Exploring the Usability Issues Encountered by Individuals with Visual Impairments on Social Networking Sites: Problem Description, System Evaluation and Semantic Web Solution

Abstract

While social networking sites (SNSs) like Facebook are widely used and have been broadly studied, investigations of their use by individuals with visual impairments are scarce within the academic literature. Anecdotal complaints regarding their usability however can be found in abundance online; an extension of the well documented difficulty that users with visual impairments have in interacting with the web generally relative to the sighted. The investigation of this issue began with a pilot study of the online behavioral habits of 46 internet users; 26 of whom self-identified as having a visual impairment (either blind or low vision). This was followed by an ethnographic usability study of the Facebook mobile interface, involving six blind participants, using JAWS screen reading software on desktop computers. Of the features evaluated participants were most severely challenged by the process of creating a user profile and identifying other users with whom to establish relationships. A portable profile architecture based on semantic web technologies is presented as a potential solution that may improve usability by decoupling the profile and relationship maintenance activity from any single system.