From Mobile Phones to Ride-Hailing Apps: How Do Blind People Use Technology?

A disability rights activist told Safir Arjan that blind people can use mobile phones and laptops with specialized software, but internet outages and disruptions in technologies such as navigation can make their daily lives much more difficult.

On the occasion of World Blind Day (white cane)

An activist in the field of the blind, in a conversation with Ambassador Arjan, pointed out that blind people can use mobile phones and laptops with the help of special software, but the interruption of the Internet and disruption of technologies such as navigation can make their daily life more difficult.

Arjan's Ambassador, Farkhunde Rafai: Devices such as mobile phones and laptops have become an integral part of life today, and many of our daily essential tasks depend on these devices. We shop online, pay our bills, check the weather and stay in touch with our friends and family on our mobile phones. With a laptop, we study, work, search for the information we need, and carry out many personal and professional affairs; Simple tasks that of course seem to depend on the sense of "sight". But the good news is that the "blind" have been able to use these communication tools for years with the help of technology.

Today (Thursday, October 23rd) is called International White Cane Day. On this occasion, we have conducted an interview with "Sara Yousefi", an entrepreneur and accessibility activist.

He told Ambassador Arjan about the technologies that connect the blind to the digital world: the technology tools used by the blind are not particularly different and the blind use the same laptops and mobile phones, but what distinguishes these tools for the blind are the software that makes it possible to use a mobile phone or laptop.

He, who is also blind, in explaining these facilities, added: blind people can hear and use the texts displayed on the screen of their phones and laptops by using software called "screen readers". These applications are available on all phones, whether Android or iPhone, and they only need to be activated so that the user can use them.

Referring to the concept of "accessibility", Yousefi said about the effective role of this concept in the use of technologies, applications and platforms by the blind and added: Accessibility means that as a business owner, how to adapt my product, platform, service and environment for the use of people with disabilities. The reality is that if accessibility standards are met, not only will my software be usable by a blind or partially sighted person, but it can also include different segments of society and they can work more easily with that system. This type of design is called "inclusive design".

This disability rights activist stated that until now no special move has been made by the government and the welfare organization to provide accessible and customized services for the blind, and added: There have been events in the private sector in this field, which were also due to the efforts of the blind, but from the government, if any action has been taken, at least the information was not to the extent that I, who am blind, would be informed about it.

Pointing to the double problems of the blind in the condition of internet outages, Yousefi said: Since our lives are now highly dependent on technology and we do everything from internet shopping to the use of artificial intelligence with the help of digital tools, over the past year, frequent internet outages and fluctuations that exist can severely disrupt the lives of the blind. For example, when we use internet taxis, the disruption of GPS in a situation where the driver does not know the route, puts us in a much more difficult situation than normal users, who can see the surrounding streets, read the names of the streets and find the route.

He continued: At one time, the problems of the blind were limited to the lack of adaptation of streets and offices, of course, these problems still exist, but our more serious problem now is that we find solutions using technology, but even these solutions are closed to us.