I have a love-hate relationship with Siri.
When I tell Siri to set my alarm just before I go to bed, I appreciate the
convenience of being able to simply tell my phone something and it gets
done. I'm the type of person who might possibly sleep through my first
alarm, so I set several as an extra precaution. When I wake up and am sure
I'm out of bed, I tell Siri, "Turn off all of my alarms," and go on with my
day. The same goes for setting my monthly hair cut appointments; almost
always, it just works.
When I ask Siri things like, "What's zero divided by zero?" I laugh, because
its response is funny and because whoever programmed it clearly has a good
sense of humor.
But when I dictate certain words, such as "horn," (something I do regularly,
as I am a railroad enthusiast and often send train horn recordings to
friends) and Siri hears and inserts another four-letter word instead, I get
really, really mad. But I know that text dictation will never be 100%
accurate, and thus I either check all of my texts (paying particular
attention to the ones I think it might have difficulties interpreting), or I
just enter them by hand.
My biggest gripe with Siri isn't about anything it does or doesn't do,
however. Rather, it is that Siri's potential to assist blind and low vision
users is generally misunderstood and overstated. Too often, I read articles
in the mainstream (that is, not specifically written for an audience of
users with visual impairments) media about iOS accessibility which extol the
access Siri provides blind users. While Siri is one of many accessibility
tools, the sighted public's idea of how we use it is ripe with
misconceptions.
Many of the articles I've read over the years have generally touted Siri's
ability to dictate text, thereby negating the need for typing on the
touchscreen. But as we saw with the "horn" example, dictation is far from
perfect. Since the blind user relies only on speech (rather than being able
to quickly scan the text Siri has dictated), closely reviewing the
text-either by word, or better yet, by character-is necessary if there is
any concern about erroneous dictation. If time is of the essence, I either
must decide to send an imperfect text (hopefully with most of the correct
words), take the time to proofread it and make any changes, or just enter it
by hand from the outset.
That the sighted public, more often than not, assumes blind people would
benefit from dictation rather than typing is nothing new. I've been asked
many a time if I use Dragon Naturally Speaking
<http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm> on my computer, and my response is
now usually a variant of, "Why would I need that?" Dragon and other
speech-to-text software is great for people who aren't able to type, but the
idea that a blind person, with no other disabilities or extenuating
circumstances, wouldn't be able to type and needs dictation software has
always bothered me.
Sadly, this "Voice-controlled technology is easiest for blind people"
mentality has seeped into peoples' perceptions of how the blind use iPhones.
In a recent iMore article,
<http://www.imore.com/making-iphone-camera-work-blind> "Making the iPhone
camera accessible for the blind," the author asserts that the first step
Apple took in the process of making camera use accessible to blind users was
making sure everyone could easily get to the camera app:
The first step in making the Camera app accessible is making Camera.app
accessible. In other words, making sure everyone can get to it whenever they
need it.
You can navigate to Camera using VoiceOver, but Apple's made it even easier.
Simply tell Siri "Open the camera". Even "Siri, take a selfie" works. It
doesn't automagically switch it to the front-facing mode or take a picture,
though-at least not yet-but it gets you where you want to be.
While I hate to destroy the image of the courageous blind man who, just by
talking to his iPhone, has a whole new world opened up to him...Siri
generally does not make things easier for me. Anyone who has asked Siri a
question and gotten the response, "Here's what I found...take a look!" will
know what I mean; there is often a lot more involved than just Asking Siri
any question and it directly telling you the answer-enough so that I often
am faster at just looking the information up myself. The same goes for
launching apps; when all is said and done, I'm quicker at using my iPhone by
hand than I would be asking Siri to do it for me.
While on its face this may look like a criticism of Siri (and, by extension,
Apple), I think my quarrel is really with automation and "smart" technology
in general. What it comes down to is that I usually don't want to talk to my
phone, and I usually don't want my phone to automate things I could simply
do better myself. (Don't even get me started on "smart" canes.)
But, I digress.
Coming back to the iMore article, I think it's wonderful that mainstream
journalists are giving much-needed coverage to accessibility. The more
developers who can be made aware that blind people use their apps, the
better for everyone. There's no shortage of work to be done, and that one
article may be the article a developer reads and realizes, "Hey, I should
really make sure my app works for blind and low vision users."
On the other hand, when I read articles which (albeit indirectly) suggest
that the easiest way for a blind user to accomplish a task like opening the
camera is to ask Siri, I can't help but think that the expectations for my
best possible user experience have just been lowered. Reading it as a blind
user, I can't help but think that the assumption, even if subconscious, is
that I need voice-controlled devices because I can't see.
Of course, I know lowering of accessibility expectations was certainly not
the author's intent, and that misconceptions almost always arise because
people simply do not know any better. But I can't help but wonder: how much
more productive could the accessibility conversation be if sighted
journalists and developers better understood how people with disabilities
actually use the accessibility features of assistive technology? What would
happen if a person looking to undertake the development of an assistive app
started the process by asking real users with disabilities, "What areas of
daily life could an app help you with?" What would happen if a journalist
writing a story, instead of assuming that Siri was the simplest way for a
blind user to accomplish a task, researched the topic or asked a group of
blind users their opinions? (On this latter question, I informally surveyed
my Twitter followers, and about half of those who responded indicated they
launch apps with Siri, either some of the time or all of the time. Others
said they did not use Siri to launch apps, with reasoning ranging from
simply not adjusting their usage habits to take advantage of the new Siri
features, to finding apps with VoiceOver being faster and preferring to rely
on themselves.)
In the end, I want the same great experience that sighted users have. I want
fully accessible app interfaces, not simplified "blind-friendly" apps with
voice control. While there is certainly a market for this type of app (such
as for very new users or those who have physical disabilities),
simplification and voice control should never be the first thing a sighted
person thinks of when they consider accessibility or how the blind use
iPhones. Accessibility is inclusion, and inclusion is designing a great user
experience for as many people as possible-from those who cannot type at all
to power users like myself. Thankfully, Apple has demonstrated time and time
again that they get it
<http://www.applevis.com/blog/apple-applevis-assistive-technology-ios-mac-os
-x-opinion/opinion-apple-still-committed-ever> , and that accessibility for
blind and low vision users goes well beyond voice control
<http://www.applevis.com/guides/ios-miscellaneous-voiceover/intro-ios-access
ibility-blind-and-low-vision-users> .
Posted by AppleVis: Website:
www.applevis.com
