Technology irritations part 17

I love technology and am still shocked at how my informational life changed through getting an iPhone nearly seven years ago now (well, once I’d learned how to use it). However there are countless things that irritate me so much that I’m going to list them:

·       IOS 14 (Apple’s latest iPhone software) has launched a lot of improvements (including to accessibility). However it has launched lots of things that have got in the way of screen reader accessibility, slowed it down and reduced access as a result. This is incredibly frustrating as merely downloading the new operating system version onto my phone has put more obstacles in the way of the things that I’ve taken for granted.

·       At work, I am on video calls continually throughout the day. New updates to video conferencing software (MS Teams in particular) have increased the number of buttons on the screen (rather than having them in menus) which makes sense, but it has nonetheless slowed me down in finding the buttons that I need to reach regularly – ‘Mute microphone’ for example.

·       I am constantly reminded how much I have to hold in my memory as a blind person, sighted people can just scan over a screen and spot what they want, but we need to explore every part of the screen until we’ve memorised it and the location of the different buttons. Then, when these buttons change (through a software update), their new positions have to be re-learnt.

·       Switching rapidly on a daily basis between Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Jitsi-meet and Skype means switching (often in a matter of seconds, from one meeting to the next) and to an entirely different layout of ostensibly similar buttons – for example, in MS Teams, they are all at the bottom in one order, in Zoom, they’re all at the top in another.

·       While my screen reader provides me with good access to the video applications that are now so common, however, in a call where I’m listening to people’s voices, taking part in the conversation, the screen reader’s electronic voice clashes with what’s being spoken by participants.

·       Video conferencing applications also have a ‘chat’ function where people can send text messages, or even get involved in entirely different conversations while the meeting is going on. This, however useful, means that it can be a continual second monologue that is spoken by a screen-reader coming out of the same earphones and I often need to make the decision to only hear the actual meeting conversation. Sighted people would see the text chat so it  does not represent an audio distraction for them.

·       … so many things to continually try to understand, think about and manage – life is exhausting.

 

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