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

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.

Acknowledgements

We thank Mr. Bader Karam and Mr. Bader AlDoukhi for their valuable time in recruiting participants from the deaf community in Kuwait and acting as sign language translators for the interviews (a total of approximately 10 hours). We also thank Mr. Fahad AlEnizi for his help in recruiting participants from the blind community to cover the age ranges we requested.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-accessibility-mapping/

2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/forproducts/guides/mobile/

3 https://yasminevt.github.io/Accessibility-Guidelines-Mobile-Applications/

4 http://www.mideastmedia.org/survey/2019/chapter/social-media/

5 https://keyhole.co/

6 https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text

7 https://app.taguette.org/

8 https://www.almrsal.com/post/927997

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zainab AlMeraj

Zainab AlMeraj is an assistant professor at the Department of Information Science, College of Life Sciences, Kuwait University, and holds multiple national and non-government positions geared at tech awareness and human rights and currently conducts research to empower the lives of people with disabilities in the MENA region.

Iyad Abu Doush

Iyad Abou Doush is a professor in computer science at the American University of Kuwait. He is the director of the Office of Research and Grants. He has published more than 90 articles in international journals and conferences. His research interests include optimization algorithms, machine learning, human–computer interaction, and accessibility.

Dari Alhuwail

Dari Alhuwail is a fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics, a fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association, a member of the WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Group, and an associate professor at the Department of Information Science in the College of Life Sciences, Kuwait University.

Shok Shama

Shok Shama has a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering (2014) and a master’s degree in information technology (2021) from Kuwait University. She is currently a program developer, analyst, and administrator for Tech Connect Co, a local tech startup in Kuwait.

Ahmed AlBahar

Ahmed AlBahar is a radio producer in the Ministry of Information in Kuwait. He is a disability rights advocate and is an avid participant with many disability nonprofit organizations. His goal is to contribute to improving the lives of people with disabilities by helping them to be productive members of society.

Mohammad Al-Ramahi

Mohammad Al-Ramahi is an assistant professor of Computing Information Systems (CIS) at Texas A&M-San Antonio/Department of Computing and Cybersecurity. His research involves data analytics and text mining. He has published in refereed journals like ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems (TMIS), and ACM Transactions on Social Computing (TSC).