eReader accessibility options not obvious enough
Nicolas Steenhout
Speaker, trainer, consultant on digital accessibility and inclusion
Too many of our elders don't know that there are accessibility options they can turn on in eReaders. You realize there's almost no information about these options when you look at marketing materials. Specifically, large print.
I recently became aware of this, but having heard of it once, I realized many of the elders I knew had a similar issue.
An elderly woman said that she was struggling with finding Large Print books at her small community library. They had less than a dozen titles in Large Print, and she'd read them all. The librarian had suggested she could sign in to her account online and get books via Overdrive. And this woman said something along the lines of:
"Oh, yes, I have an eReader, but there are no offerings for large print books on Overdrive".
This woman was not aware that she could pick any book she wanted. That she only had to adjust the font size on her eReader as she wanted and needed. What's worse, the librarian never suggested it either. Did she not know?
People are unaware of basic accessibility options that would make their lives easier. And that would open up a world of books for them.
Not to mention that forcing our elders to go to the library to grab books in these days of pandemic is either unsafe or not possible.
It isn't enough to have accessibility features. They need to be easily discoverable. They need to be easily enabled.
Why aren't these features described front and center in marketing? Why isn't the option to turn on large text displayed, in large text, when you first turn on and set up a device? Why aren't Kobo and Kindle, and other eReader makers making it easier for our elders to access reading material in a format that really works for them?
Senior Accessibility Engineer, Trainer, Speaker
4 年I have a Kobo, and I make my text so big that there's barely a few sentences per page. I love it. I find it more difficult to read print books now because the text is so small. I got the Kobo when my daughter was born so that I could more easily read one handed (sleeping baby in both arms, Kobo on knee, one finger free to move to next page). I read thousands of pages those first few months. It wouldn't take much for these companies to make these accessibility benefits clear and central in their marketing. It would bring in lots of people who could benefit from them, which would mean lots of new customers. Everybody wins.