To start with, when we talk about touch screens in the cultural sector, what do we refer to?
We need to distinguish between two types of devices:
- Devices accessible on the user’s phone (native applications downloadable from stores or web apps with streamed or cached content)
- Content embedded on devices such as video guides, tablets or touchscreen tables.
So, are these devices accessible to all audiences?
Let’s consider the experience of blind users.
For devices accessible on the user’s phone, you’ll need to check the application’s compatibility with screen-reading software.
Screen-reading software (JAWS, SuperNova and others), sometimes called screen review or screen reader, is capable of vocally announcing what is written on the screen, as well as pronouncing aloud the characters you have entered either via a physical keyboard, or via a touch-sensitive keyboard displayed on the screen.
This software integrates with the operating system and is therefore dependent on it. There are screen readers for Windows (JAWS), IOS and other systems.
Here’s what the Valentin Hauy Association website has to say on the subject:
- The screen reader is a voice synthesizer that retrieves available textual information (typed text and screen content such as menus, dialog boxes, etc.).
- The voice synthesizer cannot render image content: think about associating replacement texts (alternative texts).
- For Braille readers, the screen reader can manage a Braille display connected to the computer in parallel.
- Another important point is that it is possible to have an overview of a page, but not to “listen to the whole”, and listening to a text or reading it in Braille is slower than visual reading by a sighted person.
- We therefore need to take advantage of the structuring possibilities offered by software for documents and Web pages (titles, bulleted or numbered lists, table of contents, etc.).
- Documents or web pages created in this way contain “tags” that can be interpreted by the screen reader, so a visually impaired person can start by reading only the headings, and then read the details corresponding to the heading of interest.