If you've already read "The BlackBerry Blues", a post I did way back in 2008, you'll have some idea what this post is about. I'm sorry to say that not a damn thing has changed since that post, at least not for me.
Last year I was really hoping BlackBerry would come through with a phone I might be able to use, but the Z10 was a touchscreen and the Q10's keyboard was still too small for my clumsy hands. And these new versions, from what I can gather, don't seem to even come with a screen reader like previous versions did.
Yeah, I know, now we have the iPhone, which I hear a lot of blind people are using. And I'm really glad it works for a lot of people. But aside from the fact that it relies on a virtual keyboard and touchscreen icons instead of a tactile keyboard and buttons, you also have to be able to make gestures. Although my hand dexterity's not the worst, it's not great either, so I can safely predict that the iPhone and other phones like it would very likely misread a gesture I was trying to make. And not knowing where the icons are (or what they are) makes these phones especially tedious to use. Sure, they have VoiceOver or some other screen reader, but that just means you have to keep tapping around the screen blindly and listen each time to find out what the fuck you just pressed. Yeah, eventually you'll hit the right icon or menu option, but it'll take a while. Not my idea of a good time!!!
I was Googling just a while ago, trying again to find accessible smartphones (and even flip phones), but so far I haven't had much luck. All the keyboards (on the phones that actually still have physical keyboards) are still too small for me to touch-type on. Since I'm blind I need to touch-type (for you hunt-and-peck guys that's where you keep your fingers on the home row and from that position you know where all the other keys are without seeing them). I've been told I could get a Bluetooth keyboard to go with the phone, but that would be even more tedious and cumbersome since I'd be dropping both devices instead of struggling to hang on to just one.
And then there are my favorite phones of all -- the senior phones! OK, at first I actually thought these might be just the thing for me, and they might have been if I only wanted to make phone calls. I can't believe this, but when I was Googling a while ago I found a set of phone picks for seniors, whose intro started out like this: "When choosing a phone for your elderly parents or grandparents, forget about 4G, Bluetooth, or dual-core processors. There's also not much chance they'll have much use, if any, for texting or data plans to post to social media sites." If you don't believe me just go to http://www.bestcovery.com/best-cell-phone-for-seniors and see for yourself. Now I'm not sure what date this was written, but it was at the top of Google's list when I searched for "large key flip phone" -- yes, I'd already tried search terms like "accessible smartphone" and come up with nothing useful. At this point I wanted to scream and throw things, not to mention seriously damage all the assholes who make cell phones and lots of other stuff I can't use. Although I'm getting up there I'm far from being a senior, but with all the aging Baby Boomers out there I just know there has to be a bunch of seniors who want a lot more than just a simple cell phone that only makes calls and maybe has an SOS button. I knew this kind of senior phone existed back in 2008, but I thought for sure the phone manufacturers would have wised up by now and started making smartphones with bigger keys (I mean real keys), a built-in screen reader, and other accessibility features that would be helpful for seniors as well as other people with disabilities. But apparently the dumbass smartphone makers still haven't figured out that not everyone gives a crap about their ultra-thin, ultra-light phones that wouldn't even make a good paperweight and would probably shatter if you looked at them the wrong way.
OK, I'm totally at my wit's end here. I tried e-mailing companies like BlackBerry -- yes, more than once -- to get them to make their stuff more accessible, and only got form letters back. After the Z10 and Q10 came out I e-mailed them again to ask if they had screen readers on their new units, and got no reply. I've tried e-mailing laptop companies too, to ask them to make their laptops with keyboards that have the old-style concave keys that are much easier to type on if you touch-type like I do. NADA!!! The only thing I can do now is hope a bunch of aging Baby Boomers will start an uprising and storm the manufacturers' head offices or something. Hey, a girl can dream can't she?
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