As of today, the Unity Accessibility Plugin has a new feature: Explore By Touch!
Explore By What Now?
Explore By Touch is an accessibility feature on smartphones that let’s blind users run their finger over the screen – and the screen reader will read out what’s under their fingertip. The screen reader also makes sure that no buttons are accidentally pressed or an app is started unintentionally. This works on both Google TalkBack and iOS VoiceOver.
This was my original impression of Explore By Touch. Typical rookie mistake of a sighted person.
I originally thought that this is one feature that I wouldn’t need to re-create for the accessibility plugin, because I figured that no one would be using it much. I assumed no one wanted to blindly poke around on the screen to discover buttons. Why would anyone do that when swiping left and right navigates safely through the user interface?
Think again, you sighted fool!
As we all know, making blind assumptions is a bad thing. Pun intended.
Why would anyone use Explore By Touch?
The answer is simple. Because it is faster!
Navigating menus is a necessity, not fun. Doing it slowly by stepping through all elements on the screen one by one doesn’t make it any better.
If you already roughly know where a button is located, then using Explore By Touch is the next best thing to actually seeing where it is and clicking it directly.
Sure, the first time you get hit with a new menu, you might just trigger the Read From Top function and have the entire screen read out to you. But after that, you can poke around and find out where things are. And being blind doesn’t mean you cannot remember roughly where a button is located on the screen.
Thanks for the Feedback
I wouldn’t have come to this conclusion if I hadn’t received some very clear feedback from an actually blind person, who straight up told me the plugin would be pretty much useless without Explore By Touch. His opinion matched what I read in an article by Matt Gemmel in which he covers Myths about visually impaired users. After that I put my phone back in accessibility mode for a while and ultimately had to agree. It made me want that feature, too.
I am happy to announce that my plugin’s Explore By Touch is now fully functional.
Also: Thank you for your honest feedback, Scott!
hey, just want to say I appreciate your effots in trying to create this plugin, as well as keeping your reader updated.
Also wanted to find out if this sort of plugin can be used to make pokemon go accessible?
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Yes, in part at least. I read somewhere that the developer is using Unity, but I don’t know if that is just a rumor. If they do and used this plugin, it would make the interface accessible, but some of the gameplay, such as catching Pokemons with Pokeballs and such will need custom implementation on their side with audio cues and such.
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Thanks for the response. Also like to confirm Niantic are using Unity.
To be honest the plugin would make the game so much accessible, as it is currently 100% unaccessible.
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