About the availability of Samsung Gear s 3 smart watches for visually impaired users
Nowadays, smart watches are gaining more and more popularity - small wrist gadgets with an extensive range of features. I want to talk about the pros and cons of the Samsung Gear S3 classic smart watch from the perspective of a blind person.
No advertising - it's just one of the few smart watches with a non-visual access feature.
The average blind person probably doesn’t need it, but as an athlete I liked the ability to automatically measure heart rate, monitor physical activity and other health monitoring functions.
And, of course, two very useful options: searching for a phone (a necessary thing for the blind) and controlling music from the clock, which is also quite convenient in training.
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Despite the fact that Samsung strives to make its products as accessible as possible, the screen reading feature on the Gear S3 is far from perfect.
The first thing that unpleasantly surprised me was the clearly cut down device settings menu. It turned out that when the screen reader is turned on, such items as “action when double pressing the home button”, “additional” item at the end of the menu disappear from the settings. I do not understand why the developers have disabled these options, because they do not contain any graphics or other elements that are difficult to access for speech output.
Also, double pressing the “home” button does not work. By default, when using this command, the S Health application should open. Replacing the function of the button with “Music” does not help, although the music management is fully voiced.
By the way, the S Health application is not voiced at all, however, like absolutely all applications downloaded from the Galaxy Apps store. When we try to open them, we see, more precisely, we hear a message that screen readers are enabled, so the application is not available.
Well, I do not need third-party applications, such as a browser or games, but S Health, the system application for which I bought the device, also does not open when the screen reader is running, which is very disappointing and unexpected.
As a result, the Gear S3 in my hands turned into a pulse sensor with the ability to control music, answer calls and read notifications, again without the ability to respond to messages in WhatsApp or Viber.
In a previous article I was asked if I was trying to contact the developers with complaints and recommendations for improving accessibility.
Yes, in this case I sent three voluminous letters with detailed descriptions of the problems and suggestions for solving them. The company responded to the first letter deployed and beautifully, after which a long-awaited update was released, which added speed and pitch settings for the speech synthesizer. But for the next two letters I received clear replies about the same content: “Your proposal has been sent to the development department. Thanks for the message, your opinion is very important to us. ”
I don’t know if my proposals reached the “development department”, but I’m already waiting for the result for 5 months, during which only one system update has been released, containing only decorative improvements.
So far, we continue to wait.
Why exactly they
No advertising - it's just one of the few smart watches with a non-visual access feature.
Why do I need such a gadget blind?
The average blind person probably doesn’t need it, but as an athlete I liked the ability to automatically measure heart rate, monitor physical activity and other health monitoring functions.
And, of course, two very useful options: searching for a phone (a necessary thing for the blind) and controlling music from the clock, which is also quite convenient in training.
')
Now about the sad
Despite the fact that Samsung strives to make its products as accessible as possible, the screen reading feature on the Gear S3 is far from perfect.
The first thing that unpleasantly surprised me was the clearly cut down device settings menu. It turned out that when the screen reader is turned on, such items as “action when double pressing the home button”, “additional” item at the end of the menu disappear from the settings. I do not understand why the developers have disabled these options, because they do not contain any graphics or other elements that are difficult to access for speech output.
Also, double pressing the “home” button does not work. By default, when using this command, the S Health application should open. Replacing the function of the button with “Music” does not help, although the music management is fully voiced.
By the way, the S Health application is not voiced at all, however, like absolutely all applications downloaded from the Galaxy Apps store. When we try to open them, we see, more precisely, we hear a message that screen readers are enabled, so the application is not available.
Well, I do not need third-party applications, such as a browser or games, but S Health, the system application for which I bought the device, also does not open when the screen reader is running, which is very disappointing and unexpected.
Results
As a result, the Gear S3 in my hands turned into a pulse sensor with the ability to control music, answer calls and read notifications, again without the ability to respond to messages in WhatsApp or Viber.
In a previous article I was asked if I was trying to contact the developers with complaints and recommendations for improving accessibility.
Yes, in this case I sent three voluminous letters with detailed descriptions of the problems and suggestions for solving them. The company responded to the first letter deployed and beautifully, after which a long-awaited update was released, which added speed and pitch settings for the speech synthesizer. But for the next two letters I received clear replies about the same content: “Your proposal has been sent to the development department. Thanks for the message, your opinion is very important to us. ”
I don’t know if my proposals reached the “development department”, but I’m already waiting for the result for 5 months, during which only one system update has been released, containing only decorative improvements.
So far, we continue to wait.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/336042/
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