Blind People Interacting with Mobile Social Applications: Open Challenges

Mobile devices are very important to blind people’s autonomy and social life. Likewise, Social Networking Sites (SNS) promote social inclusion and are widely used by blind people. Previous research already focused on the accessibility of mobile devices and SNS in separate; however, little effort has been made to understand the barriers that blind people face when interacting with mobile social applications. This paper describes two exploratory case studies, resorting to Technology Biographies, where two blind people demonstrated their usual interaction with social applications and stressed their difficulties and strategies. More than looking at the accessibility problems of a particular platform, we give a preliminary insight about the limitations and open research challenges that are transversal to these social applications. Author