Submitted by Kathryn Locke, Curtin University

Back in the early days of the #Covid-19 crisis, researchers at the Curtin University Centre for Culture and Technology started working on a Vision Australia research project to highlight the importance of smartphones for people with low vision or blindness. Conducted on the precipice of the coronarvirus pandemic, it captured a moment in time for people with low vision and blindness, when smartphones became even more vital for their participation in society.

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As Assistant Professor Ashley Shew and CCAT director Professor Katie Ellis have argued in Nature and the Critical Disability Studies blog in the past few weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic underlines and mainstreams the issues faced and limitations placed on people with disabilities. Whether it’s issues around people’s ability to work from home, endorsements of the value of flexible working hours or the essential requirement for fast internet at home, people are exploring issues that have been long-term concerns for people with disability.

Our research, initiated before the pandemic emerged in Australia, highlights the significance of smartphones for people with low vision or blindness, and flags a renewed emphasis on the importance of increasing access to, training in and effective use of this everyday technology.

In February 2020 we conducted our survey of people with low vision or blindness asking them about their smartphone use. It was an extensive survey that came off the back of a three-year investigation into how people with disability use smartphones, specifically in the navigation of urban space. We wanted to track how a specific and significant group in Australia used smartphones, what they used them for, what limitations or obstacles they faced, and what might make the smartphone more useful and accessible for them.

Our researchers engaged with members of the Vision Australia network across Australia, with 845 people responding over a seven-week period, either via an online survey or through a telephone survey. Yet just as we closed the survey, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everyday lives across the world, including people’s use of smartphones and the role of the devices play in our lives.

Though our research question did not change in this context, the impetus to understand the value and role of the smartphone in the everyday lives of people with low vision or blindness was heightened. For people with a vision impairment, the smartphone is often an important part of everyday life, and this was exemplified in our survey results with more than 79% of respondents owning and using a smartphone. This is a smaller participation rate than the wider community, where 91% of Australians had a smartphone in 2019.

Since restrictions required people to stay at home, socially distance and minimise contact with people outside their family unit, the smartphone and other digital technologies replaced face-to-face connections, services, communication and information. The smartphone thus shifted from an everyday item, to an essential one. This is despite the National Disability Insurance Scheme, NDIS, not providing funding for smartphones for people with disabilities as is still does not classify phones as an essential nor everyday assistive technology.

Beyond access to smartphones, our survey was interested in the accessibility of the device. While a significant proportion of people who are blind or have low-vision do use smartphones, our survey identified there remain significant gaps in how and what people with a vision impairment use a smartphone for. While most respondents use the smartphone for calls and text messages, there was significantly less use of other features, apps and capabilities.

Looking at our results, we found 47% of blind or people with low vision that we surveyed used the smartphone to access the web, 24% used it for online shopping or paying for goods and services, and 44% used social media. Furthermore, of the participants who did use a smartphone, 35% did not use the built-in assistive features of their phone, and almost half of participants did not use accessibility apps specifically designed for people with a vision impairment.

There remains a host of reasons for these ‘gaps’ — a shortage of training in smartphone use (65% stated they wanted more training on how to use a smartphone), a lack of awareness of what apps were available and what they were capable of, and the failures of seemingly accessible apps. These mitigating factors often inform and affect each other — people with a lack of awareness of the capabilities of a smartphone for people with low vision will lack training in its use, resulting in a common perception by non-users who took our survey that they had ‘insufficient vision to use them’.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to address these issues of training, education and perception become critical in order for all Australians to maintain the same level of information, communication and services.

As our survey respondents predicted, the smartphone in a pandemic context also takes on a different ‘form’ and function for people with vision impairments, filling a void left by now physically distanced human assistants. The people who participated in our survey understood the increasing importance of apps and phones to their everyday life. As one participant said:

I currently don’t use Aps to help me get around, but in this time of social distancing with COVID-19 I anticipate a need to use something like Aira to help me follow someone into a medical consultation to avoid taking their arm and getting too close.

This reflection is important for recognising the different ways in which a lack of accessibility is constantly managed by individuals with disabilities. It also acknowledges a new reality for many of us — that devices are replacing the people who help us during this time of crisis. However, the existence of these devices and apps alone do not adequately substitute for the support networks used by many people with vision impairments. Understanding how smartphone use by the blind and low vision community can be improved and extended – specifically through increased access, education and training – will help to facilitate a deeper understanding of real accessibility.

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