The real state of accessibility for low vision people is quite shameful. I am going to go into details regarding different aspects of this.
The short of this is that it is quite shit, and mostly thought out by people who can see.
Low vision and blind people are a minority, but with the right accessibility available we can contribute a lot to society.
Operating Systems
Most operating systems claim they have decent accessibility features. They actually do not.
On Windows there is the narrator and the magnifier for use by low vision and blind people. I have not used the narrator much, but I rely highly on magnification and colour adaptions.
The magnifier can zoom quite well and invert the colours. That is not enough. Pixelated text is still difficult to read, and the colour inversion might work for some, but mostly it doesn’t. There needs to be more options on adjusting colours and controlling the cursor tracking. With cursor tracking the screen moves the whole time, which is not what you always want. The zoom controls are key combinations which are quite impractical and slows you down a lot. Most low vision people do not work at a single level of magnification the whole time. The options of mouse cursor sizes and colours are basic and quite useless.
Then in the last few Windows releases, Microsoft decided it is a good idea to make the borders of windows only 1 pixel and it cannot be changed.
On the Mac, there is a screen reader, which I haven’t used, so I am not commenting on it. The magnifier is so basic that they could just as well have left it out. I once bought a Mini Mac to try out the OS, but sold it 5 days later, due to accessibility being useless. The mouse cursor options are even fewer than on Windows. The magnification controls are shit, and if you zoom in more than x6 the mouse cursor duplicates itself on the monitor. Giving a low vision person two small mouse cursors to work with is a dick move.
Linux Distros
As a software developer it is sometimes a lot easier to get things done on Linux. Especially if you do application containerisation and build other back-end software. There are quite a few distros that state they have accessibility, so you can use it. Those accessibility features are just plain shit and useless. Rather take it out and don’t get our hopes up.
Accessibility Software
There are quite a few third-party packages out there that address these issues. They are mostly great, but they do have shortcomings.
There is NDMA which is a free screen reader. That is great if you are completely blind. It does not help low vision people.
JAWS is the most well-known one. Again, it is for completely blind people, and it comes at a hefty price.
For screen magnification, colour schemes, mouse cursors, control framing, tracking, and other great features there are two options I know of. They are ZoomText and SupoerNova Magnifier.
The problem with both of these is that you need a gaming laptop or PC to run these effectively. Then there is the cost. I understand that there is a cost, due to people building this and deserves to earn money for their work done.
The main issue here is that I first need to buy a gaming laptop or PC, then pay the software license. It is fucking expensive to be a person with low vision in this regard.
Lastly, none of these are available for Mac or Linux. There is actually no commercial assistive software available for Mac or Linux.
Phones
Where are my buttons?
Back in the day phones had physical keypads or keyboards. Now they are mostly on screen. Impractical as fuck. So, you get VoiceOver and TalkBack that helps, but you have to “scroll” through the keyboard characters until you get to the one you want, then double tap to add it. It takes for example 15 seconds to type “is”. There is the dictate option. But really, half the time it types random shit and not what you said.
Then there are the mobile apps. Many of them do not even work properly with VoiceOver or TalkBack. Not all the controls and inputs provide alternate text for the screen reader to use, or there are so many elements that it takes forever to get to the item you want to get to.
Appliances
Touch screens and soft touch buttons. How do you expect a low vision or blind person to use it? Think a bit for yourself. Again, I know we are in the minority, but we still use appliances.
It is very difficult and frustrating to find something with actual buttons. We do make a plan by asking a sighted person to stick little rubber or plastic buttons next to specific soft buttons which helps us navigate the control panel. On touch screens this does not work.
The Web
The web and how it is being put together nowadays is a clusterfuck of uselessness. There will be a post in the future diving deep into web development specifically.
For now. It might look pretty with all the sections, panels and floating sections. But it is difficult to navigate and use.
Final Thought
The world currently is a very visually focused place. It is very difficult to be blind or low vision. It is easier than it was 20 years ago, but still very frustrating.
Annoyed Dev 