Recent experience with visual accessibility support
I have been a volunteer on Be my eyes for over two years. This is an application that provides remote support for visually impaired individuals through video calls. The main needs I get are relatively simple: pointing directions, choosing colors, reading technical information (such as food shelf life).
Recently I start to get more calls on the technical side. One major request, is CAPTCHA verification. During my experience assisting 3 blind callers, there was little to no support available.
The verification process requires the user to click on a specific object within a short period of time. It generally takes 4-5 rounds of interactions of moving camera and mouse before I can see the cursor. After that, we have to continue interacting for a long time before the cursor arrives its destination precisely.
Click. You have timed out.
We have to repeat the whole process several times until the target object happens to be super close. This generally takes 8-20 rounds.
Some CAPTCHA service providers offer audio verification as an alternative by reading out some numbers. It doesn't work as fluent as expected. Blind users often use Windows Narrator which reads everything on the screen. It sometimes collides with CAPTCHA voice and cannot be heard clearly. Moreover, I've had one encounter where the numbers were read in English. I primarily support Chinese speakers.
Another experience was more thought-provoking, as I had never considered this could be challenging.
By default, Windows File Explorer displays technical attributes in list view in the order of Name, Date Modified, Type, Size. For a folder with only audio files, windows file explorer automatically assumes you want to display in media view. The displayed technical attributes are Track #, Title, Album, Contributing Artists. (As described in this article)
It could be bothering to blind users as they access the attributes by using arrow keys to navigate between columns. Narrator only reads out the value in the cell without the column name. My client (if I'm allowed to call her in that way) was so lost that she didn't know where she was.
It took me about 20 minutes to understand the need, as she cannot "see" her problem (obviously) and I cannot "see" her problem since she cannot describe it. To make matters worse, I have a MacBook and an Ubuntu desktop, but no Windows devices. There was no way I could find a workable solution and tell her what to do directly. All we could do was have me search the web for possible solutions and instruct her to try them out and see if it really worked, while putting up with the high latency, low video quality, and occasionally displaced camera.
Based on my experience in macOS, column settings can be triggered by command + J, but it didn't work for windows; another possible solution is to right click on the column headers and select correct columns.
It was hard for me to see the cursor's position on the blurry screen though.
I looked for alternative ways using only keyboard. I found several methods, but none of them work:
- The official documentation says columns can be set in
View -> Choose Details. This method is not valid any more in Windows 11. Alt + Enteropens the folder properties, but it's doesn't include which columns to display. Similarly, three dots ->Optionsis not the correct way to go.Shift + F10is supposed to display the context menu. But it somehow didn't work well and I see some similar complaints. It seems to be another upgrade in Windows 11.
Finally, I gave up and guided her to move the mouse onto the tiny area of column header and made the right click. I further helped her to fix the view permanently. This was straightforward: three dots -> options -> view -> apply to folders.
I wanted to give Microsoft feedback that their official guidance was outdated and to get official help. It took me at least 20 minutes to find the right contact information. Luckily, I finally got through to a live chat with an accessibility support specialist—so far, so good. She was incredibly enthusiastic, which was nice, but it still took a full hour just to get her to understand what I was saying. Screenshots were not accepted in the chat. Non-official Microsoft links cannot be opened. And to top it off, even her access to the file explorer on her own desktop was so limited, that she could not replicate the steps I described. Our conversation ended with she forwarding my question to the technical team.
Truly an accessible support experience. I highly appreciate her for being proactive, but I still wonder how difficult it would be for she to help a blind client, considering the difficulties to talk with me, a sighted user with technical background.
I got a reply two days later. For anyone looking for "how to change columns in windows file explorer using keyboard only in Windows 11": Navigate to the column header with Tab (not arrow keys) then Shift + F10 to open the column list.
It worked on one of my colleagues' laptop, but not on another.