When Design Fails

It is all well and fine to strive towards a more accessible world, but there are going to be some things along the way that just haven't reached that goal yet. Whether it is because the app designer missed the accessibility memo or they just don't care, I still come across many apps in my day to day life that don't work as they should with a screen reader. It is for this reason that I admire companies like Apple who have made it their mission to build features into their screen reader software that pick apart an inaccessible app and show the screen reader the bare bones of the visual interface so they can at least use the app.

You might be thinking, 'bare bones, that must be ugly', and you are not wrong. When Apple's screen recognition software looks at a visual interface, it understands what buttons look like, what regular text looks like, and it pulls them all apart. This means that the text that might have been on top of a button visually is now separate so that the screen reader can actually click that button. It requires a bit of feeling around on the screen to see what text is beside what button, and definitely should not be considered to make an app accessible, but it makes it usable in the meantime.

The easiest way to think about it is like this; Some apps don't have proper labelling...remember when I discussed labelling? The screen reader uses these labels to identify things on the screen and know what to do with them. If they are not labelled, the default action is to do nothing...not very useful right? So screen recognition does the figuring out and splits pieces on the screen as buttons or text. The screen reader then sees that button, and the text is somewhere near it so if a screen reader user feels around the button they can see the text that was previously on top of it, and then they know to click that button; and since that button is now labelled as a button, the screen reader knows to perform the action linked to it when it is clicked. Very elegant right?!

So for a world filled with inaccessible things, and designers who...let's face it...give an unfair amount of pushback when asked to use proper design techniques, built in features like this make a huge difference.

There are probably half a dozen apps that I need to use on a daily basis that I either have screen recognition always on for, or I use it about half of the time in the app. Don't get me wrong, some apps are designed quite well, but there are a couple of crucial features missing that screen recognition provides the quick fix for, and usually these are the kinds of designers that are open to feedback and actually consider said feedback. For those who are interested in using screen recognition, or want to tell/show someone about it, full instructions on setting it up and using it are below:

Enable Screen Recognition

1. Navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Voiceover > VoiceOver Recognition
2. Toggle the Screen Recognition switch on
3. >Go back to the previous screen
4. Tap on Router, a few options below VoiceOver Recognition
5. Scroll through the list and select screen recognition

Note: In the VoiceOver Recognition section, enabling the image recognition and text recognition features can add another level of assistance when dealing with inaccessible items on screen.

Using the router

If you have used the router for Voiceover features like switching between character or word navigation, selecting text, audio docking, and many other features, you can skip this section because you are already familiar with using the router. If not, follow these instructions to access screen recognition in any app:

To access router options, using two fingers on the screen (I use my pointer and middle finger), swipe them in opposite directions on the screen like you are turning a knob. You can change the order of the router options in the router settings, found in previous section, and swiping your fingers in a counter clockwise direction will go backwards through the options, clockwise will go forwards. Once you hear the option that you are looking for, swiping one finger up or down will go through the settings for that option, screen recognition has on and off settings. The router has many other options that can make toggling settings much quicker, so explore this feature that doesn't appear to be very well known in the Voiceover community...that I have found anyway.

Note: If you toggle screen recognition on for an app, and then navigate to another app, screen recognition will stay on for the app you turned it on for, and off for the app you just switched to...unless of course you turn it on for that app too. This is a handy feature that lets you leave screen recognition enabled for completely or partially inaccessible apps, and disabled for ones that are completely accessible.