Online & Search Behaviours of Blind Users

Blind computer users often rely on the keyboard only

1 in 5 Australians are living with disability [1] including 357,000 individuals who are blind or have low vision [2]. There are some depressing facts around employment and people with disabilities:

• Graduates with disability take longer to gain fulltime employment than other graduates [3]
• People aged 15–64 with disability have both lower participation (53%) and higher unemployment rates (9.4%) than people without disability (83% and 4.9% respectively) [4]
• This is despite the fact that blind people want to work to be productive and financially independent [5] — 43.8% of graduates are seeking full time employment [3].

Our purpose at SEEK is to help all people live more fulfilling and productive working lives, so these figures really hit home — we need to develop solutions with them in mind to move the needle.

At times, we make assumptions about blind users. I’ve heard statements like “blind users know how to use screen readers”, “blind users would just tab backwards” (and many more) from product managers, developers and designers. To be honest, I’m probably guilty of a few of them myself during my career.

I’ve paired with developers, eyes-closed and screen reader on, to try and determine what the order of the document should be and what should be…