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Apps open window to world for blind users
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IT was a frustrating day for Sun Tao. He was having trouble using Alipay, the online payment system created by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. What should have been a straightforward task was proving difficult.
Most people in such a situation might simply turn to cash, but things are not so easy for Sun. He is blind and cannot tell the difference between denominations of bank notes.
After upgrading the Alipay app on his Android cellphone, he found that his screen reader software, which converts electronic text into synthesized speech, would no longer work.
Sun called customer services at Alipay, only to get a puzzled response.
“Blind people can use mobile phones? Really? How?”
Sun doesn’t take offence to such questions. By now he is used to the ignorance of sighted people, including their ignorance of his smartphone use.
Recent difficulties aside, smartphone applications have transformed Sun’s life for the better. He isn’t alone.
China has about 13 million visually impaired people, and about 6 million of them have smartphones, according to the China Information Accessibility Product Alliance (CAPA).
With the help of screen reader apps such as VoiceOver on iOS and TalkBack on Android, the visually impaired in China are able to chat with friends, order food and shop online.
Wearing sunglasses and waiting for Bus 603 in downtown Beijing, Li Chongyang plays with his smartphone while he is waiting, just like everybody else. But unlike many other people, the 25-year-old has never had a chance to see the world as he was born blind. Nevertheless, he knows exactly when the bus will come, as an app tells him it will be exactly five minutes. And when it arrives, the app sends him an alert telling him to board.
Without his smartphone, riding a bus or taking a cab is a near impossible mission.
“I don’t know which car the taxi is. Sometimes they pull over right in front of me, but I’m still waving my hand. They think I am a nutter,” he says. “Since installing car-hailing apps like DiDi on my phone, I can tell the driver where I am, what clothes I’m wearing, and the driver can help me get in the car.”
Li has installed 120 apps on his phone. With a screen reader, he invests in stocks and tracks his daily exercises to stay fit.
“Smartphones have opened the gates of the world to me,” he says.
But the gates are not yet wide enough. Since his news app was upgraded, Li can no longer “read” news articles, just as Sun struggles with Alipay.
Sun was not able to make an online payment for nearly three months, but finally managed to contact Alipay’s technology department.
The engineers say they had blocked the screen reader for fear that hackers could hijack it and get access to users’ passwords and other information.
“I felt frustrated when I received Mr. Sun’s complaint because I think technology should remove barriers for the disabled rather than create new ones,” says Li Jiajia, a senior technician for Ant Financial Service Group, which owns Alipay.
Alipay formed an “emergency response” team to solve the accessibility problem. Later they also invited Sun and two other visually impaired users to become beta testers for a new version of the app on Android.
Blind users of QQ, Tencent’s popular instant messaging app, reported similar problems.
“We will never give up on our visually impaired users just because we fear a few risks,” says Xian Yecheng, general manager of Tencent’s Instant Messaging Product Department. The department spent six months improving defenses against the hacking of the screen reader.
Complaints
Emojis were also unreadable to blind people when they were chatting with others online. However, thanks to engineers’ efforts, the screen reader can now tell Sun, “your friend Ming sends you a grin.” The possibilities are endless.
“Internet firms are always surprised when they receive complaints from blind users. They don’t know that the blind also use the Internet. Nor do they know how to make their products accessible to this group,” says Liang Zhenyu, secretary of CAPA.
CAPA was co-established in 2013 by top Internet firms, such as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Microsoft and China’s Information Accessibility Research Association, to call for greater accessibility for the disabled.
“What disabled people need most is to be treated as equals,” says Liang. “Information accessibility is essential for them to fit in to society. Without access to information they will be shut out.”
Sun is glad that he can pay for food and daily necessities online again, while Li Chongyang is looking forward to a new Baidu app for the visually impaired which can read almost any object it scans with his phone’s camera. “I hope the app can tell me, ‘a 30-year-old man is standing in front of you,’ or ‘this a 10-yuan note.’ This way, the mobile Internet can really open my eyes and help me see the world,” he says.
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