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Meet Andre: a music producer and blind screen reader user

Posted on by Henny Swan in User experience

Meet Andre, a music producer and blind screen reader user who is not afraid to take his custom elsewhere if your site is not accessible.

Andre shares his experience using the web including his love of headings and consistent design to help him navigate, and his dislike of accessibility overlays and poorly implemented page updates using live regions.

If you haven't already:

Seeing: a bright purple outline of an eye chart with a bold orange E at the top. On the row below are smaller muted red letters for S and L. The bottom line has three smaller letters; H, T, and O, made up of muted purple dots, as the letters become harder to see
Seeing

Tell us about yourself

My name is Andre Louis, and I'm a musician from London. I'm blind and always have been, as far as anybody knows anyway.

I use VoiceOver on macOS and NVDA on Windows when browsing with a desktop screen reader, and iOS VoiceOver and Android Talkback when browsing with a mobile screen reader.

A black and white photo of Andre playing an electronic keyboard sitting side on. Andre is a younger black man and wears a striped shirt and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
Andre, a blind composer and music producer, "I use audio software to control the output from my keyboard during gigs; without accessibility, there would be no music".

I like to help other blind people get to grips with software such as the VoiceOver screen reader and Logic Pro for macOS. Many people who come to me seem to think they can jump the first hurdle and go for the big one, but that's not a good idea.

I've recently started wearing Meta Smart glasses and especially like the video function when I am performing. I played a gig at Mu Cocktail bar in East London as part of a quartet and I recorded a few solos as I played a one hundred year old open German piano. It was fun to record my hands on the keys showing all the hammers in the piano that I could share with the audience. I could have done it years ago with a GoPro, but these glasses make that even better because they're something I would wear on stage anyway.

A video of Andre's view of his hands as he gracefully plays a Yamaha keyboard in a large studio with black squares for soundproofing on parts of the walls in front of him. He looks to the right as the photographer asks him to smile as he takes photos with a lady in a yellow shirt standing with a laptop behind him.

What barriers have you experienced using the web?

Just this week, I was asked to fill out an online survey. It was all on-click items which didn't play particularly nicely with screen-readers, I just couldn't find a way to easily complete the task. These pretty on-click things; they're so hateful.

I was on a site the other day that had no headings, which was a nightmare to navigate. It was a shopping website, so I ended up buying from elsewhere. These days, there are enough places online you can shop, so I will go elsewhere, even if it is a site I have used for years.

Are there any websites you find especially accessible?

Amazon UK is pretty good; it's simple and has lots of headings I can navigate by. The fact that I can browse any product I want by the heading on the page means that I can quickly skim like a sighted person at a glance and listen to the relevant information. And if I want more detail, I’ll drill down by using arrow keys or links or buttons. If the heading was just the price instead of the actual product name, or if it was just the review count, it would be pointless to me, and I would probably look at buying somewhere else.

Amazon UK just works, more so than Amazon USA which is an entirely different experience when I'd expect it to be consistent. It's less accessible and harder to navigate. I mean it's doable but not comfortable.

BBC news and 404 Media news are sites I often use. Both are functional and consistent. I have a deep love and respect for BBC because I think what they've done for accessibility, no other organisation has done in this country.

404 Media have great emails. I can easily navigate by jumping between sections. For example, if I hear "separator" I can press S and jump top the next block of content. Really useful.

What features or improvements would you like to see on the web?

I'd like to see absolutely zero accessibility overlays. They should be banned by law in all countries without prejudice. Horrible things. They are so not for me that I’ve actually managed to cut them out of my life entirely like a cancerous growth.

Always use headings. Every site where you're browsing and shopping should have at least a few of them.

Don't misuse live regions to update the page, for example, to tell the time, perform countdowns or otherwise interfere with a screen reader's use of your site, so I can't clearly hear what it is saying. They are the fastest way to lose my custom. Trust me on that.

Allow me to go back to 2001 in the time machine just for a moment and state categorically that I'm glad flash is dead!

A black and white photo of Andre playing an electronic keyboard sitting side on facing the camera with a slight smile. Andre is a younger black man and wears a striped shirt and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
Andre says, "I'd like to see absolutely zero accessibility overlays. They should be banned by law in all countries without prejudice. Horrible things.

Next steps

Find out more about how people experience browsing with assistive technologies or how to include people with disabilities into your product development through Agile User Experience Testing.

Henny Swan

Henny is a Director at TetraLogical. She specialises in embedded and sustainable accessibility, inclusive user experience and design.

Having started her career focusing on the usability of dual language web platforms in China in the late 1990's, Henny moved into accessibility on her return to the UK in the early 2000s. Since then she has worked for the RNIB, Opera Software, TPGi and the BBC. It was at BBC she developed her passion for inclusive TV and streaming experiences.

Henny is co-author of the Inclusive Design Principles, was lead author of the BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines, and is a regular speaker at conferences. In 2022 Henny graduated the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses.

Henny Swan
Photograph of Henny, whose bedhead hair clearly didn't get the 'dress code' memo, wearing a big smile, black glasses and a swan necklace

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