Accessibility and Usability of Social Media: Convergence between Blind Users and Design Standards

About 300 million people with vision impairments face significant access and usability barriers in interacting with social networking sites (SNS) to communicate, collaborate and enhance professional relationships. These barriers primarily result from the visuo-centric design of Web 2.0 technologies. Literature recognizes that SNS interaction with assistive technologies is problematic, but does not clarify: Where, how and why blind users face SNS interaction challenges? This paper reports the findings of an exploratory field study to answer this question. Thinkaloud observations and verbal protocol analysis was used for a contextually-situated and experiential understanding of blind SNS users’ accessibility and usability problems. Results illustrate the nature of problems, identify problematic design elements, and explain character of these problems. Findings have implications for research on blind empowerment, human-computer interactions, and improving SNS accessibility and usability for all users.