Hi!

I’m a member of the Scratch Team, and over the next two years, I’ll be working on a project to make Scratch more accessible to Scratchers with low-vision or blindness.

Before I start designing and building, I want to hear about your experience with Scratch and how you think Scratch accessibility can be improved–especially if you have blindness or low-vision. Your stories, thoughts, and feedback will guide the project and make sure that I’m making changes that improve Scratcher experiences, so please share on this forum!

Thanks!
Tina

Ooh, that's great! I think it would be amazing for multiple options based on accessibility for this feature. I can't wait to see how this will turn out.
Also, a quick question: Is colour blindness also being considered for accessibility? It is, of course, another visual impairment, and can cause some issues with similar colours in the Scratch colour palette.

I think that this is an amazing idea! I can't wait to see it come true.
BTW, you have asked about our experience with scratch. I see scratch as a place where other people inspire you, and then you make something creative and smart and you inspire everyone else.

quacht wrote:

Hi!

I’m a member of the Scratch Team, and over the next two years, I’ll be working on a project to make Scratch more accessible to Scratchers with low-vision or blindness.

Before I start designing and building, I want to hear about your experience with Scratch and how you think Scratch accessibility can be improved–especially if you have blindness or low-vision. Your stories, thoughts, and feedback will guide the project and make sure that I’m making changes that improve Scratcher experiences, so please share on this forum!

Thanks!
Tina

Maybe you could turn on an option for a little voice when your mouse hovers over one of the buttons saying what the button says? Just a suggestion, I don't know many blind people.

Awesome!
I hope this will make Scratch more open to everyone.

WolfCat67 wrote:

Is colour blindness also being considered for accessibility? It is, of course, another visual impairment, and can cause some issues with similar colours in the Scratch colour palette.

Yes it is!

Thanks, all for your suggestions! If you know anyone with blindness or low-vision who can speak to their experience with Scratch or is willing to try Scratch it would be awesome to hear their thoughts too

This is a great idea.

I don’t really know what it’s like to have lower quality vision, as mine is supposed to be extreme high quality (I can see all the way down to colour pigment), so I’m not sure if I could help, but go ahead! Although if it involves changing/switching colours make it opt. please.

290Scratcher wrote:

Are you new to the Scratch Team? If so welcome to the ST!

They’ve been on for only a month, so yeah, pretty new

I have a feeling they may become someone legendary like ceebee someday…

I was going to say “Welcome to the ST” too, but I didn’t want to come across like… y’know

I suggest makeing it so when the mouse hovers over a block you can here what the block says

lizzybeth2468 wrote:

I suggest makeing it so when the mouse hovers over a block you can here what the block says

That might get annoying really fast, especially if you were to shake your mouse. Maybe if you click on a block, it'll say its name, and if you drag it to anything, it'll say the name of whatever's above it?? Of course, it would have to be optional.

Another suggestion I'd like to bring up for this: Maybe some different audio cues for clicking on different things, like menus. I've noticed that some things have audio attached to them (like putting away blocks) in recent Scratch 3.0 snapshots, and I think that it'd be interesting to have more sounds for clicking on block categories, a quiet sound for hovering over certain buttons, and overall just more sound effects for different things to let people know what is happening on the screen without necessarily looking at it.

WolfCat67 wrote:

Ooh, that's great! I think it would be amazing for multiple options based on accessibility for this feature. I can't wait to see how this will turn out.
Also, a quick question: Is colour blindness also being considered for accessibility? It is, of course, another visual impairment, and can cause some issues with similar colours in the Scratch colour palette.

Wait, are you colorblind? Well, I am. Partially. I can see colors okay, but sometimes I can't tell the difference between different colors. Anyhoo…
I'm glad this is finally being put into effect. I can't tell you guys how many times I've had to answer this on the suggestions forum. Sheesh…
Anyways, on the topic of colorblind people, I've heard there are special glasses that can help with that. I'm kinda hoping they're not expensive. They probably are, but…
Do you think you could do a dark theme for scratch? Many scratchers are asking for this option, and I think it would be helpful, since it would be a bit easier on the eyes.

Oh, wow! Well, do I have a story to share!

I'm color blind - I am a “strong deutan”, meaning that it's difficult for me to tell the difference between reds/greens and blues/purples. Additionally, certain shades of red or orange look orange or yellow. Besides that, in general, dark color shades are impossible.
How does this affect my usage of Scratch? To put it simply: category colors. In 2.0, the Motion and Looks categories are practically identical - I lose combined hours of productivity because I went to the Looks palette to find “change x by ()”. Also, the difference between Pen and Operators is miniscule, though their distance from each other helps differentiate them.
In Scratch 3.0, it's even worse - Motion and Looks are completely identical and Control, Events, and Data have very little difference in color, if at all.
Some areas of the website aren't great either - the grays sometimes look blue, or vice versa.

I hope you can work your way towards solving this! It would certainly save me (and other colorblind users!) much time
I also respect your mission - blindess (of any kind) is overlooked a lot.

I wish you well on your project!

Warriorbuilds3 wrote:

Anyways, on the topic of colorblind people, I've heard there are special glasses that can help with that. I'm kinda hoping they're not expensive.

I have personally tried such glasses and found that they don't work - they merely damp down other colors, instead of strengthening the colors you have problems with. Red on traffic lights, to me, is identical to the yellow - those glasses merely made the yellow somewhat darker while keeping the red as lighter yellow. I don't recommend those glasses unless you need color vision to help you in a life-threatening situation (or equivalently urgent situation).

WolfCat67 wrote:

lizzybeth2468 wrote:

I suggest makeing it so when the mouse hovers over a block you can here what the block says

That might get annoying really fast, especially if you were to shake your mouse. Maybe if you click on a block, it'll say its name, and if you drag it to anything, it'll say the name of whatever's above it?? Of course, it would have to be optional.

Another suggestion I'd like to bring up for this: Maybe some different audio cues for clicking on different things, like menus. I've noticed that some things have audio attached to them (like putting away blocks) in recent Scratch 3.0 snapshots, and I think that it'd be interesting to have more sounds for clicking on block categories, a quiet sound for hovering over certain buttons, and overall just more sound effects for different things to let people know what is happening on the screen without necessarily looking at it.

Now that's an idea…

How about voice comments? You know, like saying something then it appears in the comment? That would be cool!

Warriorbuilds3 wrote:

How about voice comments? You know, like saying something then it appears in the comment? That would be cool!

It would also be very problematic, because those algorithms aren't perfect, and not even close to perfect (although this might change soon, because computers are getting smarter and smarter). If this will get implemented, it will cause so many problems. (and most blind people have braille keyboards anyway, so there isn't a need for voice comments in the first place).

Drunken_Sailor wrote:

WolfCat67 wrote:

lizzybeth2468 wrote:

I suggest makeing it so when the mouse hovers over a block you can here what the block says

That might get annoying really fast, especially if you were to shake your mouse. Maybe if you click on a block, it'll say its name, and if you drag it to anything, it'll say the name of whatever's above it?? Of course, it would have to be optional.

Another suggestion I'd like to bring up for this: Maybe some different audio cues for clicking on different things, like menus. I've noticed that some things have audio attached to them (like putting away blocks) in recent Scratch 3.0 snapshots, and I think that it'd be interesting to have more sounds for clicking on block categories, a quiet sound for hovering over certain buttons, and overall just more sound effects for different things to let people know what is happening on the screen without necessarily looking at it.

Now that's an idea…

Yes! Even though I don’t have vision problems, I think it would make Scratch WAY more fun.

kenny2scratch wrote:

In Scratch 3.0, it's even worse - Motion and Looks are completely identical and Control, Events, and Data have very little difference in color, if at all.
Some areas of the website aren't great either - the grays sometimes look blue, or vice versa.

I don’t have vision problems, but I get where you’re coming from. Even for me, the colours can be confusing