“They should be convenient and strong”: Password perceptions and practices of visually impaired users
Jordan Hayes, Bryan Dosono, Yang Wang · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 2017
Passwords are a widely used authentication mechanism. However, little empirical research examines how people with visual impairments perceive and use passwords. To help address this gap, we conducted a qualitative user study with 12 visual impaired adults. Our findings suggest that perceptions and practices of users with and without visual impairments in password creation and management are similar at the surface, yet the root causes of their challenges tend to differ. This implies that solutions designed to address the challenges without considering the underlying causes may fail miserably in practice. Authentication designs intended to help users with visual impairments must consider both the challenges and their underlying causes to address the nuanced differences users with and without visual impairments must confront when creating and managing passwords.