Abstract
People with a visual impairment are more likely to experience social isolation as an effect of their vision loss. Social media can particularly benefit these users, but it is of concern if it cannot be fully and successfully used. This study was instigated at the request of an advisory group of visual impaired users and experts. The aim of the study was to investigate potential accessibility issues visually impaired users could encounter when using social media. A major concern was over missing content embedded in images on social media sites. A subsequent evaluation of Facebook posts carried out by a group of student participants demonstrated that nearly half of images considered contained embedded text, which would be inaccessible to visually impaired users. Despite efforts by social media companies to improve accessibility, any text present in images is not presented in an accessible way to visually impaired users. This research demonstrated the inequality that can arise from partial accessibility and the requirement to consider accessibility at all stages of design and development.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AFB: Using Social Media—American Foundation for the Blind. [online] Afb.org. http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/using-technology/using-social-media-with-a-visual-impairment-or-blindness-facebook-twitter-and-linkedin/123 (2017). Accessed 25 Sept 2017
Asuncion, J.V., Budd, J., Fichten, C.S., Nguyen, M.N., Barile, M., Amsel, R.: Social media use by students with disabilities. Acad. Exch. Q. 16(1), 30–35 (2012)
Babu, R.: Can blind people use social media effectively? A qualitative field study of Facebook usability. Am. J. Inf. Syst. 2(2), 33–41 (2014)
Bigham, J.P., Lin, I., Savage, S.: The effects of “Not Knowing What You Don’t Know” on web accessibility for blind users. In: Proceedings of Assets 29 Oct–1 Nov 2017 Balitmore, MD, USA (2017)
Borrino, R., Furini, M., Roccetti, M.: Augmenting social media accessibility. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A), pp. 54–57 (2009)
Brinkley, J., Tabrizi, N.: A desktop usability evaluation of the Facebook mobile interface using the JAWS screen reader with blind users. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, vol. 61, no 1, pp. 828–832 (2017)
Brady, E., Zhong, Y., Morris, M.R., Bigham, J.P.: Investigating the appropriateness of social network question asking as a resource for blind users. In: Proceedings of CSCW 2013 (2013)
Business Disability Forum: Accessible technology charter: accessibility maturity model (2011). https://members.businessdisabilityforum.org.uk/resource-category/resource/accessible-technology-charter-accessibility-maturity-model/. Accessed 26 Sept 2017
Carey, K.: The opportunities and challenges of the digital age: a blind user’s perspective. Libr. Trends 55(4), 767–784 (2007)
Coyle, C., Steinman, B., Chen, J.: Visual acuity and self-reported vision status. J. Aging Health 29(1), 128–148 (2016)
Della Líbera, B., Jurberg, C.: Teenagers with visual impairment and new media: a world without barriers. Br. J. Vis. Impair. 35(3), 247–256 (2017)
Dresner, A.: Social Networking & You: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for Blind Users’. National Braille Press, Boston (2010)
Dunbar, R.: Do online social media cut through the constraints that limit the size of offline social networks? R. Soc. Open Sci. 3(1), 150292 (2016)
Emerald Insight: So why do people use Facebook and Twitter? Strateg. Dir. 31(6), 4–6 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1108/SD-05-2015-0065
Englard, K.: Twitter’s new update leaves accessibility users behind. The Outline.com. https://theoutline.com/post/2458/there-are-still-some-people-on-twitter-who-dont-have-280-characters (2017). Accessed 6 Dec 2017
Facebook.com: Visually impaired people on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/visually-impaired-people-on-facebook/10152143950893859/ (2017). Accessed 14 Sept 2017
Fuglerud, K.S., Tjøstheim, I., Gunnarsson, B.R., Tollefsen, M.: Use of social media by people with visual impairments: usage levels, attitudes and barriers. In: Miesenberger, K., Karshmer, A., Penaz, P., Zagler, W. (eds.) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7382. Springer, Berlin (2012)
Gröber, P., Köster, J.: An analysis to overcome shortcomings to improve the accessibility for the blind: a case study on Facebook’s homepage. In: IEEE 12th International Conference on Signal-Image Technology & Internet-Based Systems (SITIS), 2016, pp. 442–449 (2016)
Heath, A., Heap, R.: Texto, imágenes y traducción en Facebook. In: Gutiérrez y Restrepo, E., Martínez Normand, L., Ugarte García, M. (eds.) Novática. Monografía: Accesibilidad web, no (232), pp. 30–37 (2015)
Thomas Pocklington Trust: Loneliness, social isolation and sight loss. [online]. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/68597/1/loneliness_social_isolation_and_sight_loss_final_report_dec_13.pdf. (2013). Accessed 10 July 2018
Lazar, J., Allen, A., Kleinman, J., Malarkey, C.: What frustrates screen reader users on the web: a study of 100 blind users. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact. 22(3), 247–269 (2007)
Litt, E.: Measuring users’ internet skills: a review of past assessments and a look toward the future. New Media Soc. 15(4), 612–630 (2013)
Mellon, J., Prosser, C.: Twitter and Facebook are not representative of the general population: political attitudes and demographics of British social media users. Res. Politics 4(3), 205316801772000 (2017)
Middlesex University: Research Ethics. [online] https://unihub.mdx.ac.uk/your-study/research-at-middlesex/research-ethics (2014). Accessed 20 Feb 2017
Middlesex University: Foundation year courses, Middlesex University London. [online] Mdx.ac.uk. https://www.mdx.ac.uk/courses/foundation (2018). Accessed 23 Feb 2018
Morris, M.R., Zolyomi, A., Yao, C., Bahram, S., Bigham, J.P., Kane, S.K.: “With most of it being in pictures now, I rarely use it”: Understanding Twitter’s Evolving Accessibility to Blind Users, CHI ‘16. In: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 5506–5516 (2016)
Newsroom.fb.com: Using Artificial Intelligence to Help Blind People ‘See’ Facebook | Facebook Newsroom. [online]. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/04/using-artificial-intelligence-to-help-blind-people-see-facebook/ (2018). Accessed 18 Oct 2018
Newton, C.: Facebook begins using artificial intelligence to describe photos to blind users. The Verge.com. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11364914/facebook-automatic-alt-tags-blind-visually-impared (2016). Accessed 6 Dec 2017
OFCOM Access and Inclusion: Access and Inclusion in 2016, Outcomes for consumers in vulnerable circumstances. OFCOM. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/_data/assets/pdf_file/0030/98508/access-inclusion-report-2016.pdf (2016). Accessed 25 Sept 2017
OFCOM and Inclusion: Outcomes for consumers in vulnerable circumstances: [online]. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/_data/assets/pdf_file/0030/98508/access-inclusion-report-2016.pdf (2016)
OFCOM: OFCOM, Adults’ media use and attitudes, Report 2016. [online] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/_data/assets/pdf_file/0026/80828/2016-adults-media-use-and-attitudes.pdf (2017). Accessed 14 Sept 2017
Söderström, S., Ytterhus, B.: The use and non-use of assistive technologies from the world of information and communication technology by visually impaired young people: a walk on the tightrope of peer inclusion. Disabil. Soc. 25(3), 303–315 (2010)
Seo, W., Jung, H.: Exploring the community of blind or visually impaired people on YouTube. In: Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 371–372). ACM (2017)
Teitel, E.: Big brother is a bit of a bore: 2014 is the year young people may finally flee Facebook—but for what? Macleans 126(51–52), 116 (2013)
Vashistha, A., Cutrell, E., Dell, N., Anderson, R.: Social media platforms for low-income blind people in India. In: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (pp. 259–272). ACM (2015)
Voylinska, V., Azenkot, S., Wu, S., Leshed, G.: “How Blind People Interact with Visual Content on Social Networking Services”, CSCW ‘16 Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, pp 1584–1595 (2016)
Wentz, B., Lazar, J.: Are separate interfaces inherently unequal? In: Proceedings of the 2011 iConference, pp. 90–97 (2011)
Wu, S., Adamic, L.: “Visually Impaired Users on an Online Social Network”, CHI ‘14 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 3133–3142 (2014)
Wu, S., Wieland, J., Farivar, O., Schiller, J.: “Automatic Alt-text: Computer-generated Image Descriptions for Blind Users on a Social Network Service”, CSCW ‘17 Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, pp. 1180–1192 (2017)
Ziegler, F., Schwanen, T.: ‘I like to go out to be energised by different people’: an exploratory analysis of mobility and wellbeing in later life. Ageing Soc. 31(05), 758–781 (2011)
Acknowledgements
Sarah Bailey, Davinder Kullar, Rory Heap and Andy Heath are thanked both for inspiring the paper and providing information of their personal experiences of social media.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Whitney, G., Kolar, I. Am I missing something?. Univ Access Inf Soc 19, 461–469 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00648-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00648-z