Design-Able was a campaign by a group of final-year students from Nanyang Technological University to promote making design accessible for everyone. As part of this campaign, they produced a thoughtful and meaningful Human Library series, a platform for individuals to share their experiences through stories. I had the privilege of being featured in one of those stories.
One of the students contacted me and arranged to come to my place for the filming. On the interview day, two of the three students did the filming. Before they set up the camera and fitted me with a microphone, they explained to me via texting what was going to happen. Prior to the interview, I was also given the questions in advance, so I could prepare my responses.
I am not used to being recorded. There were many false starts as I always felt I was not ready, or I did not like how I had begun. I kept repeating myself. I tried rehearsing what I was going to say but at some point, I would say to the students we had to restart. I remarked they would have to do lots of editing to put everything together. The students were very reassuring nd they would say to me that that response was good so I would continue on to the next response. Without it, I might not know what I had just said was sufficient enough to answer that question.
In the video, I shared my journey living with Neurofibromatosis Type 2. It is a genetic condition which causes non-cancerous tumours to grow in my brain, that led to the loss of my sight in childhood and my hearing later in adulthood.
With my dual disability of not being able to see and hear, I navigate the digital world through assistive technology, a refreshable braille display connected to my phone and laptop. With it, I read emails, write documents, conduct research, and stay connected.
Even when information is available in the digital format, sometimes it is still not accessible. One of the most common barriers I encounter is the PDF. If it is not properly structured or tagged, my screen reader may read content out of order, jumping between columns, reading in a confusing manner. Decorative fonts may render as unreadable symbols on my assistive devices. The information is there, but I cannot get to it.
Another issue is when text is saved as an image. This happens more often than people realise, perhaps a poster, a notice, a slide. When text is written in an image, my assistive technology cannot read it at all. It is as though that piece of information does not exist for me and my assistive technology would alert that the document is blank.
Similarly, images posted without alternative (alt) text leave me with nothing. A photo, an infographic, a chart — if there is no description attached, I simply have no way to know what it contains.
For video content, an aspect which is crucial for me in my ability to access information is descriptive transcripts. They describe not just what is said, but what is happening – the actions, background sounds, visual details.
Accessibility is not just for persons with disabilities, it can benefit everyone. An example I shared in the video was transcripts. Transcripts can help users understand better in a noisy environment, they allow us to skip to specific section in a video recording, or even for us to access content in a different language.
Through the Design-Able campaign, it promotes the awareness in making digital content accessible for everyone, not just for persons with disabilities. Content creators could take small steps which can improve the experience for all. For instance, properly structure their web layout with headings or adding alternative texts to images and visuals.
It was a meaningful experience to share about digital accessibility in a simple way, through demonstrating how one navigates the digital world on a daily basis. Good work to Design-Able.
If you would like to catch the episode of this Human Library series, here is the post:
Tan Siew Ling is fully Deafblind, having lost both her sight and hearing to a neurological condition, Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2). She carries a screen reader with a Braille display, which she fondly names it as “Bear Bear”, everywhere she goes. Her humour, wordplay, and love of puns keep friends on their toes. She enjoys reading books in her free time and loves to pen down her thoughts, often on a whim, which can be entertaining at times, on her social media. When she is not writing or reading, she can be seen doing insanely 72kg leg presses or swinging a 20kg kettlebell to and fro. You can find out more about Siew Ling and her journey here.