Vision Free Products

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Consumer Electronics - Accessibility for the Blind

During the past century, advances in technology, such as talking books, faster production of Braille, access to computers and the Internet, and reading machines, have afforded the blind better access to the world around them. In spite of the advances of the last twenty-five years, developments in consumer electronics technology have made consumer electronics difficult or often impossible to operate without vision, leaving blind people unable to perform seemingly routine tasks.

The Problem

Until the past couple of decades, blind people could operate virtually all electronic devices intended for the broad consumer market, even those of a highly specialized nature. In contrast, today's home electronic devices use multi-level menus, providing only visual feedback by which all tasks are performed. Rather than making access easier, new technology is complicating and oftentimes prohibiting access for the blind. However, it does not have to be this way.

Due to computerized control systems, devices such as today's audio/video receivers have become much more complicated than similarly priced units of twenty years ago. Besides the development of microprocessor-based control and switching systems, this increased capability has been accomplished through multifunction control buttons, menu systems, and displays that can convey a variety of information. While some of today's cost-saving designs can annoy sighted people, they actually prohibit the enjoyment of home entertainment by the blind.

Well into the 1980's the average blind consumer could operate the typical stereo system without help. The use of Braille labels and other tactilely discernable markings (filing a notch or painting nail polish on a dial) allowed blind consumers to easily adjust the many settings of a stereo. In addition, the status of switches could be determined by touch using their physical position, in or out, up or down, etc., with each performing known consistent functions.

Today's stereos may contain knobs and switches, but their use is not intuitive through nonvisual means. For example, a volume control knob may rotate continuously providing no indication of volume level. When one presses the "ON" button, will the sound be produced at the level of the last noisy party? Although some devices possess jog wheels with discernible clicks (which theoretically render them accessible to the blind), these clicks often do not provide reliable information to the blind about the settings. This is because the electronics do not consistently register all the clicks, making the clicks just another frustration for the blind. While sequences of button presses can sometimes be memorized, this is only possible after extensive experimentation and research with the aid of a sighted person. To make matters worse, many of today's devices simply have too many functions to memorize. Additionally, some functions can only be addressed by answering inaccessible screen prompts. TVs and DVD players are other examples of home electronic equipment that now provide challenges for use by the blind. Menus and channel information are displayed on-screen and the user has to navigate through the multi-level menus with the remote control. Even such basic audio controls as adjustments of tone and balance on some televisions are submerged two or three levels deep in on-screen menus. Separate dedicated knobs for these functions have largely disappeared. The chances of successfully entering a program into today's TVs, DVD players, Tivo boxes and the like are remote without the benefit of prompts and access to the on-screen menus.

Home appliances, which have long been easily usable by the blind, are, like home theatre equipment, becoming less so every day, as more and more of them introduce touch panels and layered menus. Refrigerators with touch panels can be hard to label and often provide no audio or tactile feedback, and without a clear/cancel button that makes it impossible for a blind user to detect the current settings. Many washers and dryers use menus that you cycle through, and which give you no feedback when you reach the end or beginning - and so it becomes tough to do something as simple as set the load size or soil level.

The Market

As the Baby Boomers - the largest consumer group in the United States, which even in the current climate preserves much of its discretionary spending power - age, age-related blindness and low vision become ever-more common. Conservative estimates suggest that by 2030, there will be 2.4 million blind seniors (people aged 65 and over) alone. The number of Americans with low vision has already reached 10 million. 6.5 million of low vision Americans are seniors, and this number is expected to double by 2030. The market in specialized products for low vision and blind seniors, such as video magnification and reading machines, has grown rapidly, but the mainstream market has lagged, leaving this growing section of the baby boomers unserved.

Working Toward A Solution

"Those who are blind or low vision purchase and utilize consumer electronics like everyone else. However, for this group, the decision over which product to spend their money on is tightly linked to which one will provide the greatest level of independence in its usability. Our experience is that those we find most usable as blind people are also highly usable, and desirable, by many other consumers. Therefore, we believe that nonvisual access features improve product usability in the general market place--a true win-win."

Mark Riccobono, Executive Director of the NFB Jernigan Institute

The Jernigan Institute provides leadership in sharing best practices in nonvisual access to consumer electronics. We believe that testing appliances for nonvisual access at an early stage not only ensures a broader appeal for the product without necessarily adding to the cost, but also provides all consumers with a more user friendly device. The Jernigan Institute offers manufacturers to opportunity to improve their product with our help. With the experiences of the NFB membership to support it, the Jernigan Institute brings unparalleled expertise in nonvisual access to the table. Since the inception of the Institute, we have consulted on a number of products from the earliest development and design stages, and have organized user testing for these products.

There are many examples of technologies that originated in nonvisual access and which now benefit all consumers - optical character recognition, flatbed scanners and audiobooks are only a few of the examples available in the market now. In the Jernigan Institute, manufacturers of consumer electronics and blind users now have a common resource available to continue this tradition of technological innovation, and to make sure that a good product reaches the largest possible group of consumers.

As the largest and most trusted organization of blind people, the NFB is a logical choice as a partner in reaching out to this underserved population and its untapped discretionary income. We invite manufacturers interested in making accessible consumer electronics to join the dialogue and get direct feedback from experts in the blind community. We can provide user testing on existing electronics which the manufacturer considers or believes to be usable. We also disseminate information on consumer electronics that prove usable to the NFB membership.

The NFB Jernigan Institute hosts the Accessible Home Showcase, a facility displaying a selection of usable mainstream consumer electronics, where manufacturers and users alike can explore different ways to achieve nonvisual accessibility.

For further information,contact NFB, Sendero Group or other members of our Vision Free Team