Please note that this article was written with the help of AI. I kept the structure, but changed a lot of the word choices. It is therefore not entirely just my own work. The contents is, unfortunately, true. The platform is still usable for screen reader users, but for how long is the main question.
Introduction
Learning new languages is becoming more important as people connect worldwide. Duolingo is a popular app for learning languages that was started by Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker in 2011. It has millions of users because it makes learning fun and easy. However, Duolingo has some problems for people with visual disabilities who use screen readers.
What Duolingo Offers
Duolingo has grown a lot since it began, with over 35 language courses and more than 300 million users. The app uses a game-like approach, giving users points and rewards for learning. This makes it fun for people to learn new languages. Users can start with basic lessons and then learn more words and grammar as they go.
Accessibility Problems
Even though Duolingo is popular, it has not done enough to help people with visual disabilities or those who need screen readers. Accessibility was fixed, then broken during the next update and so the journey continued until the platform is hard to use with screen readers. As someone with a visual disability, I have had trouble using the iOS app and the website. One big problem is that it doesn’t work well with screen readers.
Screen readers help people with visual disabilities use computers and websites by reading text out loud and giving audio cues. But Duolingo’s design makes it hard for screen readers to work properly. Things like images, buttons, and progress bars often don’t have the right labels, so screen readers can’t give the right information. Also, some exercises that require dragging and dropping items are hard to impossible to do with a screen reader. Some of the typing excersises, is now only clickable. This means the screen reader user have to use the tab- or arrow keys to navigate to each word, think if it is the correct word, press enter on it to move it up to the sentence being built. All of this takes in an unnecessarily long time to complete even a relatively simple sentence.
To make things worse, Duolingo took away the keyboard and forums, which were important for people with disabilities. The keyboard let people type answers using normal keyboard commands, but now they have to use the app’s design, which doesn’t work well with screen readers. The forums were a place where people could ask for help and share advice, but now that resource is gone.
Why Being Inclusive Matters
In today’s world, being accessible to everyone is very important. When a product is designed to include everyone, more people can use it and enjoy its benefits. By not helping people with visual disabilities, Duolingo is leaving out a large group of potential users.
There are about 285 million people with visual disabilities around the world, according to the World Health Organization. If Duolingo made its app more accessible, it could reach more users and be seen as a more inclusive and user-friendly platform. Plus, making it easier for people with disabilities to learn languages can help break down communication barriers and bring people together.
How Duolingo can Improve
To make Duolingo better for people with visual disabilities, the app should make these changes:
Make sure it works with screen readers: Duolingo should team up with screen reader developers to make sure the app works well with popular screen readers like JAWS and NVDA. This means adding clear labels to all images and buttons, and making sure interactive parts of the app can be used with screen reader commands.
Bring back the keyboard and forums: Adding the keyboard and forums back would make a big difference for people with visual disabilities. The keyboard would let them type answers more easily, and the forums would give them a place to ask for help and share tips on using the app.
Offer different exercises: Duolingo should give users who can’t do some exercises, like dragging and dropping items, other ways to practice. This would make the app more inclusive and help people with disabilities learn languages just like everyone else.