MOBILE CONTENT
Accessibility Features for Mobile Apps
by Marianne Kay
When I first started working on web accessibility 2 decades ago, there was a lot to do. Fixed font sizes could not be made larger. Images didn’t have alt text descriptions. Poor color contrast made content hard to read. The web was a great place for some people, but it excluded many. Over time, accessibility standards and best practices became more widely adopted. Web developers learned that building accessibility in from the start was more efficient than fixing issues later. Accessibility improvements had the greatest impact on people with disabilities, but they also benefited a much broader audience, such as older people with age-related vision loss, people who were simply tired or stressed, and those who didn’t have a mouse or a large monitor.
In recent years, I’ve been working with mobile apps rather than websites, and I notice similar patterns emerging. Mobile phone vendors already offer many useful accessibility features; however, mobile apps need to be built in a certain way for these features to take effect. For example, a mobile app must support Dynamic Type (for iOS) or Font Scaling (for Android) and have the relevant code within the app for the users to see the larger font size they select in settings. Currently, not all mobile apps are fully accessible, and some implement accessibility features better than others. As a result, when it comes to accessibility features, users don’t have a consistent experience across different mobile apps. Nevertheless, as more businesses invest in accessibility, these features become increasingly beneficial to the users.
FONT SIZE
One of the most widely used accessibility features is adjustable font size. Unlike requesting large-print versions of printed materials, changing font size on a mobile device is fast and convenient. For transactional tasks (such as online banking, hotel and travel reservations, or shopping), being unable to adjust the font size when needed may result in abandoned customer journeys and loss of business. Worse still, if a customer makes a mistake while completing an order and ends up ordering the wrong product, they may never return to the app. Good accessibility helps customer retention, and font scaling is an important first step on the way to accessibility compliance.
SCREEN READERS
Screen readers (such as TalkBack for Android and Voiceover for iOS) read text and interface elements out loud. These tools rely on accessibility labels added by mobile app developers to announce items such as buttons, links, and images. If the labels are missing or misleading, using a screen reader can be confusing. Common frustrations include order or customer numbers such as 123456 being read out as amounts (i.e., “one hundred and twenty three thousand, four hundred fifty six” instead of it being read as a sequence of digits, i.e., “one two three four five six”). Missing labels result in buttons and images read out simply as “button” or “image” without telling the user which button it is or what is displayed on the image. An additional challenge mobile app developers face is that screen-reader functionality has to be tested separately on Android and iOS platforms, and this testing may surface different bugs and issues for each platform.
COLOR CONTRAST
Implementing adequate color contrast in mobile apps is not inherently difficult, but doing it well and consistently can be trickier than it seems. Many mobile apps still fail accessibility requirements in regard to this. Large organizations (such as banks, government departments, and universities) tend to do better with implementing sufficient color contrast because their apps are based on design systems, which are a collection of reusable design components, and each is built with usability and accessibility in mind. Small businesses may not have resources to build and maintain a design system, and so the task of ensuring sufficient color contrast is much more manual and tedious.
Color contrast for a dark mode setting requires additional development effort, because inverting the colors is not always enough and may even worsen color contrast. Dark mode is a popular setting because it reduces eye strain and feels less overwhelming to people with sensitivity to light. Many neurodivergent people prefer dark mode to lighter backgrounds.
FLEXIBLE LAYOUTS
One of the most frustrating accessibility issues in mobile apps is keyboard overlap. It occurs when mobile apps are coded using fixed layouts that don’t adjust when the keyboard opens. For example, in online forms, the keyboard used to type in the data into the form can completely cover the Submit button, making the button invisible and leaving the user confused.
Pop-ups or modals with additional information also need to be coded in a way that doesn’t obscure other important elements. Nowhere is this problem more irritating than during the login process, particularly when the process involves two-factor authentication and requires the user to work with several different screens almost simultaneously. If you are only starting to improve accessibility for your mobile app and you need to prioritize which improvements to implement first, then key customer journeys such as the login and contact forms are good places to start.
COGNITIVE LOAD
When I began to work only with mobile apps, I found it difficult to visualize and remember all of the multiple screens that make up a particular user journey or a feature. Each screen holds very little information and is easy to grasp, but it’s the number of screens I had to hold in my memory simultaneously in order to do my job that was difficult. The cognitive load is substantial.
For mobile app users, rather than developers or delivery leads like me, remembering many screens and all of the details within them isn’t usually necessary. Still, retaining some information in your memory when completing a task and moving from one screen to the next is quite common. Even well-designed apps have to break up certain journeys into multiple screens. This can pose significant accessibility barriers for people with cognitive, learning, or attention differences and for many other users who are completing tasks under stress or while fatigued. Some of the things that help to reduce cognitive load are clear and consistent navigation, one primary action per screen, clear progress indicators, and clear error messages.
BY DESIGN
Moving toward accessibility compliance means establishing processes in which mobile app features and components are built with accessibility in mind from the start. To achieve this, your organization needs to consider the following areas and their related questions:
- Standards and guidelines—What does “good” look like? What level of accessibility standards does the company aim to adhere to? Are there guidelines available for developers to follow?
- Tools—Which tools will the company use to check accessibility features that could be tested using software (such as color contrast or the quality of screen-reader output)?
- User testing—What is the process of testing accessibility features on different devices? Who will be responsible for conducting user testing with real users?
CONCLUSION
Implementing accessibility features for mobile apps is important because it supports customers with additional needs or disabilities, improves customer retention, and ensures compliance with legal and regulatory obligations. Not all mobile apps are accessible today, but more and more companies are making good progress to ensure that their mobile apps are accessible for everyone. |
MARIANNE KAY (