here are the available features I found on my Galaxy S7. Yes, I am two generations behind but I believe the accessibility options remain the same if not improved for the newer versions.
Vision
You have voice assistant and voice assistant help; a voice label option which writes voice recordings to NFC tags to provide you with information.
Font and screen zoom; high contrast fonts; high contrast keyboard.
Show button shapes option with outlines to make them stand out.
A magnifier window as well as magnification option in general; large mouse/touchpad pointer.
Negative colors, color adjustment and color lens to adjust the screen colors if you have difficulty reading text.
You also have the options of dark screen to keep the screen turned off at all times for privacy as well as rapid key input.
Hearing
For hearing they offer real time text calling with anyone who is on a RTT capable device.
This one was a delightful discovery, sound detectors to receive alerts when the phone detects a baby crying or the doorbell.
Flash notification which flashes the camera light or the screen when you receive notifications or when alarms sound.
You have the option to mute all sounds including calls, alerts and media.
Hearing aids to improve the sound quality of your phone for users with hearing aids.
Samsung subtitles (CC), Google subtitles (CC); left/right sound balance to adjust the left and right sound balance of headphones and mono audio to switch audio from stereo to mono for listening with one ear.
Dexterity and Interaction
A Universal Switch is an option where custom switches let you interact with your phone and select items on the screen by tapping the screen, moving your head, opening your mouth, blinking, or using external accessories.
They also offer an assistant menu to turn on functions to improve accessibility for users with reduced dexterity. Easy screen turn on turns on the screen without having to press hard keys.
Touch and hold delay can be changed from the default 0.5 seconds to 1, 1.5 or can be customized.
You have the option to click after pointer stops and interaction control which blocks touch interaction for a selected area of the screen, hard keys and keyboard.
Along with offering these three categories, the user also has additional options such as text-to-speech where the language, speech rate and pitch can all be customized.
Direction lock to unlock the screen by swiping in a series of directions.
Direct access adds shortcuts to specific settings and functions. Accessibility shortcut allows the user to press and hold both volume keys for 3 seconds to start the service they have selected as their shortcut.
The user can turn on or off their notification reminder which plays a sound or vibrates when they have an unread notification.
The user can change their settings for the way they answer and end calls. To answer calls, the user has the options of pressing the home key, use their voice by saying Answer or Reject or automatic answering which automatically answers calls after 2 seconds while a headset or Bluetooth device is connected. To end calls the user has the option to press the Power key to end calls.
Single tap mode option is also available to use a single tap instead of a swipe to respond to alarms, alerts and incoming calls.
Android also offers accessibility settings backup to import and export your accessibility settings, or share them with other devices and the device also offers remote support by the user’s phone network.
285 million is the number of visually impaired people and over 360 million is the number of hearing impaired people around the globe. I hope that with their input and help we can continue to improve everyone’s lives by making everything more accessible.
Smartphones and Accessibility
Research & References of Smartphones and Accessibility|A&C Accounting And Tax Services
Source
0 Comments