Another participant went to the doctor for a physical and bloodwork. To check in for her physical exam, she needed to interact with an iPad. The screen reader on the iPad was not activated, and the receptionist did not know how to enable accessibility. Consequently, this participant sought assistance from the receptionist with checking in. This involved giving the receptionist private information, including her date of birth and answers to questions about her mental health and mood, in earshot of other patients, while other patients entered the information privately. Then, when going to the lab for bloodwork, the participant encountered a touchscreen kiosk with no braille or text-to-speech output. At the lab, no staff were positioned to assist with the kiosk, so the participant sought help from another patient who was waiting, having to give her name and date of birth to a second stranger. “I was able to get checked in, and was called back for my bloodwork quickly. Had no one been around however, this process might have taken a very long time,” she wrote.

Participants reported using unpaid sighted assistance either from someone whom they knew or who was on hand 23% of the time when they had digital barriers. On average, the sighted helper invested 12 minutes of their time assisting with
each barrier.

An older Latina woman wearing glasses uses a computer While sighted assistance usually led to barrier resolution, the need for sighted help limited participants’ autonomy and put a strain on relationships. In about a quarter (n=58) of the barrier descriptions, participants discussed feeling overly reliant on individuals in their circles to assist with circumventing accessibility barriers. Additionally, 11 barrier descriptions specifically cited privacy concerns associated with sharing financial or medical details with another person while getting assistance. For example, in order to get necessary assistance, participants discussed needing to verbalize private identifiable information (such as date of birth), medical details, or financial details like their banking PIN. This meant not only sharing private information with a sighted helper but also sometimes verbalizing the information in the earshot of bystanders.

Participants occasionally used a paid visual interpreter service to resolve digital barriers, but this strategy was only used in 6 barrier descriptions (3% of barriers described). When participants did use a visual interpreter service, they used an average of 10 minutes, priced at $10. In some cases, the paid visual interpreters misunderstood requests or made errors that cost participants even more time. One participant could not access the website to buy a bus ticket. This participant sought visual interpretation support, but the visual interpreter worked inefficiently, taking so long that the fare expired and the participant was forced to pay a higher bus fare.

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