glitchsoc - Link to source
I absolutely hate touch screens! I love my current phone, a Pixel 9A. It has good battery, good speakers, a flat back, etc. But I am so fucking inefficient on a touch screen, no matter if its iOS or android. Want me to google something? Okay, let me look around for the web browser, double tap on it, explore by touch until I find the address bar which might or might not have been moved or altered in a recent app update, double tap there, type way slower than on a physical keyboard, hit search, switch my rotor/reading control to headings, and very slowly start reading through results. Touch screens are remarklably efficient for people with functioning eyeballs, and I've seen people who can text on a phone almost as fast as I can type on a computer. But for me, a metal slab with a glass screen and way more computing power than I would've ever thought possible, no matter how fucking cool it is that we can drop that in our pockets like its nothing, will never ever be as efficient as win+r, browsername, enter, start typing, enter, press h, boom first result. This is not helped by the mainstream screen readers on both mobile operating systems having agrivating bugs. On Android scrolling locks up your screen reader while it refreshes the screen, because we're apparently still living in 2005, and VO has just started getting worse and worse with every iteration. I see the downsides to this approach, but I'm really starting to think the best solution for mobile devices for blind people is custom hardware/software. There are plenty of examples of getting this wrong, but I think that's mostly due to people not eating their own dog food as opposed to it being an impossible task. Paperback for Android has shown me that you can make as polished of Android software as you want, but there are still no physical buttons on the front of your phone. For a truly efficient reading and usability experience, I'd personally want both blind-centric software and hardware with physical buttons. That's not at all realistic, though. Welcome to being blind in a world made for sighted people.
This entry was edited (Sunday, May 24, 2026, 10:39 PM)

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in reply to Quin
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Martin

What, you want to be efficient on your phone? Lolol! yeah, I hate hate hate browsing on a smart phone. Both bad on IOS and/or Android. Prudence does improve it a bit, but man. Oh and yeah, typing is very innificient. I either use the Hable One, or a braille display to type. I've tried the braille input, but that too annoys me.
in reply to Quin
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Jamie Teh

I tend to think the screen reader bugs and quirks actually have a lot more to do with this than is commonly perceived. This includes things like focus not landing where it should for maximum efficiency, though I believe Android is a lot better at this than iOS. For me, braille screen input on iOS helps a lot, especially with the introduction of command mode, but the accessibility bugs still make using my phone for long periods intolerable.
in reply to Quin
glitchsoc - Link to source

x0

And people just genuinely don't understand why I only ever use my phone with resistance. Even other blind people. I literally never web search on the phone because even with dictate solving the typing problem, ever noticed that one VO quirk where the further you get down the page the slower it gets? Plus web minus adblocker is no web at all.
in reply to x0
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Borris

@x0 Granted, this isn't a thing most people would probably do, but I have Pihole available on my Tailnet, so I get ad blocking from any device without installing any third-party extensions. Sure makes the experience a lot better. There are things one can use, such as Adguard, but I haven't looked at that since what I have works for me, even on smart TVs and such.
@x0
in reply to Quin
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Tech Singer

I cannot agree more with any of this except for the solution. The solution for me, and it's not a great solution but it does exist, unlike any decent button-based phone, is remote access with a small bluetooth keyboard or game controller. This exists both from iOS testflight.apple.com/join/edg8… and from android in several versions. This is not a good solution because it requires constant internet access, because it has issues (the iOS version, for example, has speech problems with eloquence, the android stuff often has problems with the keyboard). Having said that, it is the only solution which really works, which really makes windows+r/site/pressing h and the speed from that possible. Everything else is too slow or impossible. I wish someone would make a better screen reader and a better phone with buttons. It just isn't going to happen. I'm very sorry to think that, but he evidence makes it the only conclusion. Phones can be used for reading and phone/text, and maybe for some apps. They just aren't efficient for much else, in my experience.

Join the NVDA Remote Controller beta

Available on iOS
testflight.apple.com
in reply to Quin
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Elijah Massey

I completely agree with this, but instead of a custom blindness-specific computer or phone, what about accessories with physical buttons that control your phone? I use both an iPhone 16E and a Pixel 9A, but I almost never use the touchscreen because I control them both with my NLS eReader and I just wear it around my neck everywhere I go. That way I get the benefits of mainstream software and hardware but a better input method. If a Braille display is too big or too expensive, there is the Orbit Writer which is just a Braille keyboard, or the Hable One. There are definitely bugs and inconveniences with the mobile screen readers like you said, and a few extra with Braille, but maybe the best way to fix that is to improve the mobile screen readers rather than designing specialized hardware. I am very fast at using my phone with a Braille display although for some things a computer is still more efficient. For your Google search example, on iOS I can press backspace+enter to open Braille Access, type s a f and press enter to open Safari, press dots 1-7 chord and then l for command+l which opens the address bar, type what I'm searching, press enter, and often just press dot 6 chord to move by heading, or if I need to adjust the rotor, its much quicker on a Braille keyboard.
in reply to Quin
gotosocial - Link to source

the esoteric programmer

here's a better solution I think. Bespoke hardware, unfortunately yes. Bespoke software, perhaps, maybe for some things. But built on an open system, and playing nice with everyone else taking part in that system. So you know, if you're basing it on Linux, it should be playing well with desktop environment conventions, the xdg specifications, dbus and all that stuff. That way, if we need something made for the wider ecosystem to work in that custom desktop environment made for us, just drop it in there and most of it will work just fine. Custom integrations with the shell it wouldn't have, but it would appear in the app list, save its configs where everything else does, launch stuff the way everything else does, etc.
in reply to Quin
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Nikola Jović

People take what Windows offers for granted. We can be frustrated about its issues all day, but its focus management is simply excellent, to the point where using my PC via NVDA Remote on my phone is often more pleasant than using an ap on my phone. Random bugs which pile on from time to time largely contribute to this. I also have to ssay that every Android with TalkBak is just more laggy than iOS devices.
in reply to bscross32
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Tech Singer

@bscross32 I don't think you're disagreeing with @TheQuinbox at all. I, too, hate blindness hardware because... every single example I've seen over the past ten years has been bad. By bad, I mean significantly worse than products doing similar things for the sighted. Usually, much worse. My view is that this is the market, not anything inherent in hardware for the blind, but of course I don't know that for sure.
@Quin @bscross32
This entry was edited (Monday, May 25, 2026, 12:40 AM)

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Mauve 👁💜

I'm sighted but I've been working on making a portable audio based desktop environment for these exact same reasons. I use a one handed keyboard and bluetooth headphones with a single board computer hooked to a portable battery bank. Sadly I found linux screen readers have been too slow to use so I'm designing my own. IMO screen reader first setups could be better than dedicated linux phones if you focus on keyboard access and ignore the rendering entirely.
in reply to Quin
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Mauve 👁💜

Yeah of course! The tl;dr is the Twiddler 4 keyboard and a Khadas Edge 2 glued to a random USB-C powerbank. Orca for screen reader for now but I'm gonna slap together something else. Mostly geares towards jumping around the accessibility tree with fuzzy search. Maybe also speaking live regions in multiple voices to get more data through?
in reply to Mauve 👁💜
gotosocial - Link to source

the esoteric programmer

yo, that's awesome! do you have a git repo or something I can look at?
About the screenreader, sure you can build your own, and depending on what you want to do maybe you should, but me and some other people are working on a screenreader for linux, to replace orca because of multiple grievances we have with it. Work on it is really slow especially now because we're at the heuristics stage, but you know, it's a thing which may give you inspiration and stuff if you don't want to make it from scratch.
in reply to the esoteric programmer
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Mauve 👁💜

@esoteric_programmer No git repo yet, I'm just writing notes on how I'd like to interact with the system and figuring out how to get wayland to run without a physical monitor. I'm down to collaborate though! What's your new screen reader called? Is this that new Rust one that's been bouncing around?
@the esoteric programmer
in reply to Mauve 👁💜
gotosocial - Link to source

the esoteric programmer

yep, that one! it's called odilia. Really rough because now we're in the finding heuristics stage which works kinda antithetical to the architecture we set for ourselves, so we'll have to both work around that and find what orca does in certain edge cases, because I feel like from here on outward, everything will be pretty much implementing of more at-spi events and orca-specific heuristics
in reply to Rui Batista
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Tech Singer

@ragb Even those phones, because they have, as you rightly say, "legacy components", are very slow and a serious pain to use for anyone used to a windows machine and its speed. I have a smartvision 3 which I bought used and it was worth less to me than the very low price I spent for it.
@Rui Batista
in reply to Quin
glitchsoc - Link to source

Kara Goldfinch

Honestly sometimes I have thought about looking at Blindshell even though I have been using VO almost exclusively with a touchscreen since 2009, and have gotten reasonably fast with direct touch typing mode. Also like you said web browsing really is a pain in the arse.
in reply to Quin
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Herbie Allen

Interesting, with iOS, you can get some fairly consistent behavior. I find the Google app a. little easier for searching though, but navigating by headings through the results helps tremendously. I do prefer the computer overall, but I can use the phone short-term with no problems.
in reply to Herbie Allen
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Tech Singer

@hallen I agree, but is it as good as Windows? Remember that we are at a serious disadvantage. My difficulty is that I don't want "fairly consistent" I want something that gets out of my way and lets me work and doesn't make things worse. At best, and so far as I see things, iOS is with certain apps is the best mobile system for blind and deafblind users... at best, working on mobile makes things somewhat worse. I want them to be made better.
@Herbie Allen
in reply to Tech Singer
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Herbie Allen

@techsinger No, I don’t think iOS can take the place of a computer. Things are doable, but a lot more tasks are made simpler with a PC or Mac in my opinion. I’m reminded of a discussion I had the other week with someone who only uses iOS and wanted to have files download to a particular place. Not easily done and they are at a disadvantage with not having a computer.
@Tech Singer
in reply to Quin
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Rich Yamamoto

I don't like touchscreens very much myself. I have a Hable, and it gets the job done, when I remember to use it that is. I'm so used to using BSI and touch-typing that I don't really think to use something like my Hable. I like using bluetooth keyboards, but again, it just seems like one extra thing to carry around. I've started using this thing called Whisper Flow, which is a voice dictation keyboard that you can literally whisper to, and it does a hell of a lot better job than iOS stock dictation. I really don't know the right answer, but I know one thing for sure. If Flicktype hadn't gone away, I would still be using that and typing more efficiently than I am right now. I don't even know if blaming Apple for that is the most accurate thing with this particular situation, but yeah.
in reply to Quin
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Florian

@mustikkasoppa yup. I have partially solved this by cramming my Pixel into a Clicks keyboard case, which at least makes text entry less painful. And I will say that once muscle memory sets in, and it actually works (read; doesn't get fucked with by an update), it can be very smooth to grab phone, unlock, tap banner notification for bank confirmation, tap fingerprint sensor, put away phone. But for longer interactions you inevitably slow down.
I honestly don't really know how we would fix it OS-wide. Touchscreens being organic and using spatiality to its advantage is its strength and its weakness and screenreaders don't have an effective interaction layer for them et
@Veera Laukkarinen
in reply to Florian
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Marco Zehe

@zersiax @mustikkasoppa That's why touch screens really only work for me on phones. I also have an iPad, but hardly use it, or if I use, only with a keyboard attached or paired. And I never used Windows with a touch screen, even when the Surface laptop I once owned, had one. It is just too cumbersome and too unnatural for me.
@Veera Laukkarinen @Florian

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Florian

@marco @mustikkasoppa Touch screens work the way mouses and forks do. You see it, you go to it, you click or prick it. If one thing needs to go to another thing, you just pick it up and drag it there.
Now we take away the first step. You don't see it, can't go to it, can't click it, can't drag it to another thing because you don't know where the other thing is (yet).
In UX this is very powerful; you always see all your options in front of you at a glance. If you don't, the whole thing falls over, particularly for the fully blind.
@Veera Laukkarinen @Marco Zehe

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Florian

From a screen reader perspective the equation is seemingly a lot more complicated. Suddenly it matters HOW those elements arrive on the screen, what technology was used for it, what labels were attached to it by the developer and to what degree keyboard focus was considered. For efficiency, given we don't have two dimensions to work with spatially, every user interface becomes a tree.
Some users traverse that tree node by node, trying to just find what they need and move on. Others memorize that if you first go to branchX, element Y is quicker to reach. Yet others learn the keyboard shortcuts and skip the tree as much as they can, but irrespective of the method, there's a lot of memorization and a need for rapid chains of keystrokes to almost instinctually do a chain of movement actions to get pretty much anything done.
On a touch screen, because way fewer distinct and intuitive inputs, you lose practically all of that wiggle room and frankly ... I don't know how to fix it.

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Yadiel Sotomayor

@zersiax @marco @mustikkasoppa I find that for people losing their site later in life touchscreen’s are way easier to learn than keyboard only operations. For me, until recently, I was never near a computer. Now that I am, I find myself reaching for it much more often.
@Veera Laukkarinen @Florian @Marco Zehe
in reply to Florian
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Eden Linnea

@zersiax @mustikkasoppa I literally do not have the dexterity to properly use one. I can Braille. I can play piano. I even used to do stenography. But I cannot do diddly with a touch screen. Lucky I can enter my password in a pinch but nope. If my Braille disconnects from my iPhone I'm fubar.
@Veera Laukkarinen @Florian
in reply to Quin
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Rachel Ramos

Physical buttons will always be faster than no buttons/exploring by touch. Even auto manufacturers are learning this lesson, and are putting physical controls back into cars. Anyway, the only modification I'd suggest for your workflow is to assign a gesture to navigate by heading. I have going forward a heading assigned to swipe right with 2 fingers, and going backward assigned to swiping left with 2 fingers. Hope that helps some.
in reply to Quin
friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Peter Vágner

@Quin I know there are endless debates on blindness specific apps / devices and I was one of those who used to criticize them all.

In recent two years I have slowly managed to adopt a blindness specific app for android that I find game changing.
It's called corvus, it can be tested and bought at corvuskit.com/en .
It's being developed by a non-profit here in slovakia, so it's primary localization is slovak, but english, czech, german, polish and italian localizations are also included. There is even a way to build your own machine generated localization to your language with an ability to correct it and make available to other users.

It has two modes of operation. The primary environment is self-voicing one featuring touch screen controls that are optimized for performing by blind people. There is no need to touch directly, the interface is similar to old nokia phones but instead of buttons we have set of well defined gestures such as flicks, taps, taps combined with volume button presses and similar.

In this environment there are over 50 apps we are calling modules such as calls, messages, call log, profiles, email client, file manager, notes app, text reader, music player, podcasts player / rss reader, internet radio catalog powered by radio-browser.info, language translator, weather forecasts, cash reader, clocks and calendars that integrates with all your device calendars, light detector, flash light, camera based magnifier, OCR, calculator, voice recorder, openstreetmap powered GPS app, some little games and more.

It features multiple keyboards such as qwerty keyboard that can be used with lift to type, braille keyboard powered by recent version of liblouis (contracted braille not yet supported), classic 3X4 alpha numeric keyboard you may know from nokia phones and others. System's default dictation can be started quickly including custom punctuation handling.

It can be used with a lot of braille displays those supporting HID standard directly, other models through brltty.

It's very quick to operate and bridges the gap between blindness specific and main stream quite well as you can get it installed on all the modern android phones.

It has embedded instance of eSpeak TTS easily available to rescue when the android TTS stops working for some reason.

It's an app that is in development more than 10 years already.

I know it can still be improved even further, it has made some compromises and for those of us who have invested a bit of time and learning curve it really became an indispensable every day tool.

The user guide is available in english so if you don't know it already, feel free to look at it.

Ah yes, it's not open-source but despite possibly having great powers it does not yet do evil user tracking.

@Quin
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Nova🐧✨

been thinking about how to do good navigation in XR where you have more intangibility than a touchscreen, given I'm making a display server... so far I've landed on making interactable things have their own aura audibly and tactile wise, and my friends have made a really clever controller that lets you read braille with 1 mechanism but you can move it along the lines and it travels under your fingers as if on a page, so using that or TTS for reading labels + proprioception and spatial audio should make the interface usable... thoughts?