Research

Surveys

We designed and deployed a survey about blind users' experience on online dating platforms. Through the survey, we hope to learn about the user demographics, what platforms they chose for online dating, what they value about the online dating process, and what they think these platforms are currently lacking, etc. We reached out to various no-to-low vision forums on Reddit and Facebook to try to reach a diverse audience. However, because of the sensitivity of this topic, the distribution of the survey underwent strict admin reviews and only a few forums allowed us to post. We eventually got 14 detailed responses from no-to-low vision users all over the US.

Our main findings from the survey include:

• Most users are between the age range of 18 to 29 (35.7%) , and 45 to 54 (35.7%) years old. The majority of the users are male (70%).
• Most users (77.8%) rely on screen readers to use mobile apps on a daily basis.
• Users' visual conditions are varied. Half are self-identified as complete blind and the other half as low-vision. The time that they have been visually impaired varies from 1 to 49 years and some users are born blind whereas some lost their visions in later life stages.
• Most users have used online dating platforms (78.6%) but among them more than a third (36.4%) have not successfully dated anyone online.
• More than 10 online dating platforms have been used by our users and Tinder (18.4%), Plenty of Fish (15.8%) and OkCupid (15.8%) are the most used.
• "Ease of use" and "accessibility" are ranked the highest by our users as criteria when choosing an online dating platform but when they were asked to rate the accessibility of their preferred dating platform on a scale of 1 to 5, the average rating is only 2.75. Some problems mentioned are: It's hard to get the correct pose to pass the photo verification process; The hypervisual nature is not friendly for blind users; Buttons are not correctly labeled and menu items are not compatible with screen readers; Exposing blindness scares away sighted users etc.

Expert Interviews

As sighted individuals, we are cognizant of our limited perspectives, so we conducted interviews with two experts, one being a blind graduate student specializing in accessible design and one being an accessibility expert at a tech company. The aim of the two interviews was to gain insights into the scope of challenges blind users face on online dating platforms and existing universal design practices as well as limitations. The key findings are as follows:

Affinity Notes from Interviews with Accessibility Experts

User Interviews

As sighted individuals, we are cognizant of our limited perspectives, so we conducted interviews with two experts, one being a blind graduate student specializing in accessible design and one being an accessibility expert at a tech company. The aim of the two interviews was to gain insights into the scope of challenges blind users face on online dating platforms and existing universal design practices as well as limitations. The key findings are as follows: