By using physical venues to access online interactions, individuals with impairments encounter constant accessibility challenges. There’s now a list of stuff doing to make their work easily accessible, for improving your app accessibility including making necessary accessibility improvements to our favorite mobile apps.
On Dec. 8, digital design firm Diamond issued its latest State of Accessibility Report (SOAR), which details the digital accessibility of the most popular websites and applications, including TikTok, YouTube, and child’s apps like the countless Toca Boca games that dominate the app stores. This is the first year the business has gathered statistics on mobile apps explicitly.
The Online Accessibility Program is a digital accessibility standards initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a network of experts developing web development standards. Diamond adopted the criteria from the Web Accessibility Initiative. These criteria are comprehensive, covering everything from website development to online video, text, and image user experience.
This year, the Web Accessibility Initiative issued new mobile app accessibility guidelines. It emphasizes how established, accessible website design should be applied to all apps. Custom text size options, navigable buttons for screen readers, and clear image descriptions should all be included on all devices.
Mobile applications are used for simply social ties; they can also be used for news, banking, and medical data, among other things. As a result, design apps for different devices keeping every user in mind
Here are the seven mobile app accessibility checklists
These are based on our experience working with numerous companies to create accessible mobile apps. Making apps accessible means millions of individuals with disabilities like blindness or hearing loss can use your product.
Test during development
If you think about accessibility from the start of a project, it will be much easier and less expensive to build apps. There is some in-situ testing that can be done as part of the Quality Assurance (QA) process or by the developers themselves during the process.
Mobile screenreaders like VoiceOver (iOS) and Talkback (Android) will be used to reveal the underlying accessibility of mobile apps. On iOS, you can test with VoiceOver, and the Android website has a testing checklist that includes Talkback.
Create internal policies and procedures.
It’s beneficial to have an internal standard for application accessibility for the app performance. While the Apple and Google guidelines are useful as a starting point for developers, the BBC has created its own mobile rules, which can be found on their website.
They’re platform-independent principles that cover both native and hybrid apps and include example code for both. You might use them as a starting point for building your guidelines, or you could just utilize the BBC.
Make a color palette that is simple to understand.
Color contrast is mentioned in all accessibility guidelines. Rather than addressing concerns during the QA or development stages, it is preferable to build a color palette that incorporates the most accessible colors. The W3C web-based color contrast checkpoint is well-known in this area, as it sets standard contrast tests.
This blog post by UX designer Stephanie Walter provides a helpful guide on creating an accessible color palette. Tanaguru Contrast-Finder is an excellent internet resource for determining color contrast.
Phone orientation
The ability to rotate an app’s screen from portrait to landscape is one significant mobile accessibility criterion addressed by Diamond and the Web Accessibility Initiative. Only 28% of iPhone apps and 25% of Android apps reoriented their screens for users who needed to use their devices in specified postures, according to Diamond’s manual testing of free apps.
According to the Web Accessibility Initiative, mobile apps need to handle both vertical and horizontal phone orientations to be fully accessible. According to the effort, this is beneficial for users who must keep their phones in fixed positions, such as on the arm of a wheelchair. In addition, whenever a screen’s orientation changes automatically in-app, a screen reader should be notified – this helps blind users.
Resizing of text
Text resizing is also an important part of the user-based design. It ensures that a user’s phone’s visual settings are carried over to a downloaded program. If a user with low vision sets a larger text option on their phone to help them navigate, the Leading Mobile Application Development Company allows the app’s font should adjust accordingly.
Resize text is available in 28 percent of iPhone apps and 52 percent of Android apps in the top 20 free apps. This failing norm, according to the report, is easily remedied.
Most apps now support configurable text scaling in iOS 15, which may aid user navigation. Add the “Text Size” mobile app accessibility testing tool to your phone’s control center in settings to access these options.
Slide down the control center from the top right corner of your screen once you’re in an app. Then, using the “Aa” text size widget will increase or decrease the size of your text. Slide the bottom button to the left to apply app-specific settings, or to the right to adjust device-wide settings. (This applies to all of your current apps as well as any new ones you download in the future.)
Images with an alternative text
Alternative text descriptions for photographs and other visual visuals appear to be where apps have made the most progress in terms of accessibility. Around 82 percent of free iOS apps and 77 percent of free Android apps feature built-in, understandable text descriptions for “informative photos,” according to Diamond.
However, more than half of purchased iOS apps failed to test, and the situation was considerably worse on Android, with 75% of paid apps lacking appropriate language descriptions.
For writing alternative text descriptions for visual images across websites and apps, the Web Accessibility Initiative includes a concise Tips and Tricks list.
When feasible, use standard UI components.
You should continue to create bespoke elements with a high level of complexity. However, before creating unique UI elements, one should consider using standard UI elements. Standard UI components include accessibility capabilities out of the box.
This indicates that all the controls have proper VoiceOver attributes, with properly placed navigation gestures. Furthermore, your users are already used to these common functionalities. If you’re creating custom pieces, ensure sure they’re just as accessible as the platform’s default version.
Make it simple for your users to get in touch with you. Become a proponent of accessibility. You now have all of the information you need to make your app more accessible.
