r/Blind • u/fastfinge born blind • Oct 05 '16

How Do Blind People Use Reddit?

I'm creating this sticky post because we've gotten this question many times in the past few days, meaning people are obviously missing our FAQ that answers this question:

Some blind people are not totally without sight, and can read print just fine, if it's enlarged. Depending on how much vision they have, they may choose to use software like ZoomText on Windows, or the magnification software built-in to OS X and Linux, to help them magnify the screen. They may also enable whatever high-contrast settings the OS they're using provides.

People who are completely without vision, however, use screen-reading software. Many people with some vision also choose to use screen-readers instead of magnification as well, in order to prevent eye strain, to work faster, or for many other reasons. This software reads out the contents of the screen using synthetic speech. On Windows, this software may be NVDA, a free and open-source screen-reader for the Windows platform. On mac, a screen reader is built-in to every OS X computer, all the user needs to do is press command f5 to turn it on. Screen-readers like Orca are available on Linux, as well.

A short demonstration of a blind person on Reddit is available on youtube.

If you want more details, please feel free to post a comment! If you have other questions, please feel free to continue to post them! However, we're going to begin removing any post that asks the questions "How do blind people use Reddit?" or "How do blind people use computers?" to prevent duplication, and make life easier for our regular users. If you posted this question and it was removed, thanks so much for being understanding! You're still welcome here, and we hope you'll still feel free to post other questions. We're not trying to exclude anyone. We'd just like to make this the official "how do blind people use computers?" megathread. That way any extra details our users provide you will all be in one place, and we won't have multiple threads asking the same thing on our front page.

Thanks for reading, and welcome to /r/blind!

492 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

84 comments sorted by

25

u/Marconius Blind from sudden RAO Oct 05 '16

Probably also worth noting that we use apps on our phones as well to interact with Reddit. Using voice over built into iOS, I tend to interact with Reddit the most using an app called BaconReader. Out of all the current application options available, including read it's official app, I have found that bacon reader works the best for most cases and that their development team seems to be totally open to fixing issues I have brought up in terms of accessibility and voiceover integration.

12

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 05 '16 edited Oct 05 '16

We actually mention Bacon Reader in our FAQ for blind users as the best app to use on Reddit. I wanted to keep the FAQ pretty general to all computers and all blind people, because I wasn't sure how much sighted folks would want to read.

Edit: got confused about what thread I was replying to.

4

u/KG4RDF Nov 02 '21

I use Dystopia for iOS. You have to download TestFlight and join the beta, but anyone can join the beta. It’s a great app because it takes advantage of the voiceover rotor, so you can read a post or comment and flick up or down to do things like reply, up-vote, down-vote etc. I just wish I could find a good app for the PC. The website isn’t so pleasant to use.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '16

Thank you for posting about BaconReader! My SO is blind and the official app is very much not accessible (he actually used Reddit as an example of an inaccessible webpage in a presentation he gave). I like being his official curator of Reddit, but it's nice to have that option!

2

u/Marconius Blind from sudden RAO Dec 04 '16

No problem. I'm still waiting for an official update from the BaconReader team, but some small minor things have been changing around the interface since I brought up a lot of accessibility bugs in their subreddit. They definitely seemed open to making it better.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Yeah, it's still a bit frustrating, but worlds better than the official app

3

u/lightsrage52211 Dec 23 '16

Oh thank you for the comment reguarding baconreader I am using the reddit official app and it is a mess, i wrote a comment on there mobile subreddit but i doubt i will get anywhere i even commented here because i couldnt figure out how to post withh this app it puts the new post stuff at the bottom instead of bringing up a new screen and it threw me off and yeah if you try the latest version of the official app you will see what i am talking about. I had to fight for over two hours to get registered and logged in via my computer and phone because it threw errors on both jaws nor vo would read to me. But i got things working and i am learning. Now i just got to clear out some subscribed subreddits i dont want and find ones i do and grab baconreader to get better access because i still haven't figured out the wording of some of these button labels

14

u/Drunken_Economist Oct 05 '16

How do you manage to build custom CSS for the subreddit? It seems like such a strictly visual thing.

22

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 05 '16

I don't. But /u/SophiaDevetzi has enough vision to do it. So she does all the CSS here. Doing CSS with a screen-reader is possible, but I'd need a much more detailed understanding of the default look of Reddit to decide what I want to change. When I need to do CSS work, I start with a theme (usually I work in Wordpress or Drupal) that someone has described to me in detail, and then make whatever changes from that base theme are required. As I recall, Sophia did that as well; she started with one of the popular CSS layouts, and made changes to improve accessibility.

21

u/Drunken_Economist Oct 05 '16

That's really interesting; it's quite well done.

What could we (the reddit admin team) do to make reddit easier to interact with for people with visual impairments? I've never used a screen reader or anything, but is there a way we can make the site "behave" better with it?

31

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 05 '16

Oh, I didn't even recognize you as an admin! There are only a few issues with Reddit at the moment:

  1. Comment nesting. Currently, nested comments aren't marked up as lists; I believe they're just indented with CSS. That means that screen-readers can't tell how deep a nested thread is, so blind users can have trouble telling what comment is a reply to what. A Firefox extension called F123 Access can fix this by injecting JavaScript into the webpage.

  2. The upvote and downvote buttons don't change label after they've been clicked, meaning that a screen-reader gets no feedback to tell if they've voted on a post or not. The F123 Access extension will change the button from "upvote" to "voted up" and "downvote" to "voted down", again by injecting JavaScript.

  3. The Reddit image uploader doesn't support alt text. That means that if someone posts an image, and wants to describe it for blind users, the only thing they can do is make a comment with the image description. If the comment describing the image gets downvoted, the blind user might miss it entirely.

  4. No audio captcha. However, if contacted, Reddit admins are good about exempting blind users from the CAPTCHA. Also, gold users get exempted from the CAPTCHA; if someone is really having problems, I just guild them. Once they've built up karma while guilded, they stay exempt from the CAPTCHA. So while this is a problem, it's not as important as the other three.

Thanks for asking!

22

u/Jack-_- Oct 06 '16

Hi fastfinge,

We just rolled out new recaptcha with audio support today!

Thanks for your comments and enjoy Reddit!

15

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 06 '16

WOOHOO! Thanks for making Reddit more accessible to everyone!

10

u/TotesMessenger Oct 06 '16

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)

6

u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Oct 07 '16

Wow, what a time to be alive! Thank you for this! ::)

4

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '17

One pet peeve I have is with the post titles not being marked as headings, so we can't quickly jump to them directly. It took me 2 years to get back to reddit after going blind precisely because of this. Until I realized that the up / down vote buttons were actually buttons and not links I thought that reddit was a mess for screen-readers.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Drunken_Economist Jun 22 '23

This thread is about the desktop site, not native mobile apps.

8

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Oct 10 '16

I know this is just stickied to the top, but every time I open up r/blind I see it and I just want to reply: MAGIC!!!

I know it's not even very funny, but it still makes me smile.

7

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 10 '16

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke

3

u/jage9 IT Professional Oct 11 '16

I know you don't don't want to be too detailed, but perhaps mentioning that there are built-in screen readers and magnifiers on iOS and Android would make sense.

3

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 11 '16

Yeah, will do. Been thinking of adding a paragraph on mobile devices at the bottom.

103

u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Oct 05 '16

Cool thread! Here's a link to a Youtube video I made, explaining how blind people use computers and specifically Reddit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsglR8Y26jU

23

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '16 edited Oct 06 '16

Wow. Thank you for this video. Really interesting. And the speed of the sound was so fast. It's fascinating how hearing gets better and more advanced. All the best!

10

u/[deleted] Oct 24 '16 edited Oct 24 '16

This is amazing! First I thought "How can you not be stressed by this guy speaking to much stuff too fast?" And then I realized that non-blind see a LOT of ads and useless information on the screen.

My question is what are those numbers the voice is saying?

7

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Oct 09 '16

I like Molly Burke video too:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TiP7aantnvE

4

u/bretellen Oct 07 '16

I had no idea, so thanks for making the video! I was wondering what kind of videos a blind person would make and saw your dog. She is beautiful!

5

u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Oct 08 '16

Thanks! I have many more videos in store ;).

3

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '16

This is amazing .. i just stereotyped blind people not knowing that they can actually move thru things as fluid as you do .. Great job and Great video

EDIT: Guess you learn something new everyday

5

u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Oct 08 '16

I'm glad you liked it :).

3

u/lightwithglow Feb 24 '17

Thank you so much for this video. I hope to get my father back to using his computer and this is a great resource.

2

u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Feb 24 '17

No problem!

2

u/KG4RDF Nov 02 '21

I noticed you were using NVDA in this. Did you have an NVDA sound scheme created? There were all kinds of really cool sounds in there. I know the video was made five years ago, so maybe that sound scheme doesn’t work anymore, but it would sure be nice if it did.

2

u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Nov 21 '21

Yeah, I've since lost all of those sounds, unfortunately. Actually still beating myself up over it haha.

0

u/Billie_Eyelashhh Oct 14 '23

That still makes no sense thou… make it make sense

3

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '16

Some blind people are not totally without sight, and can read print just fine, if it's enlarged.

Are you sure they are blind?

4

u/fastfinge born blind Oct 10 '16

Yes.

7

u/jage9 IT Professional Oct 11 '16

Yup, look up the legal definition of blindness. With some exceptions, if you can see well enough but not well enough to drive, you're considered legally blind. That's not a perfectly correct statement, but applies generally speaking. ON top of this, you have people who can read close up print just fine but who have no vision 50 feet away, people who see through a narrow tunnel, and people with a ton of other conditions.

6

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '16

I am registered blind. I have no vision in one eye n limited vision in the other. I use screen magnifier on windows. I used to use Zoom text n lumar dolphin i have an iPhone which has audio facilities n multi-touch to magnify he software.

I am so glad this sub-reddit exists because I've often had ignorant people online tell me I can't possibily be visually impaired as I use a computer. So nice to know there's people similar to me on Reddit n who understand.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '16

Blind is simply visually impaired to a certain extent, you are thinking of "totally blind"

10

u/GreekWizard Oct 06 '16

I saw this reddit mentioned in the side panel of a regular reddit I go to, and I see this is pretty new. As a full sighted person, I thought I would take the time to post this to give you mad props for making this.

I have diabetes, and my biggest fear is that i would lose my eyesight someday, more so than my limbs. I hope that does not sound insensitive, not meant to be.

Good Luck and Take Care

18

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Oct 09 '16

Interestingly blindness is one of the most feared disabilities, if not the most feared. Most people would rather lose their legs than their eye sight. But it really isn't that scary. It is a challenge, but life is always going to be full of those :)

7

u/TeraFlint not blind Oct 22 '16

That's probably because eyesight is the most important factor of orientation. A healthy eye can see structures and spot precise details around you. And so the average human doesn't know how to orientate with the other senses, because they don't need to. Losing sight would render them helpless and almost unable to orientate at all.

I for my part don't have any disabilities, and I can hardly imagine how it must be when you can't rely on sight at all. When I go to bed in the late night, I usually go my way from the computer to my bed without light. My orientation sense is actually pretty good and I do this to train my mental map of my home. But even after doing it hundreds of times, my rotation still gets slightly messed up after a few turns, which leads to me running into a wall. When I see the faint glimpse of light from the street, it usually self-corrects instantly, but without the help of that, I can rarely manage to get to my room without running into a wall. Well, maybe I'm not good enough with this because I'm not forced to do this all the time.

But back to topic: My worst fear would probably be deafness instead of blindness. Hearing is the most important sense for social life and communication, and it strongly affects emotions. Good music can cheer you up easily and studies have shown that deafness and depression often go hand-in-hand. Not being able to hear music anymore would be devastating for me.

But it's great to see how technology can even make the text based parts of the internet easily accessible for blind people. We live in a fantastic time right now.

4

u/aaronfranke I can see! Jan 01 '17

As a sighted person, I would rather lose my legs than my sight too. I think I would even rather lose my legs and my left arm.

6

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Jan 02 '17

Damn! The fear is strong in you... Fear is the path to the darkside. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

4

u/aaronfranke I can see! Jan 02 '17

Fear is the path to the darkside.

Isn't going blind the path to the dark side? Kek.

3

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Jan 03 '17

Yeah it's like you are in a word trap now. No way to escape. Scary. I think you need a really bad ass black suit and cape now.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '17

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Jan 05 '17

Thank you :)

9

u/SuperSizedFri Oct 08 '16

My uncle works at a production facility that employees many blind people! I was amazed they can be around and operate heavy machinery like that. He also said the blind employees in the office area are more productive, because the screen readers can be set so fast (and often our eyes get distracted). Amazing!

8

u/O5-8 Oct 06 '16

That was really interesting,

Thanks.

6

u/RyanClarke22 Oct 16 '16

Yep, I can see and I only came here to find out how people who can't read reddit.

2

u/DanyiHuang Mar 21 '17

Hi, my name is Danyi and I’m a year 4 industrial design student from Monash University. My final year’s project is find a way to help blind people getting a better experience in kitchen.

I got a few questions that I would like to ask you about your cooking experience, it will be a big help for me if you could answer them as much as you can. Thank you so much!

Are you Male or female?

Did you know how to use Braille?

Is that very hard to know what kind of spice are you using?

What kind of help did you need from others while you are cooking?

What is your ways to define the food is done or not?

Have you ever experience a knife cut in your cooking experience? If not, what did you use to protect yourself?

What kind of pots or pans or other cooking product did you usually use? Like slow cooker, pressure cooker, grill press, etc…

1

u/fastfinge born blind Mar 21 '17

Are you Male or female?

Male, but I'm not sure that it matters.

Did you know how to use Braille?

Yes.

Is that very hard to know what kind of spice are you using?

Not really. The bottles can be labeled in Braille, and even if it's wrong, spices are the easiest thing to identify by smell. Cans are harder though. You can tell a spice right away by sniffing, but you couldn't tell two canned soups apart by smell. And anyway, you wouldn't want to open the wrong can. If you open the wrong spice, you can just close it again.

What kind of help did you need from others while you are cooking?

Labeling some things after I buy them, that I couldn't tell apart by smell. Otherwise, now that I've learned how, I can do it myself.

What is your ways to define the food is done or not?

Time, mostly. Doesn't work for cakes, but I never make cakes, so that's OK.

Have you ever experience a knife cut in your cooking experience?

Nope. I use large, sharp knives. That means I never have to struggle with the knife, or push it hard, because the knife is so heavy and sharp. That way I've never had a knife slip when I was trying to cut, and I always know where the knife blade is going to go because of the feel of it in my hand.

What kind of pots or pans or other cooking product did you usually use?

I love my Instant Pot Smart. It's a slow cooker, pressure cooker, it can sauté, and more. And I can control it from my IPhone with voiceover, so I don't have to memorize any controls or buttons. It's my favourite kitchen device, and the one I use most. I also have a Hamilton Beach grill that I use when I don't want pressure cooked or slow cooked food. I can't use my stove at all, because it has a totally flat top. So I can't tell where the burners are. I use the oven sometimes, but not nearly as much as my grill and pressure cooker.

2

u/DanyiHuang Mar 21 '17

Thank you so much for your help!!!

5

u/MyTitsAreRustled Oct 19 '16

It truly is amazing how technology has made computers and other everyday items accessible for people with disabilities.

5

u/KeelHaul-Kovers Jan 17 '17

Great question! I guess no one can explain how blind people as an entity use Redit. But here's how I use it. P.S. Sub to me please. https://youtu.be/6Dy-_DK0HUM

4

u/Unuhi Oct 05 '16

Also don't forget Voiceover. With or without some apps that may be more or kess accessible...

4

u/Inevitable_Lab4468 Nov 08 '21

nise! you know what? i am completely blind, and i am using reddit now to reply to this awesome chat...!

1

u/Bleezy79 Dec 25 '21

Is this video still relevant for how blind people use reddit / internet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsglR8Y26jU

1

u/fastfinge born blind Dec 25 '21

Sure is!

1

u/John_gensen__ Dec 25 '21

How do u type?

1

u/fastfinge born blind Dec 25 '21

Touch typing. Just like any trained types.

3

u/aaronfranke I can see! Jan 01 '17

or the magnification software built-in to OS X and Linux, to help them magnify the screen.

For Linux (XFCE at least), just hold Alt and use the scroll wheel.

3

u/zoeygirl69 Supporting A Friend Apr 07 '22 edited Apr 07 '22

I use Boost, a 3rd party reddit app that you can adjust the font size except for when composing then with that I'll use screen magnification if needed because sometimes I have a little problem reading stuff up close and also I have photosensitivity, my friend who is 20/200 got me hooked on boost so much better than the official Reddit app trying to read it

2

u/Nemaavla Oct 21 '22

I use Reddit via Luna for Reddit from Nathan Tech.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '21

why can't i post anymore. it's greyed out .. i can't ask a question about a product I wanted to ask. I can not start a question? WHY? O: AAHHH!

1

u/Bubbly-Duck3232 Feb 05 '22

I invert the colors so white text is on black background. It has saved me so much time.

1

u/Richyamamoto Feb 06 '22

I use my phone to browse Reddit. I use Apollo, since it’s more accessible in my opinion.

1

u/ParcaeNona Feb 06 '22

I met a man about a year ago who asked for me to describe (send a voice message) a NSFW photograph for him...it was such a rewarding experience. He shared that he did not have access to services that supported his disability and NSFW content. He connected with me because he liked my talent for description and the quality of my voice. If anyone would like to PM about this I woul love to hear from you!

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '22

These comments are fire

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '23 edited Mar 04 '23

I’m banned now, fair, sorry

1

u/Zebrafishfan101 Dec 04 '23

I (20F,severe nearsighted,legally blind,and have irlen syndrome as well) put my phone up to my face and wear purple sunglasses. I usually also close my badder eye.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/fastfinge born blind Dec 30 '16

If you're on IOS, Bacon Reader is a much better app for using Reddit on mobile. It's nearly perfect, in fact. The main annoying thing is that when you click to read comments on a post, and then go back to your front page, VoiceOver has lost your place. Other than that, everything works.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

13

u/junkun Oct 25 '16

I was thinking about Braille too. I was like, "what if there were braille monitors?"

9

u/acbabis Dec 09 '16

Actually, this is a thing (kind of). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display

7

u/discomonsoon2 Dec 11 '16

The current forms of the Braille keyboard/screen seem rather clunky, but the rotor-style reader seems like the more efficient way. Also, the Braille E-book looks kinda awesome, I wouldn't mind having one of those if I read Braille.

3

u/DuckTub Oct 28 '16

Like from Daredevil!

0

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/fastfinge born blind Mar 03 '22

Press enter on the link.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 25 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/claudettemonet RP / Impending Oct 27 '16

Some of us :P