Before I begin let me just say that the content of this post is based solely on my opinion and has no input from any person with disabilities.... Let us begin.
How many of you have had that 'oh no' moment when you hear a cracking sound as your precious phone just slipped out of your hands or accidentally hit the phone against a hard surface? You pick up the phone fearing the worst and you find that its not so bad. Yeah,your screen is cracked but you can see who's calling you and maybe use a portion of the touch screen.
Such happened to me recently. I walking into a solid metal pillar with my Lumia 820 iny pocket, heard a sound and there it was when I pulled it out, a huge crack on the capacitive Bing search button. This not only did this render all the essential buttons non functional, so went 2/3 of my display. I was left with only limited input using touch then I realised that a small thing called accessibility and voice control.
Many of us are blessed with all working five senses, we do not know how not being able to hear your phone ring is or not being able to see what the message you receive says so we take some of the settings under accessibility on either our computers or phones for granted. I found that the screen magnifier made it possible to access parts I normally wouldn't because they're in a damaged portion of the screen and the text to speech functionality reads me the text out to me,even giving me the chance to dictate a response. Something that's missing is a screen reader, something that tells you what is on screen. This you most likely have to download separately. All these and many more custom app make phone and computer use a bit easier but not completely useful to those with disabilities.
Whats the reason behind this blog post, I think most people,especially those with visual or hearing impairments here in Zambia may not be aware of some of these things. Its purely an assumption. Even the able bodied probably skip accessibility on their phones not curious as to what its for.
