My theme for the 2021 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is to give an overview of what it is like to be visually impaired and to break down the misconceptions that still exist regarding the blind and visually impaired community. In this post I will discuss the topic of phones.
A few years ago there was a post on Facebook that showed a photo of a woman with a white cane looking at her mobile phone. And in the post she was accused of faking her vision impairment because she was able to look at her phone. You can read an article on this here.
This post is an example of the lack of education there is regarding vision impairment and the spectrum that exists when it comes to visual impairment. Blindness can range from total blindness to light perception to some usable vision.
I have low vision and I use glasses with a high prescription and I use a white cane when I am out on my own to let others know I can not see well and for safety reasons. This could have been me looking at my phone. This could have also been any screen reader user trying to listen to their phone.
Blind and visually impaired people are able to use mobile phones with the help of assistive text to speech software that reads out the text on the screen and the user can interact with items on the screen by swiping and double tapping.
Jazmin Ruiz 