Supporting Selfie Editing Experiences for People with Visual Impairments
Soobin Park · 2020 · Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) · doi:10.1145/3373625.3417082
Summary
This short paper investigates the selfie editing experiences and desires of people with visual impairments (PVI), a topic largely overlooked despite research showing that PVI actively participate in social media and photo sharing. The study has two parts: an online survey of 47 participants with visual impairments (29 totally blind, 18 low vision) examining their awareness of and interest in selfie editing tools like sticker features, AR filters, and face editors, followed by a design probe study with four blind participants comparing a prototype voice-command selfie sticker app against Apple's iMessage drag-and-drop sticker interface. The survey found that 60% of respondents were aware of popular editing trends and the majority were willing to use these tools. The most frequently edited photo type was a selfie. However, each editing feature presented different accessibility barriers: sticker features were "difficult to access with a screen reader," AR filters had "insufficient description of what the feature is," and face editors produced "unexpected results." The researcher developed an iOS app using ARKit that allows PVI to take selfies, select stickers via VoiceOver, place them on facial landmarks using voice commands (e.g., "nose," "right cheek"), and then explore sticker placement through touch with voice feedback.
Key findings
The design probe study comparing voice commands versus drag-and-drop for sticker placement revealed clear advantages for the voice-based approach. With drag-and-drop (iMessage), participants struggled to accurately place stickers and most failed to position them correctly. With voice commands, participants could place all stickers at the exact desired positions without considerable difficulty. Three of four participants felt voice commands were more than five times faster than drag-and-drop, though one participant noted drag-and-drop felt subjectively faster despite lower accuracy. Participants highly valued both voice command input and voice feedback about sticker placement. They requested additional features including the ability to resize stickers, add text, and apply image filters — indicating a desire for the full range of editing capabilities, not just basic sticker placement. The study also revealed that PVI want to participate in the same visual social media trends as sighted users, challenging assumptions that visual creative tools are irrelevant to blind people.
Relevance
This research highlights an often-overlooked dimension of digital accessibility: creative self-expression on social media. While accessibility research tends to focus on information access and task completion, this paper demonstrates that people with visual impairments also want to participate in visual social trends like selfie editing, AR filters, and stickers — activities that are fundamentally about social belonging and identity expression. For app developers and accessibility practitioners, the key takeaway is that photo and image editing tools need voice-based alternatives to visual manipulation methods like drag-and-drop. The finding that voice commands outperform drag-and-drop for spatial placement tasks on photos suggests a broader design pattern applicable to any app requiring spatial interaction. The work also reinforces the importance of descriptive feedback — telling users what an AR filter does or where a sticker landed — as a complement to voice input.
Tags: visual impairment · social media accessibility · photo editing · voice interface · blindness · augmented reality · mobile accessibility