DESIGNED FOR ACCESSIBILITY
A TikTok star’s fave accessibility apps
With 1.5 million TikTok followers tuning in to watch the hundreds of explainer videos she’s created, self-described “British Blind Girl” Lucy Edwards is now unfazed by even the most uncomfortable questions.
Do you know how you look?
How does a blind person socially distance?
How does a blind person pick up guide-dog poop?
Her followers and fans have sent her those questions and hundreds of others – all of which she’s answered with her signature candour, charm and wit.
For Edwards, starting her TikTok channel last year was as much about self-preservation as educating others. “I would go out in the world and get this underlying discrimination and not be able to put my finger on it,” she says. “I would think, ‘Am I going crazy? It’s 2020. This can’t be happening.’
“But when I started answering those questions, it was like a weight was lifted. I got to another level of accepting myself, because you have to be quite strong to answer questions like ‘Can you brush your teeth?’”
There was an additional benefit: the more questions she responded to, the more thoughtful the questions became. “Do you dream in pictures? What do you see? Thinking about how to articulate that helped me develop as a person,” she explains.
We spoke to Edwards about the apps she uses to create her TikToks and realise her passion to “spread the word about disability”.
Framing the shot
Edwards creates her videos with a two-tripod setup – one to film, the other to check that she’s in frame with the help of Aira, an app that connects her to an agent who’s trained to answer questions from people who are blind or have low vision. Just point your iPhone’s camera at your surroundings.
“I used Aira recently for a video I did on ‘Is it offensive to give a blind person a handwritten card?’” Edwards says. “Just before I start filming, the person in Aira would see my screen and tell me whether to look up, right or left.”
(The answer to the question about the handwritten card, by the way, is no, it’s not rude. But typed text is read more easily by Seeing AI and other assistive apps.)
Brainstorming on the go
To capture ideas for her videos, she uses the voice-recording app Just Press Record, which lets her start an audio note with a Magic Tap gesture (a two-finger tap for users with VoiceOver enabled) or by saying, “Hey Siri, start a voice recording.”
“If an idea comes into my head, I will make a voice note and name the file to save my ramblings,” she says. “Then I’ll write the whole script using Pages.”
Identifying objects
One of Edwards’ most famous videos is “How Does a Blind Girl Know What’s in a Jar?” which she and her fiancé, Ollie, remixed to create an EDM track, complete with its own dance routine.
In the video, she demonstrates how she uses a tag reader to identify a jar’s contents. Day-to-day, she also uses the Seeing AI app, which leverages artificial intelligence, and the LiDAR scanning technology built into iPhone to recognise currency, read signs or documents, and even recognise friends in real time. The app also uses surround sound and pitch to notify users how close objects are.
“It has a product-scanning mode. I use it for tins in the kitchen. For my hair and make-up, I’ll use it for bottles that I haven’t labelled with braille,” says Edwards.
“I get lots of comments online asking, ‘Why don’t you just get Ollie to do that?’ Well, because I’m not going to sit around for five hours for my sighted fiancé to finish work, then say, ‘Please help me!’” says Edwards.
Wrangling TikTok comments
“There’s a really cool Q&A feature in the TikTok app that collates all of my comments. You just tap the button and you can scroll through all of them.”
As she swipes, her iPhone’s built-in VoiceOver feature (toggle it on in the Accessibility settings) reads out loud the TikTok comments and messages she receives. (Her favourite VoiceOver voice, by the way, is “Daniel,” set to a relatively brisk 500 words per minute.)
Staying positive
“When you lose your eyesight, it’s not only the grief and loss and trauma of that event. You are reminded every time you wake up that you can’t see,” says Edwards, who lost sight in her right eye by age 11 due to a rare genetic condition. When she was 17, a retinal detachment in her left eye caused her to become completely blind.
Edwards has found comfort in the meditation and mindfulness app Headspace. “I love Headspace for if I’m feeling really low or I need to find some patience,” she says. “Every single night I go to sleep with rain sounds on.”
Reading a pregnancy test
“At the moment, pregnancy tests are not accessible for blind women at all,” she explains. “But Be My Eyes is amazing – it now has a specialised help tab for Clearblue pregnancy test results.”
Be My Eyes connects people who are blind or have low vision to sighted volunteers who can provide information over a video call – or puts them in touch with Clearblue representatives for an anonymous, private reading of the test result.
Navigating outdoors
Microsoft Soundscape helps Edwards navigate the outdoors on her own. As she walks, the app calls out nearby landmarks, letting her know, for example, that a park is 250 yards away or that she’s passing a coffee shop on her left.
“I started to do cane training because my guide dog retired. Every time I go out, I have Soundscape helping me plot where I am,” Edwards says.
One of the coolest features is that when the app announces a location, the voice appears to come from where that landmark is in relation to you. “You walk down the street and it feels as though sounds play from where the buildings are,” she says.
Watching TV
“Honestly, the audio description on Netflix is just so good,” she says, referring to a dedicated audio track, available for certain series and movies, where a narrator describes what’s happening onscreen over the standard soundtrack. “The audio describer’s voice on Stranger Things in particular just sounds like she is meant to be there. When it is so integral to the programme, it makes me feel so included.” (To switch to this track while you’re streaming, tap anywhere on the screen and open the Audio & Subtitles menu.)
Banking better
The digital bank Monzo Bank is one of Edwards’ favourite apps. “They must have someone who is blind on their engineering team, because all the buttons are labeled correctly,” she says, and when you navigate the app using VoiceOver, everything is in a logical order. “That’s when you can tell accessibility has been at the forefront.”
Connecting on social
Edwards has a presence on many social media platforms, but one rises above for accessibility. “Clubhouse is the only app I have seen in its infancy take on and think about accessibility,” she says. “Clubhouse developers have said, ‘We’ll take your feedback straightaway,’ and it’s crazy how accessible it became overnight. No other app has been that inclusive for the blind community.”
Clubhouse is currently in public beta. An invite is required to join.