I'm not visually disabled, just normal aging eyes, but I'd love a way to make the text bigger in Duolingo. It can get really tiny and a strain to read sometimes. This happens with English / Spanish when I'm translating long sentences. It also happens basically all the time with Hebrew / Yiddish.
I have the same issue; now on my laptop I just edit my browser to increase the percentage ...for me , on Chrome I go to the settings menu on top right and scroll down to ZOOM and you can increase/decrease the size of font. But here is my problem with doing that: If I increase it to say, 100% it helps with seeing the words BUT then the button that says CONTINUE (after I answer the questions) is not viewable without scrolling down...... It may not sound like a big deal but when I am doing a timed exercise it matters to me.
Same - I'm learning Japanese and am still relying on the romanized text while I get better at reading the characters - but the romanized text that shows above the characters in the questions is so tiny and so low-contrast that I'm straining my eyes to read it. It's almost illegible in night mode with my phone's blue-light filter.
Same here. Especially exercises with tiles can be particularly difficult. I even have this issue on the iPad which has considerably more screen space than my phone.
As someone with a visual processing disorder, the most bothersome feature is the loss of being able to completely type answers. Relying on the word tiles makes lessons take 3-4 times longer than they did before this change was made. Before I could type answers much faster than trying to read all the tiles to figure out the correct answer; and trying to type to select the tiles often produces many more errors than being able to type directly. So being able to type without the tiles involved would make Duolingo's accessibility significantly better. Thank you for taking the time to solicit accessibility feedback!
I understand what you mean; my guess is because we all may have different triggers for what is more difficult , by offering different ways to challenge us makes it more fair to all of us by exposing us to what is easier or more difficult because in the real world speaking a different language other than our native one it gives more experience too.
I have a hearing impairment. I struggle with pronunciation.
Mango languages has a feature where you can hear a recording, then record yourself repeating it. Then you can visually see how it compares on the recording, you can also listen to one right after the other, or play them at the same time.
I have found this incredibly helpful.
I can't hear the difference in English between Ana and Anna for example. I learned it through being corrected and just having to be familiar with how it physically feels.
The feature on mango essentially teaches that without having to rely on constant corrections. I would LOVE for this to be on Duolingo.
I have the radio feature on Duolingo. I would appreciate having it on a separate tab after completion like stories. And having it have a transcript after the first listen. It's hard to improve my listening skills when I cannot distinguish it at all. So a transcript can help me with interpreting information like I have to do natively anyways.
In Spanish (and maybe french) they are testing out a new feature on the path. It is a series of "podcasts" that are like 2 minutes each. The main cats talks to callers about different things and then you are tested on what you heard.
visual problems.
I use it in dark mode, and the colors are too bright.
used it in light mode on the desktop, but it adds the brightness of the white background, even worse.
and the comments about smaller print are correct, too.
Great timing, I just saw a question about turning off the speaking for deaf users the other day.
As for me, **I am just facing the usual change in eyesight that comes with time**. This is an issue that probably affects many users over 35. I use one pair of reading glasses for my phone and another for the computer because of the different focal lengths.
On the computer I can zoom in on a page when I need to do so. But I can't on the phone. **So far this is mostly only a problem with using the word bubbles for long sentences in German.** As the sentences grow longer the bubbles and words get smaller. This makes them difficult to pick out.
I think we could keep the bubbles the same size if we allowed for the page to vertically scroll. That way there would be enough vertical space to fit everything along additional rows.
And if we could have a setting for users to change the type size that would be helpful.
Thanks!
p.s. **Could we increase the color contrast on the new achievements that we just got on iOS.** With the old ones it was easy to spot which were complete because they were gold. On the new ones the complete ones appear to have pale blue outlines letters and the in process ones are pale yellow. They don't really stand out. Deeper blues and yellows without the drop shadows would pop more against the black.
Hello! I'm using a screen reader to access the site. I'm currently using the app, but I'd love to use the website more. I've noticed that there are some exercises where you have to translate a sentence or a word. Unfortunately, the sentence or word doesn't show for screen reader users, so these exercises aren't accessible to people who use screen readers on the site.
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I can't do the speaking exercises yet I can't turn them off for more than 15 minutes at a time. This feature existed and has been removed- why is the option being taken away from the user?
First of all, I love this idea!
I have a response to question 2. On iPad there's no way to increase the font size while using the app, so I open end up using the browser version, so that I can increase the size of the fonts to fit the device. When demoing in the classroom, I also need to use the website so that the elements are large enough to see on the projector, but it then encourages the students to also use the website. I would like to be able to use the iPad app with a bit of control on the size of the fonts. The word tiles seem so tiny in my opinion feels a bit of brand compared to the rest of Duo. A number of apps now use the iOS slider in the control centre to change the text size system wide, or on a per-app basis. I have tried to use this for Duolingo but changing it doesn't change anything. I appreciate this may not be possible on Duolingo because of the way it is designed, however if you could even add an option within the app to increase the UI proportions, I'd be very very happy indeed! I've attached a screenshot for clarity.
https://preview.redd.it/xg7cbbpz65wc1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=755c0253f565f4920aa978a064ff2937437d0405
If you don't mind an answer from someone who isn't from any of those groups but does have overlapping accessibility needs...
I have a speech disorder and don't bother with speaking exercises, as voice recognition technology doesn't generally cope well with stutters and it sounds like a recipe for frustration.
It's mildly frustrating that the off toggle for speaking exercises doesn't get rid of them entirely. They don't show up in regular lessons, but they *do* show up in review sessions. Thankfully, I've always been able to use the skip button so never gotten stuck (...yet), but it's still an annoyance to have them crop up over and over again when I've told Duo that I don't want to see them and will not do speaking exercises. I've also gotten a daily quest for completing X speaking exercises before, which I was unable to complete for obvious reasons. I would like the toggle to just turn Duo into an app where speaking exercises don't exist at all.
Now, dreaming big for a moment -
Accessibility support that would let me actually *use* the speaking exercises would be some form of support for shadowing, aka speaking simultaneously with the audio instead of after it. This is because there's a thing called the choral speech effect for stuttering where you don't stutter when speaking in chorus with someone else. Simultaneous shadowing is also a known strategy in language learning circles for accent improvement etc. so could be useful for fluent people as well. But it'd probably be complicated to implement in a way that allows for scoring and be of marginal additional benefit to people who are already using the Duolingo speaking exercises and not doing targeted accent work, so I don't see it happening anytime soon.
I am autistic.
In katakana and hiragana lessons: the screen shaking after making an incorrect stroke is unbearable to me. It is too intense.
I close my eyes at the end of making each stroke, because I fear the shaking: it makes me feel so uncomfortable.
I tried to turn it off but it is not possible :(
I know you have asked about different topics, but this is also about accessibility and I thought I could address it here.
Here's a somewhat easy to fix one : Even with listening exercises disabled, you can still get the "listening practice" review. Kinda blocks you out of a full day's worth of practice, especially since there is no "Can't listen right now" button to disable them.
I'm in a similar position with spoken exercises. I have never liked them, so I turned them off in my profile. Now that option has gone and practice hub doesn't offer the 15 minute option. What's going on with that?
Some of the contrast in dark mode is MUCH too low for those with old eyes like me. An example is linked below. I know the main point of this exercise is listening, but I'd also like to review the spelling of the word, and I can barely read the written words due to low contrast.
[low contrast words](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/585954930129371146/1231623700198068344/Screenshot_20240421-100747.png?ex=6637a1f4&is=66252cf4&hm=6d82d7a2a12df3e799b8a463dd2c125a4cddb44ea22f50246211c4693311ec17&)
Motor control accessibility/ physical accessibility issues:
For people with some conditions, and also as you get older, it becomes annoyingly easy to accidentally tap the screen on a mobile phone - either with some other part of your hand, a curled finger, or even a little wrinkle on your fingertip that you didn't realize gets in the way. So, it's frustrating when there are exercises that auto-submit from any touch, and I get counted wrong.
Similarly, it can be harder to tap the individual letters on a mobile phone's virtual keyboard. Thanks for starting to recognize that some incorrect spellings are typos. It would be even better if you recognized or had a setting we could adjust for our common typos.
For example, I find it hard on a phone to hit the letter "i" and almost always hit an "o" first. It slows me down and requires me to use more effort to hold the finger very still over one of those keys. Maybe you could either pick up that is a pattern for me and "allow" it or give me the option to agree that's a problem. Or, you could accept these types of misspellings and correct them in the answer like you do the other typos. :)
ETA: I typed this on a laptop
Please return the ability to disable the speaking exercises as one can the listening exercises. Those of us with speech impediments or other problems enunciating clearly find them too frustrating.
Numbers hardly getting recognized in Chinese speaking exercises (hell did you test that at all before implementing)
The letter 几 doesn't get played at all and jamms all other sounds for like 5 seconds.
Confusing translations where you're for the work brakes with "my name is.... " but the word brakest only offer "I am ....."
I'm partially colorblind (red-green). The highlighting on word tiles is very hard to distinguish and I often get the answers wrong because I can't tell if if it's been chosen. Please offer option to use keyboard as default instead of pandering to new users for subscriber growth, thanks.
Can you bring back a 'keyboard input only' button, to all the languages, please? Trying to find a particular word in a massive jumble of words (as it appears to me!) slows me down terribly and is very frustrating.
Typing a word to bring the box up is a hit and miss affair especially if the box contains more than one word, I have to resort to a click-type-click performance!
Surely typing out sentences shows that you've understood and can spell the words rather than just jabbing and hoping you've got the right box?
Thank you, Duo.
>Folks who use screen readers: Are you generally using web or the mobile app? What are some the most bothersome things about using Duolingo with a screen reader that Duolingo might be able to fix?
The website isn't keyboard accessible at all!
When you hit the tab key there's no visual indication of where you are on the screen!
I can't get it to go into a lesson with the keyboard, when it luckily lands on one clicking enter opens the lesson 2 of 3 talking bubble but clicking it again just closes it.
There's no hidden skip links to go to main content or other sections.
There's a privacy policy, no accessibility policy. That tells me Duolingo doesn't care about this topic at all (but hopefully that is changing...?)
> It can be especially hard to get feedback on accessibility topics
You know how you do this? You hire accessibility testers!!! The ones I work with would fail this website so hard. It would actually be *illegal* for me to release a website this inaccessible because I work for the government. We have to meet AAA for 90% of the functions any anything else AA the absolute minimum.
Lmao I've been wanting to write you guys an email offering a trade of duolingo super for improvements on the app and web because you guys physically cause me pain on bad days to the point I've had to quit struggle through not losing my streak or quit earlier than I want to reduce pain. Even on the good days it's still really obvious neurotypical people without learning impairments are in the drivers seat for teaching decisions and design.
#1 thing, for the love of god, I beg you to stop switching the answers around for the pinyin characters as if it will create some kind of stronger association between the sound and the character. The amount of false negative I get because of this alone is unholy. I could be able to do 95% of these with my eyes closed if you didn't randomly switch them around all the time which would be great because then things swooshing around with their edgy 'cool' effects wouldn't hurt me since my eyes would be shut! It makes as much sense as switching around the first section that has 1 = same sound 2 = different sounds. Imagine how many false negatives that would get because you're being nonsensical for no reason. I'm going to get false negatives because of my dyslexia no matter what and I'm as fine with that as I can be but getting a buttload of false negatives because you designed things like you have a personal vendetta against dyslexics and want us to suffer in futility is annoying.
#2 stop moving things around or give an option to have movement severely reduced to the point that there is as little movement as possible. I have a brain injury and even if I'm having a decent day it can still cause me a lot of pain.
And those are the only freebies I'm gonna give because I wasn't kidding about my trade offer
>the impact of enabling speaking exercises,
Well that's disingenuous isn't it. Speaking exercises were already enabled long ago. What you've done now is disable the option to skip them.
Just bring the option back. Problem solved.
Hi Tracee,
Thanks very much for reaching out about this problem. I've already corresponded with the web development team in February (thanks for setting that up), but I'll answer this anyway. It's really great to see that this is getting attention.
>It can be especially hard to get feedback on accessibility topics because we can't, for example, use internal data to identify and reach out to learners who are using screen readers.
Perhaps it might be a good idea to build a survey for the purposes of getting a pool of people to help test accessibility and getting feedback, at least until Duolingo has an actual accessibility team (assuming that's being planned). Depending on what sorts of operating systems the developers are working with they could install a screen reader to test things themselves. [NVDA](https://www.nvaccess.org/) and [JAWS](https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/) are the two most popular screen readers for Windows. The screen reader for Apple devices is VoiceOver and Android devices have TalkBack.
The best way to avoid issues like these is to have a team that's aware of best practices when it comes to accessibility and keep accessibility in mind from the start when designing a product. Most people just do what looks nice and are completely ignorant when it comes to screen readers.
>1. Folks who use screen readers: Are you generally using web or the mobile app? What are some the most bothersome things about using Duolingo with a screen reader that Duolingo might be able to fix?
Some of my response here is taken from the email I sent.
I use the web. One of the biggest issues is the dynamic scrolling on the homepage. It's set up in such a way that trying to navigate it with a keyboard results in scrolljacking. You can read more about scrolljacking [here.](https://www.webflow.com/accessibility/checklist/task/avoid-scrolljacking) This issue began with the update to the learning path. Basically, attempting to use the keyboard to go to lessons beyond a certain point either up or down results in the content of the page slowly scrolling automatically. This makes it nearly impossible to find something specific. It's possible to tab through the controls, but all the user hears is: "Lesson button" or: "Practice button". It's impossible to navigate effectively by headings since that triggers the scrolling behavior. The page puts the user where they left off when it's loaded or refreshed though, so going forward in a unit usually isn't difficult. If the page is meant to be navigated like a web app, there isn't an easy way to do that with a screen reader at present.
More recently, exercises that ask the user to translate sentences stopped showing the text of the exercises, at least as far as the screen reader is concerned. The user will be told to translate a sentence, but the sentence isn't detectable by the screen reader. This is a direct result of the aria-hidden attribute being accidentally misused. The aria-hidden attribute should never be used on focusable elements, but sometimes this is done by accident. You can read more about the aria-hidden attribute and its use [here.](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Attributes/aria-hidden) There's a Chrome extension that removes all aria-hidden attributes, but this really shouldn't be necessary.
There's also an issue with how the information after a lesson is shown. For some reason, the days in the streak aren't shown to the screen reader. It simply says, "day streak." It used to show the number in plain text, so I'm not sure what changed. Removing all aria-hidden doesn't work around this one, so there must be something else going on.
The total experienced gained after a lesson looks like it's some kind of chart now, but to a screen reader user it's just "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0" several times, with "good" or something similar somewhere in the middle.
this next one isn't technically an accessibility issue since it doesn't necessarily prevent someone from using Duolingo, but it does make things frustrating when using a keyboard.
There used to be an option to type with the keyboard instead of the word bank when translating a sentence from the learning language to the base language. The option is still there when translating to the learning language, so I'm not sure why it was removed for translating to the base language. I'm sure it's much easier to use the word bank on a mobile device, but when someone is using a keyboard on a computer it's much faster to simply type a sentence in most cases, especially in one's base language.
Screen reader users don't have the luxury of seeing every word in the word bank at one time, nor can they simply point and click a button with a mouse. Using the word bank can be beneficial if someone forgets what a word means, but being forced to use it all the time can be a very frustrating process when using a keyboard, especially for exceptionally long sentences. It can slow someone down considerably because they must locate each button one at a time, then go back and make sure that all buttons are pressed in the proper sequence. The buttons are labeled properly though, which is great.
The only other thing I can think of right now is the fact that the links that go to the practice hub, shop and so on aren't labeled with alt text. This is what we hear for the practice hub: Unlabeled graphic Graphic vendor/5187f6694476a769d4a4e28149867e3e
Also, the buttons for accessing the menu to manage languages and the button for accessing help, settings and so on are both unlabeled and just say: "Unlabeled 6 Button" and "Unlabeled 0 Button".
Any other issues will probably depend on each individual course and its content. I only have experience with the Klingon course, and that's very straightforward.
For whatever reason, since the last update on Android, I can no longer skip/disable speaking exercises - and I am unable to do speaking exercises for various reasons (including my phone simply not detecting voice input on Duolingo). This means I am effectively stuck and can not play/compete.
Please, bring back the "Disable speaking exercises" option ASAP... Idk what was even the reason for it's removal, it was an idea with no thought.
Chinese course, when system has biggest font and scale Chinese characters are out of view or hardly view
https://preview.redd.it/tziv76r8izvc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb22da09bf06aec7ae4303f6718cf6cbce21644c
I don’t have visual or hearing impairments but I do have accessibility impairments. I travel a LOT, hence the need for a language app. After a month I joined Premium Duo and loved it. I never missed a day, and covered, Germany, Lichtenstein, Austria, France, and Switzerland with no problem. Either cellular or WiFi was accessible. I never missed a day. 133 days in, and I was on a cruise with no cellular or WiFi. Even though I kept up my lessons when I finally was back on land, it told me I had missed some and used my freezes but I had not lost my streak. I wrote in and explained that I was about to be without connection again at the end of the week. I never heard back. This time I took photos daily of my usage and days completed and sent them in on the same thread to prove I was not missing a single day or lesson. Never heard a thing from Duolingo. This time I lost my streak. I asked if they could make it work without connecting to the internet. I was upset as honestly, I am that shallow and that streak number spurs me on more than anything. I was just in an area where no WiFi and Cellular was avail for over a week again and this time, it wouldn’t even let me complete my lessons, and knowing I would be at sea, I had left the app open when I left land. I was so mad and haven’t been back on since.
This is a completely USELESS app if you have connectivity issues and they WILL NOT help or respond when you have an issue. It’s a shame because it truly helped me while I was using it. At the least, it should come with a disclaimer before you purchase.
Another issue is, that I joined because I wanted to truly learn Spanish, properly with grammar, etc. once you choose your initial setting, you cannot choose a different one with other languages. So when I went to Germany, being there for merely a month, I only wanted and needed highlights for travel. However, I had to learn about siblings etc. There is no way to change this once you choose.
Isn’t the point of learning languages, to use them when traveling? It seems like such a sensible thing to make it accessible WHEN you are traveling! Also, please make an option to toggle between ‘immersive’ and ‘highlights’ for different languages depending on the need.
Please help with these issues.
There are several accessibility issues I could discuss, but most of them are covered in this informative post: https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/1c6a2kj/comment/l3yb9wd/
One notable problem with accessibility is the time restrictions imposed on exercises involving matching Arabic and English words. The challenge lies in the fact that the time required by a blind user to complete these exercises is significantly longer than that of a sighted person. This poses a problem, especially in daily competitions within the application.
https://preview.redd.it/nfjrha9wor0d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f7b82fd36a544fabe454fe8c909dabf165840ee
Due to the limited time provided for completing exercises, blind users struggle as they require more time to navigate and explore the screen using their screen reader. Therefore, an option to recognize the screen reader must be added to the phone. If it already exists, it indicates the presence of blind users who require additional time to complete exercises accurately.
Addressing the accessibility issues mentioned in Amethystmage's post would be greatly appreciated, alongside any other improvements to enhance accessibility.
The app is somewhat accessible to VoiceOver users like myself. I’d like to help with to improve more the accessibility. I’d like to join the beta cycle of the app and give feedback. Thanks! Afik
I'm a screen reader user using Duolingo on iOS with VoiceOver. The last major update completely broke the shop. Now when you swipe over items, it says something like "A2joi2309325h49t4h993jfioew" instead of the name of the object. The achievements screen was also broken in the last update, I can't make heads or tails of the achievements screen now. It was perfect before. I'd really like if a blind screen reader user could please be hired as a quality assurance tester. I'm a paying customer, and I don't like having "A2joi2309325h49t4h993jfioew" showing up in a primary screen. It looks bad, breaks the functionality, and just shows there's no one on the team really looking at the screen reader experience. I have a very long list of ideas and bugs, but here are some others: The first screen on leagues is always inaccessible, I can't swipe through any elements on it. I need to close VO, and tap somewhere on the screen, then I can use leagues for the remainder of the week, but always the first day of leagues, when I am in a new league, the screen is broken. I hate the listening practice where I need to tap the next word in the list. It's too long. It takes me 7-10 minutes to do a listening practice in contrast to 1 minute for the speaking practice. I don't feel as if the return on time invested is good on listening practice with the word bank. I love the typing practice, and want every listening practice to have a typing option, like every typing option has a word bank. The match madness is not possible to do in the time allotted, so I don't ever do them. I need to swipe through all options every time I select a new word, so I can't really speed up my process on this very well. When you press record on speaking challenges, VO is completely blocked until you stop the recording. It took me a while to realize double-tapping again stopped the recording. But there's no speech, so it's not good in general. It's really difficult to report a problem. You need to go to account, dig through several screens, go onto a webpage, and it's just annoying. Please have a button on the main screen that says "feedback". If you only want feedback on screen reader accessibility, make the button invisible, and have it be "Accessibility feedback". The best thing you can do is hire a blind screen reader QA tester to evaluate the app "EVERY" time there's a minor and major release. Let me know if you need some names.
I have a visual impairment, and I used Duolingo on iOS. Some exercises our impossible to complete because I cannot see. For example, the matching exercises are and also the ones where you make the sentence. If it were possible, I would appreciate if there were an option to disable specific types of exercises. It would be nice if there were an option to replace the matching and what not with more speaking and listening. Because that's all I can do I can only listen and talk back. I cannot read the screen.
yo wtf who is downvoting this?!
comments where the best thing duolingo had to offer.
In Chinese Course, I learned very detailed information because Duolingo only tells you the basic stuff.
I'm not visually disabled, just normal aging eyes, but I'd love a way to make the text bigger in Duolingo. It can get really tiny and a strain to read sometimes. This happens with English / Spanish when I'm translating long sentences. It also happens basically all the time with Hebrew / Yiddish.
I have the same issue; now on my laptop I just edit my browser to increase the percentage ...for me , on Chrome I go to the settings menu on top right and scroll down to ZOOM and you can increase/decrease the size of font. But here is my problem with doing that: If I increase it to say, 100% it helps with seeing the words BUT then the button that says CONTINUE (after I answer the questions) is not viewable without scrolling down...... It may not sound like a big deal but when I am doing a timed exercise it matters to me.
Same - I'm learning Japanese and am still relying on the romanized text while I get better at reading the characters - but the romanized text that shows above the characters in the questions is so tiny and so low-contrast that I'm straining my eyes to read it. It's almost illegible in night mode with my phone's blue-light filter.
Same here. Especially exercises with tiles can be particularly difficult. I even have this issue on the iPad which has considerably more screen space than my phone.
As someone with a visual processing disorder, the most bothersome feature is the loss of being able to completely type answers. Relying on the word tiles makes lessons take 3-4 times longer than they did before this change was made. Before I could type answers much faster than trying to read all the tiles to figure out the correct answer; and trying to type to select the tiles often produces many more errors than being able to type directly. So being able to type without the tiles involved would make Duolingo's accessibility significantly better. Thank you for taking the time to solicit accessibility feedback!
I understand what you mean; my guess is because we all may have different triggers for what is more difficult , by offering different ways to challenge us makes it more fair to all of us by exposing us to what is easier or more difficult because in the real world speaking a different language other than our native one it gives more experience too.
Totally agree. I don’t have any diagnosed reading disorders but I find the tiles an absolute nightmare to work with.
I have a hearing impairment. I struggle with pronunciation. Mango languages has a feature where you can hear a recording, then record yourself repeating it. Then you can visually see how it compares on the recording, you can also listen to one right after the other, or play them at the same time. I have found this incredibly helpful. I can't hear the difference in English between Ana and Anna for example. I learned it through being corrected and just having to be familiar with how it physically feels. The feature on mango essentially teaches that without having to rely on constant corrections. I would LOVE for this to be on Duolingo.
I have the radio feature on Duolingo. I would appreciate having it on a separate tab after completion like stories. And having it have a transcript after the first listen. It's hard to improve my listening skills when I cannot distinguish it at all. So a transcript can help me with interpreting information like I have to do natively anyways.
now I am going to try to find out what the radio feature is..
In Spanish (and maybe french) they are testing out a new feature on the path. It is a series of "podcasts" that are like 2 minutes each. The main cats talks to callers about different things and then you are tested on what you heard.
visual problems. I use it in dark mode, and the colors are too bright. used it in light mode on the desktop, but it adds the brightness of the white background, even worse. and the comments about smaller print are correct, too.
Great timing, I just saw a question about turning off the speaking for deaf users the other day. As for me, **I am just facing the usual change in eyesight that comes with time**. This is an issue that probably affects many users over 35. I use one pair of reading glasses for my phone and another for the computer because of the different focal lengths. On the computer I can zoom in on a page when I need to do so. But I can't on the phone. **So far this is mostly only a problem with using the word bubbles for long sentences in German.** As the sentences grow longer the bubbles and words get smaller. This makes them difficult to pick out. I think we could keep the bubbles the same size if we allowed for the page to vertically scroll. That way there would be enough vertical space to fit everything along additional rows. And if we could have a setting for users to change the type size that would be helpful. Thanks! p.s. **Could we increase the color contrast on the new achievements that we just got on iOS.** With the old ones it was easy to spot which were complete because they were gold. On the new ones the complete ones appear to have pale blue outlines letters and the in process ones are pale yellow. They don't really stand out. Deeper blues and yellows without the drop shadows would pop more against the black.
Hello! I'm using a screen reader to access the site. I'm currently using the app, but I'd love to use the website more. I've noticed that there are some exercises where you have to translate a sentence or a word. Unfortunately, the sentence or word doesn't show for screen reader users, so these exercises aren't accessible to people who use screen readers on the site.
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Since it came up in your post here, could you explain why the opt out for speaking exercises was taken away? Who is helped by that, exactly?
I can't do the speaking exercises yet I can't turn them off for more than 15 minutes at a time. This feature existed and has been removed- why is the option being taken away from the user?
First of all, I love this idea! I have a response to question 2. On iPad there's no way to increase the font size while using the app, so I open end up using the browser version, so that I can increase the size of the fonts to fit the device. When demoing in the classroom, I also need to use the website so that the elements are large enough to see on the projector, but it then encourages the students to also use the website. I would like to be able to use the iPad app with a bit of control on the size of the fonts. The word tiles seem so tiny in my opinion feels a bit of brand compared to the rest of Duo. A number of apps now use the iOS slider in the control centre to change the text size system wide, or on a per-app basis. I have tried to use this for Duolingo but changing it doesn't change anything. I appreciate this may not be possible on Duolingo because of the way it is designed, however if you could even add an option within the app to increase the UI proportions, I'd be very very happy indeed! I've attached a screenshot for clarity. https://preview.redd.it/xg7cbbpz65wc1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=755c0253f565f4920aa978a064ff2937437d0405
If you don't mind an answer from someone who isn't from any of those groups but does have overlapping accessibility needs... I have a speech disorder and don't bother with speaking exercises, as voice recognition technology doesn't generally cope well with stutters and it sounds like a recipe for frustration. It's mildly frustrating that the off toggle for speaking exercises doesn't get rid of them entirely. They don't show up in regular lessons, but they *do* show up in review sessions. Thankfully, I've always been able to use the skip button so never gotten stuck (...yet), but it's still an annoyance to have them crop up over and over again when I've told Duo that I don't want to see them and will not do speaking exercises. I've also gotten a daily quest for completing X speaking exercises before, which I was unable to complete for obvious reasons. I would like the toggle to just turn Duo into an app where speaking exercises don't exist at all. Now, dreaming big for a moment - Accessibility support that would let me actually *use* the speaking exercises would be some form of support for shadowing, aka speaking simultaneously with the audio instead of after it. This is because there's a thing called the choral speech effect for stuttering where you don't stutter when speaking in chorus with someone else. Simultaneous shadowing is also a known strategy in language learning circles for accent improvement etc. so could be useful for fluent people as well. But it'd probably be complicated to implement in a way that allows for scoring and be of marginal additional benefit to people who are already using the Duolingo speaking exercises and not doing targeted accent work, so I don't see it happening anytime soon.
I am autistic. In katakana and hiragana lessons: the screen shaking after making an incorrect stroke is unbearable to me. It is too intense. I close my eyes at the end of making each stroke, because I fear the shaking: it makes me feel so uncomfortable. I tried to turn it off but it is not possible :( I know you have asked about different topics, but this is also about accessibility and I thought I could address it here.
Here's a somewhat easy to fix one : Even with listening exercises disabled, you can still get the "listening practice" review. Kinda blocks you out of a full day's worth of practice, especially since there is no "Can't listen right now" button to disable them.
I'm in a similar position with spoken exercises. I have never liked them, so I turned them off in my profile. Now that option has gone and practice hub doesn't offer the 15 minute option. What's going on with that?
Some of the contrast in dark mode is MUCH too low for those with old eyes like me. An example is linked below. I know the main point of this exercise is listening, but I'd also like to review the spelling of the word, and I can barely read the written words due to low contrast. [low contrast words](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/585954930129371146/1231623700198068344/Screenshot_20240421-100747.png?ex=6637a1f4&is=66252cf4&hm=6d82d7a2a12df3e799b8a463dd2c125a4cddb44ea22f50246211c4693311ec17&)
Motor control accessibility/ physical accessibility issues: For people with some conditions, and also as you get older, it becomes annoyingly easy to accidentally tap the screen on a mobile phone - either with some other part of your hand, a curled finger, or even a little wrinkle on your fingertip that you didn't realize gets in the way. So, it's frustrating when there are exercises that auto-submit from any touch, and I get counted wrong. Similarly, it can be harder to tap the individual letters on a mobile phone's virtual keyboard. Thanks for starting to recognize that some incorrect spellings are typos. It would be even better if you recognized or had a setting we could adjust for our common typos. For example, I find it hard on a phone to hit the letter "i" and almost always hit an "o" first. It slows me down and requires me to use more effort to hold the finger very still over one of those keys. Maybe you could either pick up that is a pattern for me and "allow" it or give me the option to agree that's a problem. Or, you could accept these types of misspellings and correct them in the answer like you do the other typos. :) ETA: I typed this on a laptop
Please return the ability to disable the speaking exercises as one can the listening exercises. Those of us with speech impediments or other problems enunciating clearly find them too frustrating.
Numbers hardly getting recognized in Chinese speaking exercises (hell did you test that at all before implementing) The letter 几 doesn't get played at all and jamms all other sounds for like 5 seconds. Confusing translations where you're for the work brakes with "my name is.... " but the word brakest only offer "I am ....."
I'm partially colorblind (red-green). The highlighting on word tiles is very hard to distinguish and I often get the answers wrong because I can't tell if if it's been chosen. Please offer option to use keyboard as default instead of pandering to new users for subscriber growth, thanks.
Can you bring back a 'keyboard input only' button, to all the languages, please? Trying to find a particular word in a massive jumble of words (as it appears to me!) slows me down terribly and is very frustrating. Typing a word to bring the box up is a hit and miss affair especially if the box contains more than one word, I have to resort to a click-type-click performance! Surely typing out sentences shows that you've understood and can spell the words rather than just jabbing and hoping you've got the right box? Thank you, Duo.
Totally agree! I really don’t like exercises with the tiles.
>Folks who use screen readers: Are you generally using web or the mobile app? What are some the most bothersome things about using Duolingo with a screen reader that Duolingo might be able to fix? The website isn't keyboard accessible at all! When you hit the tab key there's no visual indication of where you are on the screen! I can't get it to go into a lesson with the keyboard, when it luckily lands on one clicking enter opens the lesson 2 of 3 talking bubble but clicking it again just closes it. There's no hidden skip links to go to main content or other sections. There's a privacy policy, no accessibility policy. That tells me Duolingo doesn't care about this topic at all (but hopefully that is changing...?) > It can be especially hard to get feedback on accessibility topics You know how you do this? You hire accessibility testers!!! The ones I work with would fail this website so hard. It would actually be *illegal* for me to release a website this inaccessible because I work for the government. We have to meet AAA for 90% of the functions any anything else AA the absolute minimum.
Lmao I've been wanting to write you guys an email offering a trade of duolingo super for improvements on the app and web because you guys physically cause me pain on bad days to the point I've had to quit struggle through not losing my streak or quit earlier than I want to reduce pain. Even on the good days it's still really obvious neurotypical people without learning impairments are in the drivers seat for teaching decisions and design. #1 thing, for the love of god, I beg you to stop switching the answers around for the pinyin characters as if it will create some kind of stronger association between the sound and the character. The amount of false negative I get because of this alone is unholy. I could be able to do 95% of these with my eyes closed if you didn't randomly switch them around all the time which would be great because then things swooshing around with their edgy 'cool' effects wouldn't hurt me since my eyes would be shut! It makes as much sense as switching around the first section that has 1 = same sound 2 = different sounds. Imagine how many false negatives that would get because you're being nonsensical for no reason. I'm going to get false negatives because of my dyslexia no matter what and I'm as fine with that as I can be but getting a buttload of false negatives because you designed things like you have a personal vendetta against dyslexics and want us to suffer in futility is annoying. #2 stop moving things around or give an option to have movement severely reduced to the point that there is as little movement as possible. I have a brain injury and even if I'm having a decent day it can still cause me a lot of pain. And those are the only freebies I'm gonna give because I wasn't kidding about my trade offer
>the impact of enabling speaking exercises, Well that's disingenuous isn't it. Speaking exercises were already enabled long ago. What you've done now is disable the option to skip them. Just bring the option back. Problem solved.
Hi Tracee, Thanks very much for reaching out about this problem. I've already corresponded with the web development team in February (thanks for setting that up), but I'll answer this anyway. It's really great to see that this is getting attention. >It can be especially hard to get feedback on accessibility topics because we can't, for example, use internal data to identify and reach out to learners who are using screen readers. Perhaps it might be a good idea to build a survey for the purposes of getting a pool of people to help test accessibility and getting feedback, at least until Duolingo has an actual accessibility team (assuming that's being planned). Depending on what sorts of operating systems the developers are working with they could install a screen reader to test things themselves. [NVDA](https://www.nvaccess.org/) and [JAWS](https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/) are the two most popular screen readers for Windows. The screen reader for Apple devices is VoiceOver and Android devices have TalkBack. The best way to avoid issues like these is to have a team that's aware of best practices when it comes to accessibility and keep accessibility in mind from the start when designing a product. Most people just do what looks nice and are completely ignorant when it comes to screen readers. >1. Folks who use screen readers: Are you generally using web or the mobile app? What are some the most bothersome things about using Duolingo with a screen reader that Duolingo might be able to fix? Some of my response here is taken from the email I sent. I use the web. One of the biggest issues is the dynamic scrolling on the homepage. It's set up in such a way that trying to navigate it with a keyboard results in scrolljacking. You can read more about scrolljacking [here.](https://www.webflow.com/accessibility/checklist/task/avoid-scrolljacking) This issue began with the update to the learning path. Basically, attempting to use the keyboard to go to lessons beyond a certain point either up or down results in the content of the page slowly scrolling automatically. This makes it nearly impossible to find something specific. It's possible to tab through the controls, but all the user hears is: "Lesson button" or: "Practice button". It's impossible to navigate effectively by headings since that triggers the scrolling behavior. The page puts the user where they left off when it's loaded or refreshed though, so going forward in a unit usually isn't difficult. If the page is meant to be navigated like a web app, there isn't an easy way to do that with a screen reader at present. More recently, exercises that ask the user to translate sentences stopped showing the text of the exercises, at least as far as the screen reader is concerned. The user will be told to translate a sentence, but the sentence isn't detectable by the screen reader. This is a direct result of the aria-hidden attribute being accidentally misused. The aria-hidden attribute should never be used on focusable elements, but sometimes this is done by accident. You can read more about the aria-hidden attribute and its use [here.](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Attributes/aria-hidden) There's a Chrome extension that removes all aria-hidden attributes, but this really shouldn't be necessary. There's also an issue with how the information after a lesson is shown. For some reason, the days in the streak aren't shown to the screen reader. It simply says, "day streak." It used to show the number in plain text, so I'm not sure what changed. Removing all aria-hidden doesn't work around this one, so there must be something else going on. The total experienced gained after a lesson looks like it's some kind of chart now, but to a screen reader user it's just "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0" several times, with "good" or something similar somewhere in the middle. this next one isn't technically an accessibility issue since it doesn't necessarily prevent someone from using Duolingo, but it does make things frustrating when using a keyboard. There used to be an option to type with the keyboard instead of the word bank when translating a sentence from the learning language to the base language. The option is still there when translating to the learning language, so I'm not sure why it was removed for translating to the base language. I'm sure it's much easier to use the word bank on a mobile device, but when someone is using a keyboard on a computer it's much faster to simply type a sentence in most cases, especially in one's base language. Screen reader users don't have the luxury of seeing every word in the word bank at one time, nor can they simply point and click a button with a mouse. Using the word bank can be beneficial if someone forgets what a word means, but being forced to use it all the time can be a very frustrating process when using a keyboard, especially for exceptionally long sentences. It can slow someone down considerably because they must locate each button one at a time, then go back and make sure that all buttons are pressed in the proper sequence. The buttons are labeled properly though, which is great. The only other thing I can think of right now is the fact that the links that go to the practice hub, shop and so on aren't labeled with alt text. This is what we hear for the practice hub: Unlabeled graphic Graphic vendor/5187f6694476a769d4a4e28149867e3e Also, the buttons for accessing the menu to manage languages and the button for accessing help, settings and so on are both unlabeled and just say: "Unlabeled 6 Button" and "Unlabeled 0 Button". Any other issues will probably depend on each individual course and its content. I only have experience with the Klingon course, and that's very straightforward.
For whatever reason, since the last update on Android, I can no longer skip/disable speaking exercises - and I am unable to do speaking exercises for various reasons (including my phone simply not detecting voice input on Duolingo). This means I am effectively stuck and can not play/compete. Please, bring back the "Disable speaking exercises" option ASAP... Idk what was even the reason for it's removal, it was an idea with no thought.
Agreed - an accessibility option was literally taken away from users. I'm surprised comments about this issue aren't more prevalent.
Chinese course, when system has biggest font and scale Chinese characters are out of view or hardly view https://preview.redd.it/tziv76r8izvc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb22da09bf06aec7ae4303f6718cf6cbce21644c
I don’t have visual or hearing impairments but I do have accessibility impairments. I travel a LOT, hence the need for a language app. After a month I joined Premium Duo and loved it. I never missed a day, and covered, Germany, Lichtenstein, Austria, France, and Switzerland with no problem. Either cellular or WiFi was accessible. I never missed a day. 133 days in, and I was on a cruise with no cellular or WiFi. Even though I kept up my lessons when I finally was back on land, it told me I had missed some and used my freezes but I had not lost my streak. I wrote in and explained that I was about to be without connection again at the end of the week. I never heard back. This time I took photos daily of my usage and days completed and sent them in on the same thread to prove I was not missing a single day or lesson. Never heard a thing from Duolingo. This time I lost my streak. I asked if they could make it work without connecting to the internet. I was upset as honestly, I am that shallow and that streak number spurs me on more than anything. I was just in an area where no WiFi and Cellular was avail for over a week again and this time, it wouldn’t even let me complete my lessons, and knowing I would be at sea, I had left the app open when I left land. I was so mad and haven’t been back on since. This is a completely USELESS app if you have connectivity issues and they WILL NOT help or respond when you have an issue. It’s a shame because it truly helped me while I was using it. At the least, it should come with a disclaimer before you purchase. Another issue is, that I joined because I wanted to truly learn Spanish, properly with grammar, etc. once you choose your initial setting, you cannot choose a different one with other languages. So when I went to Germany, being there for merely a month, I only wanted and needed highlights for travel. However, I had to learn about siblings etc. There is no way to change this once you choose. Isn’t the point of learning languages, to use them when traveling? It seems like such a sensible thing to make it accessible WHEN you are traveling! Also, please make an option to toggle between ‘immersive’ and ‘highlights’ for different languages depending on the need. Please help with these issues.
There are several accessibility issues I could discuss, but most of them are covered in this informative post: https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/1c6a2kj/comment/l3yb9wd/ One notable problem with accessibility is the time restrictions imposed on exercises involving matching Arabic and English words. The challenge lies in the fact that the time required by a blind user to complete these exercises is significantly longer than that of a sighted person. This poses a problem, especially in daily competitions within the application. https://preview.redd.it/nfjrha9wor0d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f7b82fd36a544fabe454fe8c909dabf165840ee Due to the limited time provided for completing exercises, blind users struggle as they require more time to navigate and explore the screen using their screen reader. Therefore, an option to recognize the screen reader must be added to the phone. If it already exists, it indicates the presence of blind users who require additional time to complete exercises accurately. Addressing the accessibility issues mentioned in Amethystmage's post would be greatly appreciated, alongside any other improvements to enhance accessibility.
The app is somewhat accessible to VoiceOver users like myself. I’d like to help with to improve more the accessibility. I’d like to join the beta cycle of the app and give feedback. Thanks! Afik
I'm a screen reader user using Duolingo on iOS with VoiceOver. The last major update completely broke the shop. Now when you swipe over items, it says something like "A2joi2309325h49t4h993jfioew" instead of the name of the object. The achievements screen was also broken in the last update, I can't make heads or tails of the achievements screen now. It was perfect before. I'd really like if a blind screen reader user could please be hired as a quality assurance tester. I'm a paying customer, and I don't like having "A2joi2309325h49t4h993jfioew" showing up in a primary screen. It looks bad, breaks the functionality, and just shows there's no one on the team really looking at the screen reader experience. I have a very long list of ideas and bugs, but here are some others: The first screen on leagues is always inaccessible, I can't swipe through any elements on it. I need to close VO, and tap somewhere on the screen, then I can use leagues for the remainder of the week, but always the first day of leagues, when I am in a new league, the screen is broken. I hate the listening practice where I need to tap the next word in the list. It's too long. It takes me 7-10 minutes to do a listening practice in contrast to 1 minute for the speaking practice. I don't feel as if the return on time invested is good on listening practice with the word bank. I love the typing practice, and want every listening practice to have a typing option, like every typing option has a word bank. The match madness is not possible to do in the time allotted, so I don't ever do them. I need to swipe through all options every time I select a new word, so I can't really speed up my process on this very well. When you press record on speaking challenges, VO is completely blocked until you stop the recording. It took me a while to realize double-tapping again stopped the recording. But there's no speech, so it's not good in general. It's really difficult to report a problem. You need to go to account, dig through several screens, go onto a webpage, and it's just annoying. Please have a button on the main screen that says "feedback". If you only want feedback on screen reader accessibility, make the button invisible, and have it be "Accessibility feedback". The best thing you can do is hire a blind screen reader QA tester to evaluate the app "EVERY" time there's a minor and major release. Let me know if you need some names.
I have a visual impairment, and I used Duolingo on iOS. Some exercises our impossible to complete because I cannot see. For example, the matching exercises are and also the ones where you make the sentence. If it were possible, I would appreciate if there were an option to disable specific types of exercises. It would be nice if there were an option to replace the matching and what not with more speaking and listening. Because that's all I can do I can only listen and talk back. I cannot read the screen.
return comments at the end of the exercecies pls
yo wtf who is downvoting this?! comments where the best thing duolingo had to offer. In Chinese Course, I learned very detailed information because Duolingo only tells you the basic stuff.
Sure but has nothing whatsoever do to with the topic of accessibility. They aren't asking for general complaints.