On the second page of the diaries, the participants provided detailed descriptions of a total of 227 barriers encountered. A significant number of barrier descriptions (155 counts) specifically detailed that digital interfaces were either completely inaccessible, such as kiosks in doctors’ offices or grocery stores, or very challenging to use with assistive technologies like screen readers. For instance, a participant who works for a college, tasked with filling out an employee background check form, described the experience as “not only time consuming, but frankly demoralizing.” The additional time and effort led them to comment, “I couldn’t believe something as simple as checking a checkbox or entering my date of birth was inaccessible on a form used by hundreds of employees at my college.”
There were 35 specific mentions of issues caused by unlabeled buttons and links, which made completing tasks difficult or impossible. Another participant, while attempting to purchase bus tickets online, mentioned that “the buttons that relate to selecting one way/round trip and adding to the cart” were unlabeled. This required them to “randomly select the buttons to see what happens and adjust accordingly,” a process they found “deeply frustrating and time-consuming” as they had to “try one button at a time and go back a page and try a different button.”
Participants with low vision reported 27 instances where they could not complete digital tasks due to poor contrast and layout, or inappropriate color themes and font sizes in web pages or applications. Other barriers included a lack of necessary image descriptions (16 counts) and website or mobile updates that degraded accessibility and usability (7 counts).
“I couldn’t believe something as simple as checking a checkbox or entering my date of birth was inaccessible on a form used by hundreds of employees at my college.” — Study Participant
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