How do they sign up or navigate through lemmy or interact do they use aditional software or hardware for these ? And i am not just talking about lemmy everytime i see some app or websit or litterally any piece of software having an accesibility feature i think to myself that if i was blind how does this feature help me like at all ? Is it for another kind of disabled people like people who are a little blind wouldn’t bigger fonts be better for them ? Or if someone doesn’t have any limb how does this help em . I am geniunly clueless on this subject do educate me.
You can find a lot about this online. Accessibility text is embedded in a way to make things easy for apps and standardize implementation. It’s kind of like writing a tool that can read anything “in a red box”. So various sites implement their own UI, but then add the red box other softwares know how to use.
Screen reading technology allows a completely blind person to speak to the computer and be explained what they see. This is how life if in most cases outside of smell and touch so it’s not jarring. Except of course when website and apps don’t implement the standards for accessibility.
Also not everyone is completely blind. Some are able to see through a kind of projector that make a spot really big as they scroll through, but even then using the reader and other accessibility functions is easier. Stephen Hawkin blinked at a computer for 30 years picking word by word, imagine what we have embedded into OS’s now. You don’t have to imagine, it’s an interesting dive to look into various disabilities and how they interact with the internet and devices.
It’s a very difficult task.
There’s a class if software called screen readers that can basically read what’s in the screen out loud in a specific way.
Browsers and operating systems like Windows or Mac implement standard ways to navigate around them using only the keyboard, and most applications take the easy way and use the built-in components so they also follow those conventions. Things like using the tab key to move to the next button, and the spacebar to select.
Beyond that, there are a lot of accessibility “hints” built into a lot of webpages that help the screen readers know what is or isn’t important. Some websites do better than others at this.
Smartphones are getting more accessible because of voice controls, which let someone say “answer” instead of needing to tap the button.
Larger fonts can help, and the ability to change them is also considered an accessibility feature. There’s a lot of different types of disability, and there are different things that help people differently.
There are mice driven by moving your jaw, or a small mouth joystick. Others use their feet. Very much depends on the person.
If you want to learn more, an easy way to sample is to just turn on some of the features and see what they do.
We’re there any specific features that you were most curious about?
Thanks for explaining
I’m near-sighted and need new glasses, (they’re on order!) so I’m not super disabled, but it’s annoying. I love the one in Mac OS that makes holding command enlarge whatever text you’re hovering over.
It depends a lot on specific software, but generally, they hook into the standard functions on the computer and provide alternative ways to interact with it. For example, for someone who is visually impaired, the software will be able to take text (not usually images, thus the need for transcription) and enlarge it, or read it aloud. For someone who has mobility limitations, there are options for different control methods, that usually replace traditional control methods. That said, these options are limitted to what is standard interaction, so if the program or website does something weird, unique, or outright hostile, will will usually break. For example, text needs to be stored as text, links programmed as links, and games need to not ban you for using a non-standard input device.
