Facebook Mobile Experience for Users with Age-Related Macular Degeneration

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Research Team: 

Drue Thomas, Skip Georges, & Elisandra Diaz

DePaul University,  Chicago, IL 60604, USA

By 2050 we will likely see the number of Americans who are visually impaired, 3.2 million in 2015, double—largely due to an aging population. Despite this, tech companies have routinely done the bare minimum (and sometimes nothing at all) to accommodate users with low or deteriorating vision. 

We decided to investigate how users with low vision, specifically Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD)—the leading cause of blindness among people aged 55+ in western countries—experience social media, specifically Facebook, on their mobile devices. Our team focused on understanding the accessibility needs of users with low vision on social media sites and/or applications in hopes that we could offer suggestions on how to better accommodate their needs.

OBJECTIVEs

We wanted to understand what assistive technologies they currently use (if any) for interface elements and how they use them, what difficulties they face using interfaces on mobile devices day to day with impaired vision, and how existing app interfaces might be improved to better accommodate users with impaired vision.

METHODs

Research Review

We started with a review and annotated bibliography of academic papers related to AMD, social media use, and accessibility. This familiarized us with the disorder and framed our plan for the user interviews.

One particularly interesting piece of research was a multi-disciplinary study done by researchers in the UK. The researchers conducted a series of in-home observation sessions and attended local AMD support groups to gain a deeper understanding of daily coping strategies and what’s it like living with AMD,

You can check out what we learned here. We used their study as a model for our contextual inquiry. 

Contextual Inquiry

We recruited and interviewed 3 participants for this study. All participants had AMD and were over 65. We observed users in their homes during a typical session on the Facebook mobile app and collected user feedback on assistive technologies and potential improvements.

We transcribed the interviews and clustered results to reveal any themes and findings, and created recommendations for future research and design for users with AMD.

Findings

elderly users use facebook regularly

We found that our participants used +3-4 times a week and said it was their favorite app to use. Participants used Facebook primarily to stay connected to family and friends.

FAMILIARITY IS KEY FOR LOW VISION USERS

There were no issues navigating to the Facebook app and all participants seemed to be extremely familiar with the placement of the app icon on their device, the app functionality and the actions to take to complete tasks.

“I post a lot and i talk to my friends almost everyday. I like to play games too...It’s just something to do.”(Monana)

SMALL TEXT & SYMBOLS CAUSE DIFFICULTY

All participants showed signs of difficulty reading or writing text and viewing images. Two would bring the phone closer to focus on what they were looking at.

“It can be challenging to see icons like the “like” symbol and comment symbol. I’m not sure if it is the size or color but I can hardly see it.” (Bobby)

LOW VISION USERS WANT SIMPLICITY

Others mentioned that they would like things to be simplified.

“It can be too much sometimes...so much to read and look at but that's just the nature of social media. So many buttons and things to do. I don’t know if I’m getting old or they’re just doing too much these days.”(Moana)

FILTERING IS KEY

There was also a desire to filter the news feed to the items they cared about.

“I would require a user to make some kind of designation as to the description of their posts, especially shared posts that contain supposedly humorous material...Then allow me to choose not to have these kinds of posts included in their news feed. I am more interested in what’s going on in people’s lives.” (Bobby)

OLDER USERS FEEL NEGLECTED

Users felt that there were things they would change but felt that they would just have to get used to.

“...they could make some improvements for people like me. But immediately after my thought was that apps like Facebook aren’t really made for people like me, so why should they change to cater to me?” (Bobby)

RECOMMENDATIONS

  • Facebook should take more of an interest in their older users with AMD and low vision.

  • While this audience is aging, they seem to have high levels of activity (specifically posting) and a desire to use Facebook as their primary social media app.

  • Create specialized icon sets that make icons, keyboards, etc. easier to see and press.

  • Offer filtering settings that can reduce the amount of picture and video content and Ads for users with screen readers.