https://www.wired.com/story/blind-youtube-creators/
Meet the Blind YouTubers Making the Internet More Accessible
Visually impaired creators are a lifeline for those who share their
disability—and they’re educating and making allies of sighted people along the
way.
Emma Grey Ellis01.22.2019 08:00 AM
Visually impaired creators are a lifeline for those who share their
disability—and they’re educating and making allies of sighted people along the
way.Casey Chin
To be blind on the internet, at its worst, is to be told that you are a liar.
“Every time I say I’m visually impaired,” says Casey Greer. “someone will try
to shut me down, saying ‘Well then how did you type this comment?!’ It feels
silly that in 2019, I always have to explain that blind people use and love the
internet just as much as anybody else.” The antidote? YouTube’s thriving
community of blind creators, which includes Greer.
These creators have become voices for a poorly understood and often overlooked
group of people, who, apparently unbeknownst to many sighted people, share
digital space with them every single day. If you are sighted, visual impairment
YouTube answers questions you likely never thought to ask: How do blind people
keep houseplants? Do blind people understand concepts like “translucent” or
“reflective”? How do they use Instagram? And how do their Tinder matches react
when they find out they’re blind? In offering a window into their lives, not
only have these YouTubers become de facto educators for the general public, but
also they’ve become rallying points for the broader visually impaired
community—a place to share stories and tips about navigating the world, online
and off.
On first examination, YouTube doesn’t seem like the most natural fit for
visually impaired people. Along with Instagram, it’s the social platform that
relies least on things that can easily be spoken aloud by your screen reader.
But for some blind YouTubers, like Tommy Edison, that’s exactly why they got
into the game. “I went to see Tropic Thunder and all the resolution was
visual,” Edison says. “I’d spent two hours with these characters, and in the
end, I had no idea what the heck had happened to them.” He turned that
frustrating experience into a YouTube channel: the Blind Film Critic.
Edison's troubles didn’t necessarily end there, though. “As far as I know, I
was the first blind person on YouTube, and in 2011 when I started, it wasn’t
very accessible at all,” he says. “I couldn’t even find the buttons to pause or
play a video. Forget about reading comments.” Screen readers, which audibly
describe visual text, can only work if developers fill in the fields to tell
them what to say—otherwise you end up with silence, or (and this really drives
Edison “right around the bend”) buttons that just say “Button.” YouTube in 2011
was a largely silent experience for Edison, and glitchy too because those
fields were often misaligned. Since then, YouTube has not only recalibrated
those problem areas and provided tutorials on using a screen reader, but also
enabled keyboard shortcuts that automatically take blind users to key features
like the search bar. “Now I can [read comments] for hours,” Edison says.
For others, though, video is a more accessible format than you might think. The
majority of blind people have some residual vision, and legally blind filmmaker
James Rath has been using cameras to help him see the world since childhood.
“When I was eight, I discovered in my parents’ basement that cameras are a
glorified magnifying device,” Rath says. “My retinas are too weak to read, but
if I zoom in enough, checking the composition of a shot is totally possible.
I’ve had a YouTube account since I was nine.”
Greer too remembers bringing a camera to the zoo so she could zoom in to make
out the animals, and has been on YouTube since she was 16. And, as all are
quick to point out, there’s a lot about YouTube that’s accidentally accessible:
unboxing videos, reviews, and story times are all basically podcasts with
talking heads. (The reverse is also true: Blind YouTuber Molly Burke has
amassed almost 2 million subscribers by doing regular YouTuber stuff like
jumping out of planes, dying her hair, and introducing her dog to a pig.)
These creators are trying to do more than translate experience for the
sighted—they employ a host of technical tricks to give their entire audience
the best possible experience.
Still, these creators are trying to do more than translate experience for the
sighted—they employ a host of technical tricks to give their entire audience
the best possible experience. “Contrast is huge for people with low vision,”
says Sam Seavey, frontman for the channel TheBlindLife. “You’ll never see me in
front of a bookcase. I purposely have a large blank wall behind me. And much to
my wife’s chagrin, I’ll get a really good camera and upload in 4k.” They’re
also careful to explain everything they’re doing in great detail. According to
Rath, allowing people to upload audio description tracks the same way YouTube
allows users to upload captions in other languages is the platform’s biggest
missed opportunity to help its visually impaired users.
Of course, being truly helpful and inclusive goes beyond tweaking a video’s
look and feel. “I want to be the foremost channel on YouTube for assistive
technology for the visually impaired,” Seavey adds. “I’m very proud that the
majority of my audience is visually impaired, and I’ve always geared my channel
toward people who are new.” He knows exactly what it’s like to be “new”:
Seavey's vision has degenerated over the course of his adult life, ending a
career working in restaurants and leaving him isolated and unemployed—until he
came to YouTube. “If my videos can teach them how to brush their teeth and use
a screen reader and which magnifier apps are best, I’m helping out,” he says.
Living with disability is a learned skill, and these YouTubers are the teachers.
That instruction is as philosophical as it is practical. “To be brutally
honest, people don’t see us," Edison says. "To be able to show a chunk of the
world who I am and what I’m capable of is amazing for a lot of different
people, including me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a message
that says something like, ‘I have a 2-year-old blind child and we were scared
to death about what his life would be like, but your videos made us feel so
much more comfortable.’ Those are the ones that make me cry.” For the creators
and their audiences—visually impaired and sighted alike—these channels not only
expand their world, but also normalize it too. “It’s such a simple thing, but
it’s great for people to see that we’re really not that different,” Greer says.
Seavey might be onto something in saying this is the best point in history to
be living with visual impairment; in large part, that’s because of technology.
These YouTubers are helping their peers make the best of that incredible new
asset, while also making sure their community is considered as tech continues
to develop. “The way I look at it, accessibility isn’t just for people with
disabilities," says Rath the filmmaker. "Being able to do things without
looking at them lets you multitask and be more productive, and I think it’s
important for everyone to understand those benefits now." Besides, he points
out, anyone's circumstances can change: "You may end up joining our community
at any time, whether you want to or not.” Thanks to these YouTubers, those new
members will have more support than ever.
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