The A11Y Project update: July 30th, 2021

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Myth: Accessibility and SEO, by Cooper Hollmaier.

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Accessibility Frontiers

In this short section, Sam, Accessibility Evangelist at Fable, and full-time screen reader user, will share something interesting that’s happening at the frontier of accessibility.

Augmented Reality

While I typically like to talk about something that’s coming in the near future, or just getting started, this time I want to highlight something that has existed for a while now. I don’t think augmented reality has gotten the attention it deserves as an accessibility technique.

For example, thanks to the AirPods transparency mode, and the availability of bone conduction headphones, it is now possible for blind people to hear the world around them, while having other audio mixed overtop of it.

The most obvious use of this has been in GPS. The Microsoft Soundscape app uses the transparency and 3D audio features of AirPods to enable blind users to locate landmarks in an easier, safer, and quicker way.

But audio isn’t the only way to provide augmented reality; when using Apple Maps, the Apple Watch offers tap and vibration feedback to help blind users better navigate the world. Although the existing uses of augmented reality for travel are just a taste of what is to come.

Smart Glasses will soon allow blind users to get descriptions of the environment, read printed text, and more. Deaf and hard of hearing users will soon be able to have captions or sign language projected in front of them.

This technology is already out in the world. Now, it’s time to start talking about standards to make sure that the users who most need this technology can access it in ways that are cross-platform, hardware agnostic, and accessible to all. Once we do that, we can truly bring this revolutionary technology to everyone.