If you, as a product manager, were to design a smart phone for the blind, what would you do?
It is nothing new for blind people to use mobile phones. In the era when Nokia was still dominating traditional mobile phones, they could play their mobile phones as smoothly as normal people through physical buttons and voice prompts, and it was no problem to listen to music and make phone calls. Even with a huge base, the blind are still a marginal group, and it is difficult for them to enjoy the fun brought by intelligent technology like normal people.
There are many kinds of mobile phones for the blind in the market. Mobile phone manufacturers are following the product concept of "less is more", removing useless modules and highlighting core functions.No screen, multiple buttonsIt has become the "standard" for blind people’s mobile phones. Even if you go out with a mobile phone as ugly as a TV remote control, Who care? I can’t see it anyway, just use it.
However, simply relying on voice broadcast to exchange information can’t solve the contradiction between the blind people’s yearning for a better life and the single function of the special machine. And the barrier-free design in smart phones, with a bang, brought them Marxism, ah no, it brought them "a pair of eyes". In the jargon of our products, the special machine for the blind is the superficial demand-a faster horse, while the barrier-free service in smart phones is the train and car, which solves their deeper needs.
Barrier-free is relative to "disabled" people, which is what we often call disabled groups. Since the era of special machines for the blind, information barrier-free technical services have always been around.Phonetic assistanceWith the development of this core function, the blind can get voice feedback by touching physical keys, thus guiding further operation. But today’s mobile phonesThe screen is getting bigger and bigger, and there are fewer and fewer buttons.Without a comprehensive screen, I am embarrassed to open a press conference. Everyone can’t wait to make the screen ratio the ultimate 100%. Chopin of B can’t play the sadness of the blind, but the information barrier-free technology of B has given this "useless" screen a new historical mission.
The two heroes, Android’s TalkBack and Apple’s VoiceOver, make the blind finally use the mobile phone screen, and the more they use it, the smoother it is! Blind people touch the screen and use different interactive gestures to identify the current content and perform functional operations through screen reading.
Instead of exquisite visual animation and flat design style, the focus of interaction falls on physical gestures. For example, normal people’s interactive operations such as "click to enter", "long press and drag" and "slide to cut the screen" on the mobile phone are all redefined in the barrier-free auxiliary mode, so blind people can use various program services more deeply without relying on the physical buttons of the mobile phone.
Take Apple’s mobile phone as an example. You can turn on or off the VoiceOver service in "Settings–General–Accessibility", and the interactive gestures of the mobile phone will change after turning on. Taking opening an APP as an example, the normal operation is to directly click the icon of the APP. However, in this mode, in order to prevent the blind from touching the APP by mistake, clicking the icon of the desktop APP will only read the name of the APP, and the blind will open the APP by double-clicking the screen when they touch the app that needs to be opened one by one through voice feedback. Looking at this text description alone, I already feel that the operation is cumbersome, but these new interactions have given them unlimited possibilities.
Although mainstream aesthetics runs counter to the actual needs of the blind, thanks to barrier-free design, the scenes of blind people using smart phones are enriched. Starting from scenes and user portraits, it solves the pain points of how blind people use smart phones, which is equivalent to solving most of the pain points in their lives:
Difficulties in traveling-insufficient blind road facilities, greatly affected by the weather, and scarce guide dogs;
Corresponding plan: travel apps (such as Didi, Shenzhou special car, using express car and other travel modes)
Social difficulties-narrow communication circle, daily access to information only by listening to the radio, and single information channel;
Corresponding solutions: news & social apps (such as WeChat, QQ, various news clients, voice chat or listening to news).
Difficulties in shopping-it is difficult to identify the authenticity of banknotes, and buying goods is easy to be stolen and shoddy;
Corresponding plan: shopping apps (such as Taobao and JD.COM, through voice search, you can buy various items without leaving home to solve the payment problem).
……
You don’t have to visit users, investigate the market, and try to figure out the product positioning and direction. Any analysis can dig out a lot of pain points in blind people’s lives, and each pain point seems to have corresponding APPs to "relieve pain". However, barrier-free service is not a panacea for blind people to use smart phones, and there are often embarrassing scenes with full ideals and skinny reality.
After the author’s experience for a period of time (my eyesight is normal), I will share with you the pit in the process of using the mobile phone barrier-free service.
I believe many people will feel dizzy when they see this picture, let alone people with visual defects. The verification code often appears at the entrance of websites, software or services. As a tool to verify identity, blind people who are stuck at the entrance are disqualified from normal use, and the unreadability of pictures makes the screen reading function useless. The most famous case is that the verification code of 12306 website (which doesn’t explain what you know) was brought to court by a blind person. Although it ended in the blind person losing the case, the verification code problem that plagued the blind person’s operation can no longer be ignored.
Voice verification code is a better solution, although its original intention is not for the blind, like some take-away apps will be used when registering. Due to cost and technical reasons, this service has not been used on a large scale. In addition, the general SMS verification code also meets the screen reading requirements of the system. The difference in user experience between PC and mobile also makes more blind people rely more and more on mobile phones.
Due to their own physical conditions, the education level of the blind is generally not high, so the input method has become a threshold for them to use smart devices. They haven’t learned five strokes, can’t pinyin, and can only write some simple words by hand, which leads them to stumble when using traditional input methods. The input process is full of difficulties and the output words are full of mistakes and omissions. After the simulation experience, I suddenly realized that the original "goddess" chat mode is such a thing: others say ten sentences, and you only reply slowly.
Since the emergence of voice chat applications like WeChat and the rise of various intelligent voice recognition input methods, this pain point has been well solved, which not only facilitates most "lazy people", but also relieves the urgent needs of the blind. I’m trying to read a short passage of about 100 words by using Iflytek’s voice input method. The speed of synchronous input and voice recognition is very fast, and the accuracy of words is over 99%. Of course, this is also limited to the reader’s Putonghua level. I believe that the development of artificial intelligence will make the recognition rate higher when the voice input method is used.
Android is a little girl who can be dressed up at will. Large mobile phone manufacturers will build their own customized Android system, and all kinds of ROM packages on the Internet are flying all over the sky. In order to pursue the simplification and smoothness of the system, some people often castrate most of the built-in services, including accessibility, while satisfying most of the target groups, they accidentally hurt this small group of vulnerable people, making the blind get a carefully "optimized" "brick" machine, which is useless. However, Apple has not lost in this aspect of the system and maintained its due conscience.
For normal people, even with the golden key of barrier-free service, after practical operation, it is found that there are actually many hurdles to be crossed. It is hard to imagine how blind people can play mobile phones happily with us. Everyone is joking that poverty limits their imagination, but after reading a set of real data, I find that my imagination is actually limited by prejudice.
According to the Basic Information Report of Internet Visually Impaired Users in China released by the Secretariat of China Information Accessible Products Alliance (CAPA) in 2016, China has13 millionVisually impaired people, among the surveyed users of visually impaired people, there are92%While using smart phones, 22% of the visually impaired have used Internet software such as Didi, Kuaidi and uber taxi to take a taxi, 33% of the visually impaired have installed 11 to 20 applications on their mobile phones, and 83% of the visually impaired are operating their mobile phones and computers.Can be completely relied onScreen reading function.
Lovely and respectable products and technicians did not limit their imagination to mainstream design, but turned "waste" into treasure, turning the mobile phone screen that was useless to the blind into the best entrance to enjoy intelligent services. Although there are still many pits in the barrier-free product experience, more and more manufacturers are gradually aware of the existence of this special group. For products like BAT, barrier-free details are finely integrated into QQ and Alipay, which may not be noticed by normal users because we are not the "target group".
Although the target group always excludes blind users by default in the process of our product analysis, and the benefits created by 1% special users seem to be so insignificant for a product that meets 99% normal users, with the development, China’s Internet information accessibility level is gradually improving, and more products begin to examine their own barrier-free user experience design, opening up a green information channel for visually impaired people to integrate into the mainstream society.
Maybe one day, a blind man will come to me and say:
"Hey, I’ve used your product, it’s really good!"
It has solved the pain points of users, realized the benefits of products, and fulfilled the social responsibilities. As the glory of product people, this is much Cool.
Source of data: Report on the Basic Situation of Internet Visually Impaired Users in China.
This article was originally published by @ kenfai. Everyone is a product manager. Reprinting is prohibited without permission.
The title map comes from unsplash and is based on CC0 protocol.