Innovations in Accessibility in the Palm of your Hand: Phone Apps
We use our phones all the time, probably too much. It is a tool that began for long distance communication, but now has grown to be an essential element of life for social networking, tracking the weather, organizing your schedule, entertainment, and more. There is always an App for what you need, including for accessibility resources. From helping read text for people with visually impairment to crowdsourcing information for people with physical disabilities, each app has a different speciality. I wanted to review just a few of the ones available that I use the most in my practice.
Roll Mobility
This App started recently in 2023 out of Denver, so locally grown. It is designed to “easily find and share detailed information on features such as wheelchair ramps, elevators, and accessible restrooms.” They use a community driven approach with users documenting accessibility in a qualitative way for businesses, trailheads, parking areas, etc so that people with physical disabilities will have a realistic expectation of the accessibility of a location. It uses a red, yellow, and green system for rating overall accessibility and bathroom accessibility based on a questionnaire. It also allows the user to write comments for better understanding of why the rating was chosen, which I think is the best feature.
Overall, I like the idea of this app as it allows the community to define accessibility versus the business itself. Often times, you see issues highlighted like broken sidewalks or steep ramps that provide a more full picture. However, when using qualitative data versus quantitative it can be difficult to apply one person’s ratings to your needs. Right now, there is just not enough reviews completed from people with different levels of disabilities to make the ratings informative. This is especially true in Fort Collins with only a few businesses rated, and in my opinion, not super consistent ratings. Over time, I think this app could be helpful, but just not quite yet.
VoiceOver/TalkBack
This is an app that comes with your Apple products that is a screen reader best used for people with visual deficits. It can describe people, objects, text and graphs, and is available in over 60 languages. Having access to different languages is essential as it is not a good assumption that everyone who has visual deficits reads braille as it is another language all together. A significant pro of this app is that it is easy to use and already on apple products. All you have to do is go to settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver and turn it ON. You can change the speed of the voice as well as it starts super fast. It was hard for me to understand it initially, but after using it a bit more I got used to it. If you use an Android smartphone, they have a similar screen reader called TalkBack. It works very similar to VoiceOver.
Live Transcript
This app was designed for the deaf and hard of hearing community to have conversations easily with just a phone. It is very simple to use. All you do is pull up the app and it captures words spoken allowed and transcribes them in real time on your screen. In this way, you can order a coffee at a coffee shop or have a conversation with your family. I have used this app with my hard of hearing patients, and it really allowed us to have a more in depth connection. I can not underestimate how easy this is to use, which for my geriatric population is essential. Another pro is that the app can read spoken words for over 70 languages and dialects. Unfortunately, the major drawback is that this app does not work to translate for sign language as it is not auditory. The user who uses primarily sign language to communicate would have to be bilingual to be able to use this app.
This is just a small sample of the many apps available and are the ones I use the most. Adaptive technology is increasing at an exponential rate, and I can only see access improving from here. I would love to hear from you all about any apps you use that help you the most! Spreading the word will increase true accessibility for all.