RGT Accessibility for blind cyclists

Hi RGT community, just exploring options for my entry in to the virtual cycling world as a blind but enthusiastic tandem stoker. Too many weekends/times with no available pilots, and RGT could be my answer. Looking at buying a Kickr, but hoping to reach other screenreader / VoiceOver users here, who rely on accessibility in the IOS for example for feedback during a ‘ride’. Ideally, I’d like to just run RGT / SYSTM on my iPhone, paired to my Kickr and have headphones on for some kind of audio feedback on progress through a ride. Distance remaining, average power, notification of an approaching ascent … Can anyone advise me, re-assure me that I’ll have some level of access on RGT to select, start and complete a ride, and although team TT and group events might be too hard to be accessible, I’m just happy with basic participation for now.
Regards, Brian

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Welcome to the forums @TandemBrian! I am not a screenreader/voiceover user but am following this post as an ally. Tagging @RGT-FB-Moderator or @Robin-RGT-FB-mod to see if they might weigh in.

Edit: I should add that there are a couple of active RGT FB groups that would be worth checking out/joining.

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Hi @TandemBrian welcome to the group!! :slight_smile:
This isn’t anything I can advise on but I will make some enquiries :slight_smile:

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Hey, many thanks for that, and grateful for any allies to help advocate and support increase Accessibility on any virtual cycling platform!
Just looking for others, so I do not have to reinvent the wheel for my own journey.
Best regards.

Hi Tim, thank you so much for that, and grateful for any information you can pull together to help me on my own journey into accessible virtual cycling.
Bryan.

I’ve asked, but sadly there are no features in RGT that can provide any sort of voice feedback at this time :frowning:
We have a large RGT Facebook Community group that you may wish to investigate. It is a very safe group and we are proud of the friendly and inclusive nature that we have built there :slight_smile:
This is a link to the User Group Redirecting...
These are community groups led by volunteers and not an official part of RGT) There are Wahoo RGT staff members in the groups and they respond where they see fit.
We also have a Support Group, an Events Group & a Magic Roads Group :slight_smile:

Well, that is disappointing but not entirely surprising. I’m gonna put a note on the feature requests. Not sure about RGT but there have been similar requests made for the SYSTM app to enhance subtitles when there are speaking bits (for the Deaf or hard of hearing) have voiceover options for the many text bits for people with any sort of vision loss etc. Sadly, the principles of universal design have not been fully adopted by most companies even though the benefits to that approach usually extend well beyond the intended audience. A commonly sited example of this is curb cuts that were originally designed for wheelchair users but also benefit older people or anyone with mobility challenges (users of walkers or canes) as well as parents with strollers for their kids.

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Thanks all.
To be clear, we don’t strictly need spoken / synthesised speech building in to the platform for RGT / SYSTM, but if text banner elements of text are displayed, it can be done in a way that allows VoiceOver, the built in IOS accessibility feature to capture that text and announce it automatically.

Just as my iPhone automatically notifies me when I have an incoming call, the notification is accessible and my phone speaks the announced notice.

Same for RGT, and so messages displayed could be announced by VooiceOver.

There could be plenty of other accessible enhancements though to be able to schedule the display of remaining distance, average watts, speed, gradient , current average HR etc etc.

Like a dashboard display with configurable metrics that are populated and change with time and VoiceOver can detect what has changed.

Anyway, for now, just keen to find any other blind RGT or Wahoo Kickr users out there.

Regards

Brian

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You may want to add a post under the broader SYSTM category then @TandemBrian. As I tend not to use RGT much (at least so far :slight_smile: ) I’ll often pay less attention to RGT related posts

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Are you able to access Facebook?
There is an RGT community group that I moderate and it has over 11000 members.
It is a very safe and friendly group :slight_smile: You may like to see if there are any users out there that share your needs :slight_smile:
This is the link RGT Users Events | Facebook