Apps for visually impaired

Hello. I received an email last night from a potential customer asking if my apps were suitable for the visually impaired. My initial reaction was, well no. Then I started thinking if and how to make it work. I don’t have much knowledge on visual impairment so did a quick search. It seems that the condition can vary from slight vision loss to complete blindness.

I’m posting to see if anyone has any experience with developing applications for this population. Is it worth the effort of attempting?

Since Xojo uses native controls, the OS takes care of this for you with the tools it provides. In OS X, there is the Accessibility System Preferences, and I’m pretty sure Windows has something similar.

In OS X, there is VoiceOver which reads out the interface and provides captions at the bottom. There are also the zoom options.

Did the potential customer have a particular request?

Thank you Kem. I didn’t get too much out of the request. I was thinking of something like the VoiceOver feature but was afraid of how much extra he would need, like how much vision he actually lacks. Would he be able to see the correct buttons to click, etc? Hence my lack of knowledge in this matter. I’ll ask him for more information to his specific needs. If it’s as much as just needing the text spoken to him, that doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable and undoable request.

I appreciate the reply!

[quote=76101:@Ryan Hartz]I’ll ask him for more information to his specific needs. If it’s as much as just needing the text spoken to him, that doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable and undoable request.
[/quote]
I tutored a blind person in University and he has worked as a programmer ever since - thank to technology & screen readers.
However the range of impairments that can be cause for someone to be designated “legally blind” have an enormous range.
Some of the students we dealt with could read the news paper or books one letter at a time (severe tunnel vision)
Some had no central vision but only peripheral vision so they could literally never look at you to see you - I forget the name of that condition.
And others had limited vision that would mean they were classed as “blind” but could see partially and in various ways.

So knowing what you’re dealing with will be instructive to knowing what is possible.

Thank you Norman. I appreciate the help! I sent a message back to the customer to find the extent to their impairment