This interesting and concise paper describes some experimental usability work involving the social networking site Facebook and visually impaired users. Wentz and Lazar performed usability tests based on a number of tasks that users were likely to perform, and recorded whether the task was completed and how long it took.

Facebook is available in both desktop and mobile versions, and the paper demonstrates that the mobile version is more accessible to visually impaired users--mostly because it uses simpler coding and is more compliant with standards. The authors point out that, because of rapid changes in the coding of interfaces and differences between the functionality of the versions, it is difficult to make definitive comparisons. In addition, this lack of stability makes applications even less accessible because users are unable to rely on interfaces behaving as they expect, or have learned to deal with. As social networking becomes a ubiquitous activity, inaccessible interfaces could lead to social exclusion for visually impaired users.