Can anyone point me to the best resources which might help me understand how visually impaired users navigate the internet today?
The impetus for thinking about it today was looking at a maps subreddit, and seeing how much fun people were having. The contents of the map images in the sub are very complex with lots of text data on the maps. I would imagine that blind, or near blind users, could not participate in the fun.
I started to make a Custom GPT [0] to try to deal with this. The end goal being an iOS shortcut where a user could send an image to it, and get the GPT's text response.
Am I re-inventing the wheel here? Am I even coming at the problem correctly?
[0] https://chat.openai.com/g/g-jcyEz5uDP-image-descriptions-for-the-blind
WebAIM, a web accessibility group, has a good survey about the tools involved: https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey9/
They also have a good overview intro of web accessibility fr the visually impaired: https://webaim.org/articles/visual/
If this is your first time trying to address visual impairment online, it might help to get some training or consultation with them: https://webaim.org/services/
It's helpful to discuss your proposals with real users with visual disabilities rather than assuming you know what's best.
I’ve been trying a few times to learn to use iOS accessibility features because I’m curious about the topic, you can find good tutorials on YouTube and videos of people sharing their workflows and tooling.
I wouldn’t look into developing a tool before having a good understanding of the subject, it’s pretty likely you will be misunderstanding what would be useful or not for a blind person.
Thankfully it was just a scare. My family has some eyesight issues, so I've always been curious on how visually impaired users navigate the web.
It helps that in my high school there was a boy that was born blind. He used a braille machine during class, until he got a thinkpad configured with a screen reader. Later he joined a bank working in IT, and I remember he already knew Linux very well during high school (early 00's).
>Can anyone point me to the best resources which might help me understand how visually impaired users navigate the internet today?
I use the Wave accessibility tool [1] on my websites, and whenever I am reviewing pull requests for $work, or Apache, Jenkins (it&plugins do very poorly), and other Open Source sites (latest one was the CWL Conf 2024 [2]).
Another thing I use to test accessibility is try to navigate the site with Orca (with/without looking at the screen). You can install that on any Linux machine, completely free. Microsoft screen reader is better than Orca, or at least was the last time I checked it. But I am a Linux user -- and plan to continue being even if my eyesight gets really bad.
It is relatively easy to learn Orca, you just need to learn a few shortcuts, and the commands to enable/disable it. And testing web sites will help you both learn to use the screen reader, while also helping other visually impaired users if you submit bugs/pull requests.
Here's a great video that shows what you hear when you open a browser with Orca enabled/running: [3]. If you are running Linux just try typing `orca`, then open a browser, and follow this link: [4]. There you can find most of the necessary key bindings to navigate a website with Orca. Give it a try and experiment how that works.
I don't know much about maps, GPT, etc., but I hope Orca and these links will help you to learn more about web accessibility.
[2] https://github.com/common-workflow-language/cwlcon2024/pull/...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI76P-KPZec
[4] https://techblog.wikimedia.org/2020/07/02/an-orca-screen-rea...
https://i.redd.it/x9glb5g6j09c1.jpeg
Short Summary: A map displaying the oldest (almost) continuously operating universities in Europe, with founding years and noted operational gaps.
Detailed Description: The image is a color-coded map of Europe showing the oldest universities in various countries that have been (almost) continuously functioning. The universities are indicated by dots on the map, with the year of establishment next to each dot. The map is shaded in various tones of green, possibly indicating different time periods or durations of operation. At the top, there's a title "Oldest (almost) continuously functioning universities in Europe". Below the title, a note clarifies that these universities have been in operation with gaps less than 50 years at a time.
Here is the text on the map, from oldest to newest:
University of Bologna - 1088
University of Paris - 1150 (1200)*
University of Oxford - 1167
University of Cambridge - 1209
University of Salamanca - 1218
University of Montpellier - 1220 (and 1289)
University of Coimbra - 1290
University of Pisa - 1343
University of Florence - 1349
Charles University in Prague - 1348
Jagiellonian University - 1364
University of Pécs - 1367
Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg - 1386
University of Vienna - 1365
University of Ferrara - 1391
University of Leipzig - 1409
University of St Andrews - 1413
University of Rostock - 1419
University of Barcelona - 1450
University of Glasgow - 1451
University of Greifswald - 1456
University of Freiburg - 1457
University of Munich - 1472
Uppsala University - 1477
University of Tübingen - 1477
University of Copenhagen - 1479
University of Genoa - 1481
University of Wittenberg - 1502
University of Leipzig - 1409
Dublin (Trinity College) - 1592
University of Edinburgh - 1583
Babeș-Bolyai University - 1581
University of Groningen - 1614
University of Oslo - 1811
University of Helsinki - 1640
University of Tartu - 1632
Lviv University - 1661
University of Zagreb - 1669
University of Innsbruck - 1669
Istanbul Technical University - 1773
Vilnius University - 1579
University of Münster - 1780
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens - 1837
State Agrarian University of Moldova - 1933
University of Iceland - 1911
Faroe Islands - 1965
University of Luxembourg - 2003
University of Liechtenstein - 1961
University of San Marino - 1986
University of Pristina - 1969
Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje - 1946
International University of Monaco - 1986
Gibraltar - 2015
Malta - 1769
The map has a label at the bottom right corner with the source as "Wikipedia, Websites of universities" and a watermark "efisha.com".
The map also denotes centuries with markers on the left side, from the 11th century to the 21st century, suggesting the periods when these universities were established.
"I am not perfect at this yet, some data and sorting might not be perfect."