Case Study: Updating Accessibility on Instagram
- Timeline: 1 week
- Methods: UX Research, Prototyping
- Tools: Figma, Invision, Illustrator, Miro
- Results: ⬆ Accessibility
Project Brief 🧠
Over 500 million people are using Instagram stories per day but often times, people with disabilities are excluded from the major social experience and feeling disconnect in a way.
People who are visually impaired experience independence and confidence when the world around them is accessible. We are aiming to design for everyone to enjoy every little parts of social engagement.
“Accessibility ensures people with disabilities can access the same information from a system as everyone else, and also gain the same benefits”
Process outline ✍🏻
1. Understand your client: Defining problems in everyday
2. Problem identification and insight gathering
3. Existing platform analysis: Why instagram?
4. User research & existing technology research
5. Solution
6. Final Prototype
Target User 💬
- Visually Impaired with the ability to perceive light and shadow
- lacking smooth Social Life
- feeling disconnected from not being able to take part in certain parts of social media.
The challenge 👩🏻💻
In this project, we're addressing several pain points from every day of visually impaired people. Due to the visual deficits, they struggle to find connections from not being ab le to engage in certain parts of social media.
According to a study, They are often excluded from a significant social engagement tool such as memes, stickers, and other highly visual-focused elements.
Problem 1: Could Instagram stories be more accessible?
- Instagram was among the less accessible social media platforms in 2018: Instagram stories is not accessible by either screen readers or alt-text.
- Alt text feature can be used only when posting to the newsfeed
- Globally the number of people with visual deficits is estimated to be around 285 million and 39 million are blind
- Therefore, instagram could potentially be excluding half of its user base.
Why Instagram stories ? 👀
- Highly visual-centred social networking application that also visually impaired people enjoy using
- 500 million users of stories per day
- Different studies show there are various motivating and engaging social experience when using instagram stories such as the act of sharing thoughts and feelings with someone else brings a rewarding emotion. And some claims that it's the best replication of a social experience
- We don't want to exclude anyone from the amazing social experience
🤔
How might we retrieve independence and confidence for people who are visually impaired in social engagement through making the world around them more accessible?
👇🏻
Empathy Mapping 💖
- lacking smoothSocial Life
- feeling disconnected from not being able to take part in certain parts of social media.
Angie desires to be part of a major social networking life. And be more connected
Technology research 👩🏻💻
- What are the existing Alt-text features?
- How beneficial is it?
- How other social networking platforms are using AI in their platform to provide better accessibility?
- How do people with visually impaired say about it?
Solution 🤯
We believe that by designing a feature, 'Alt-text in stories' on instagram will maximize the quality of life of visually impaired people.