Main Video
Justin's Perspective on Blindness
Justin Salas, our Accessibility Champion at Perspective Tester, guides us through his world of web navigation.
Transcript and visual description: Justin's Perspective on Blindness
[Justin sits facing the camera in a dark T-shirt against a plain wall, hands clasped, a tattoo sleeve on his left forearm.]
Justin Salas: My name is Justin. I work for Perspective Tester, and I'm blind or low vision, and I'm a native assistive technology user. My vision presents with no central vision and limited peripheral vision. Without assistive technology, I certainly don't think I would be where I am today.
[Over Justin's shoulder: he leans in to a large monitor showing the Google home page, then gestures at it from a normal viewing distance. The screen zooms in until one letter of the Google logo and the mouse pointer fill the whole display.]
Justin Salas: You know, I can't see the screen when it's back this far. I see a little bit of light and contrast in certain places, but I really need to get down on the individual letter size to see what things are. I use screen readers and zoom and all the different tools to help me navigate life and to be as independent as I possibly can. And so when it doesn't work, it's extremely frustrating. It's pretty limiting, but I can still function and get around.
[Back at the monitor, magnified so far that the mouse pointer, then the text cursor, fills the screen while Justin types.]
Justin Salas: With nothing in the middle, I can't see my screens very well. I use assistive technology in a myriad of different ways. When I'm using my computer, I'm zooming down to individual letters and navigating my screens that way.
[Justin pans across a magnified website a few letters at a time: part of a navigation link, “Join now” and “Sign in” buttons, a search field, and a pale “Get tickets” button that barely stands out from its background.]
Justin Salas: Sometimes it's really difficult to read long paragraphs of text with one letter on the screen at a time, and so I use VoiceOver at a pretty fast speaking rate. It's really important that a lot of websites and mobile apps work well with screen readers, to have it read it to me.
[Justin browses a web page with a photo of a man holding a guitar, then zooms in on a heading beginning “Our” with the text cursor over it.]
Justin Salas: It's really amazing, but when it doesn't work, it creates huge limiting factors.
[Justin, seated facing the camera again.]
Justin Salas: My name's Justin, and this is my perspective.
Audio-described version (2:17): Justin's Perspective on Blindness
The picture pauses while a narrator describes what is on screen. Captions include the descriptions.
