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iPad includes visually impaired and blind users - 29/04/2010

The last and most controversial product released by Apple, the iPad, raises different opinions among consumers all around the world.

There are those who consider it a useless and superfluous product. Many say that the main reasons for the iPad commercial success are its beauty and novelty factors as well as a good marketing campaign conducted by Apple, since consumers already had a previous option for reading e-books, the Amazon Kindle, which costs about half the price and promises a more pleasant reading experience with its E-paper technology which reproduces the visual sensation of printed paper.

But for more than 300 million people , iPad arrived as great news, not for its design or for its novelty factor, but for its usability.

Three hundred million is the estimate number of people with some kind of visual impairment around the globe, who until the release of the iPad, had no access to electronic publications because Kindle does not offer a feature to read out loud onscreen system navigation menus which are necessary for choosing and buying online publications or even turning on the read out loud functionality for the texts.

For these people, e-readers such as Kindle could represent a unique opportunity for acquiring literature, news and other content in a device that is more portable and cheaper than a desktop or laptop computer.

However, these users only were able to take full advantage of this new e-reader concept with the arrival of the Apple device, which has a default feature that reads out loud books, magazines and newspapers as well as all navigation menus.

The National Federation of the Blind in the US has already filed suit against Arizona State University for discrimination and indifference for the rights of the blind because Kindle has been chosen to be made available for students.

The NFB has also publicly appraised Apple's initiative of including the read out loud feature for menus and content on the iPad. They stated that now the blind will have the same opportunity as the sighted of taking full advantage of e-readers.

There is no doubt about which product will be chosen by the visually impaired who wish to have full access to electronic publications, even if the price fixed by the manufacturer is higher than the competitor's.

Fernando Oliveira
Usability consultant