A phone to me is what eyes are to you

Jesse has been blind from birth. He studied information and communication technology and now works as a digital accessibility advisor at Royal Visio, the Dutch expertise centre for visually impaired and blind people. Jesse’s hobbies include music, sports and dragon boating. "How many hours a day I use my phone? Well, how many hours do you use your eyes?"

What accessibility features have you set up on your phone?

I have set up most of the accessibility features because they are necessary for me as a blind person. I've made a few adjustments, because I think they work better.

I have VoiceOver activated on my iPhone. I've made some adjustments within VoiceOver: the speaking speed is very high (95), and unnecessary information is turned off. I have limited the extra information that is not needed to use the content.

In addition, I use a Braille display that I linked through VoiceOver so that I can use apps with speech and braille. Everything on screen and spoken is also pushed to the Braille display. So I can feel with my fingers what is being said.

Within VoiceOver I also have Screen Curtain activated. This puts my screen on black, so people can't watch along. It also saves the battery. To make the screen even darker by default, I have Dark Mode always on.

Furthermore, the font size is as small as possible. Since I can't see it, it doesn't matter, but it’s handy for VoiveOver to have a lot of text on the screen at once.

Finally, the automatic rotation of my phone is turned off.