Title

Access and Experiences of Arabic Native Speakers With Disabilities on Social Media During and After the World Pandemic

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

Since the start of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, governments across the world have mobilized to inform citizens on the virus spread details, nation-level processes, and best health measures and practices to be taken. A large percentage of the media posted through the COVID-19 crisis has been graphical, which raised the question of whether Arabic-speaking blind and deaf persons were able to independently access reliable information. This article presents the results of two studies. The first study involves a content analysis of official social media posts about COVID-19 during critical phases of the outbreak via heuristic evaluation of WCAG2.1 on an iOS smartphone and an iPad. The second study explores the experiences of native Arabic-speaking blind and deaf persons on social media during the pandemic and curfew or lockdown periods in the State of Kuwait using a semi-structured interview (11 people who are blind/low vision and 7 people who are deaf). Overall, our findings highlight the accessibility gaps in the current government social media information content and its dissemination practices and barriers in providing information and services. Also, it gives insights into how people who are blind and people who are deaf are able to manage their lifestyle within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2022.2051887

Comments

This article has been published as:

Zainab AlMeraj, Iyad Abu Doush, Dari Alhuwail, Shok Shama, Ahmed AlBahar & Mohammad Al-Ramahi (2022) Access and Experiences of Arabic Native Speakers With Disabilities on Social Media During and After the World Pandemic, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2022.2051887

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