Mobile Accessibility For People With Combined Visual And Motor Impairment: A Case Study

To date, mobile device users with disabilities still have access issues. While there exist satisfactory arrangements focused on specific impairments, users with multiple disabilities still struggle to find acceptable workarounds to everyday tasks that are straightforward for other users. In this paper we present a case study of an iPhone user with combined visual and motor impairment. The study includes the task analysis of some of the user's specific needs in everyday life, the problems faced by the user while trying to do them, a brief description of the workarounds and their degree of usability in terms of efficiency and satisfaction. While the combination of VoiceOver and Siri gives the user some degree of accessibility, the most notorious access problems were the difficulty to do manual gestures involving more than one finger, and editing text with the keyboard. Besides the obvious need to continue analyzing voice and manual interaction modes, it is required the exploration of other gesture controls on the device, or the use of alternative gadgets in order to improve the mobile accessibility of people with multiple disabilities.