Accessibility Deja-Vu

“When you come near Hotel Mahableshwar, a large tilted building you would see on your right...a little ahead...”.  I was interrupted “Manoj, we both are visually impaired, let me give the phone to our auto-rickshaw driver”. For the first time in my life, I realised that simple instruction to reach our office could have special needs.


Dr Homiyar walked in after some time, and the guard took him right up the staircase where I welcomed him and his companion into the conference room. Dr. Homiyar is a practicing physiotherapist at Ahmadabad and ACCESSIBILITY AND ACCESS TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT at The Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged, Mumbai. Once settled Dr. Homiyar started talking of how digitalisation of gadgets is a bit inconsiderate for visually changed. Microwaves and Washing Machines don’t have features that can guide the visually challenged. Earlier, the specific knob shapes on the gadgets could give information on the job status, but since the invent of the touch screens, loaded with ‘fuzzy logic’ and multiple functionality, visually challenged are left with difficult situation. Only recently some gadgets did incorporate ‘speak’ options.


He did mention about the XVCRC (www.xvcrc.org) and the pioneering work it is doing in using technology to help visually challenged people lead a normal life. One of the things which we noticed was that neither him nor his companion was using the white stick, we usually see the blind men using. He happened to mention that there were people like him who are partially blind. His companion could see us somewhat but cannot put together the face in the brain. Partial blindness makes them look like normal people and they can go about doing things with little help. India alone has largest number of visually challenged people in the world, estimated to be nearly 2 Crore (20 million).
They also mentioned how ‘signs of pity’ and not ‘help’ upsets them. On an airport, they are offered ‘wheel-chair’ while they can perfectly walk up the staircase or escalator with little guidance.

Discussing about website: They said our website www.oniodesign.com is somewhat more ‘accessible’ than many others. How? He opened his laptop to show us the website. We started hearing different operation commands being spoken out by the software. Once the website opened, the software started speaking out different things wherever tab went. We did name each image on the website properly (alt tag). I was surprised to know that what is a good technique for Google search optimisation is also a good design thinking for accessibility. If the Image of the button ‘Contact Us’ has an alt-tag as ‘Contact-us’ then it will be SPOKEN by the speech software deployed on the machines, visually challenged people tends to use. But if the images are named as ‘button 23_c’, it garbles the entire website structure in their head.
I asked them if they faced any difficulty in walking up the two staircases while coming up. They said “ not much, though it would have been better if the railing could continue throughout, rather than pausing it at corners (architect probably saved some corner rounding of pipes in the railing). Also, if you could put a small rub-strip or matt-tile just before the stairs begin, we can sense the beginning of stairs.” That is an indication to the visually challenged that they must expect the staircase now. Change of tactile textures and shapes are such an important design element. But never did it occur to me in those deeper dimensions, till Dr. Homiyar articulated in the terms, designers and managers understand.


He talked of many other things, which I as a designer, was sensitized during studies at design school. However, things were left out in the hum-drum of ‘client briefs’. Now thinking back, forget about the Indian clients, even so called ‘mature economy’ clients also did really press on accessibility criterion at all; not even mentions. Constant mention from Dr. Homiyar was that visually challenged people just need a ‘little help’ from all, and especially from designers, who are creating products that hit the mass market. I was glad that I met him. I was sad that it had to take this long, and a personal visit by a visually challenged person himself, to open our eyes.

No comments

Powered by Blogger.