Consumer Agency: "Many Difficulties for Visually and Hearing Impaired in Using Mobile Apps"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeon Jin-young] Although the use of mobile applications (apps) has become widespread, consumers with visual and hearing impairments still face difficulties in using them.

The Korea Consumer Agency announced on the 23rd that, as a result of investigating the accessibility provisions for 16 mobile apps closely related to consumer life, alternative text for the visually impaired and closed captions for the hearing impaired were not properly provided.

According to an online survey conducted by the Consumer Agency in November last year targeting 193 visually impaired individuals who had experience using shopping, delivery, and video streaming apps, 178 people (92.2%) reported difficulties in the stage of checking product and service information.

The most common reason for the difficulties was "lack of alternative text," cited by 67.4% (120 people, multiple responses allowed). Visually impaired users cannot recognize the information if there is no alternative text explaining image information, as screen readers cannot convert it into audio information.

At the payment stage, 148 out of 167 experienced users (88.6%) reported discomfort. They pointed to "excessively complicated screen layout" (56.8%) and "lack of alternative text" (55.4%) as the main causes of inconvenience.

The Consumer Agency investigated the provision of alternative text in nine major shopping apps and three delivery apps, finding all to be insufficient. Shopping apps lacked alternative text for detailed product information, and delivery apps did not support alternative text during the card registration process on the payment page.

Among four video streaming apps, only one provided closed captions for the hearing impaired. The other three supported subtitles only for dialogue in some content.

Based on this survey, the Consumer Agency plans to recommend app operators strengthen the provision of alternative text and closed captions for videos. They also stated that they will propose improvements to relevant government departments, including expanding the scope of actors under the Disability Discrimination Act to include mobile app operators and mandating closed caption provision for content delivered through VOD and online video services (OTT).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.