Article

Innovative Affordances for Blind Smartphone Users: A Qualitative Study

Blindness imposes various functional limitations on the blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals. Anecdotal evidence suggests that BVI use their smartphones in various innovative ways to overcome those limitations. We conduct a qualitative field study with three BVI participants to understand how they use their smartphones to overcome their functional limitations in the personal and professional contexts. We use the lens of theory of affordances to analysis the BVI participants' use of smartphones. Affordances emerge from the contextually situated interaction between users and technologies to achieve specific objectives. Our analysis reveals many meaningful affordances which can be systematically incorporated in the smartphone design to enable BVI to overcome some of their functional limitations.

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