Iris Hulzinga (18) has a passion for singing and playing the ukulele. She also enjoys reading and writing. Due to her hereditary eye condition, she is largely blind. She enjoys visiting websites and using various online services. Nowadays, she also regularly takes classes online. So digital accessibility is a very important issue for her.
Iris says: I was born with Leber congenital amaurosis, which is an eye condition where the retina does not work properly or at all. It is a hereditary condition, but no one in my family has it. The gene that gives you the condition is recessive. So to get it, both parents must carry the gene. I don't know what my vision is as a percentage, but I can still see dark and light.
When website accessibility is taken into account, it really makes a lot of difference to me.
I used to have more trouble with my disability than I do now; back then I couldn't accept the fact that I could see practically nothing. Now I get annoyed sometimes. When I lose something or cannot easily go somewhere on my own, for example. I think the word disability is a good description of my blindness, because it certainly limits me to a certain extent. But it also has advantages; I will not judge anyone because of his or her appearance.
I have been using the Internet for about six years. The online services I visit include Spotify, Whatsapp, Facebook and Bol.com. On my phone, I mainly use Apple's voice-over feature in the process. The voice-over reads texts and labels aloud and navigates me through the website by voice. A website I visit a lot is Wikipedia, which is a very user-friendly site. Websites are user-friendly for me if there is a clear menu bar at the top. Using speech, I can then quickly find the search field.
I also have an app that allows me to read text from a carton of milk or a paper letter. That's super nice
During the corona crisis, I took a lot of online classes. In doing so, I used Teams a lot. Like many other Microsoft products, this is fortunately very accessible. I also have an app that allows me to read text from a carton of milk or a paper letter. That's super nice!
I think digital accessibility is very important. Especially because I like to visit websites myself. If websites are not digitally accessible, I can't really do much on the Internet. When accessibility is taken into account, it really makes a lot of difference to me.
If websites are not digitally accessible, I can't really do much on the Internet.
When using the Internet, I run into several problems. For example, with apps, it often happens that buttons are not labeled. So then I don't know what the button is for. What also happens frequently is that my screen reader cannot read text properly, because it has not been processed correctly in the website.
I do notice that there is improvement in website accessibility, but unfortunately this is far from universal. I want to give web builders the tip to open up to the people who know how websites can be made accessible. Use that knowledge so that more people can use your website. It is so important that everyone can get by on the Internet.
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