Mobile Apps and Accessibility

By | September 3, 2024
smart city

Accessible Mobile Apps

Generally we stay focused on kiosks here at the KMA.  Having said that, oftentimes in-house development projects for “unattended customers” which involve kiosks, often involve mobile apps and even websites for that matter. Here is a look from kioskindustry on mobile accessibility

Excerpt:

Accesssible Apps From LinkedIn Collaboration

Your team values speed over accessibility. How can you ensure inclusivity while meeting tight deadlines?

Accessible apps – When time is of the essence, it’s essential to identify the accessibility tasks that will have the most significant impact. Start by implementing keyboard navigation and ensuring that all content is accessible through assistive technologies. This doesn’t have to be time-consuming; simple adjustments to HTML can make a big difference, such as using <header> , <nav> , and <footer>elements for better document structure.

Our perspective on accessible apps  (747 words)
Start with identifying main channels and percentages. How much desktop versus mobile? Probably more mobile (60%?) and accessibility considerations are different for both. Is it Europe or US? They are different. https://kioskindustry.org/standards/ is good start point to learn how we think about kiosk accessibility and standards. Most of them apply in part to mobile.

For testing mobile I suggest the Section 508 Mobile Standards Testing summary by VA. Checking mainstream web accessibility use google pagespeed and MS edge. Generally just tune your stylesheet. Simple and easy. Takes 20 minutes. Arias and menu picklists are the real pains and they are easy too.

A slow site is less accessible as well.

New standards from US Access Board come out in next 60 days. New legal liabilities. Large companies are often held for ransom by lawyers.

Reply

Don’t forget iOS versus Android either. Great thing about pagespeed is it looks at it from Mobile perspective, then Desktop. Plus it tells you how fast or slow. Lighthouse in developer tools is another option and so is ARC from Vispero. All free.
Editors Note:  We do recommend experienced consultants in unattended customer input space and those would be TPGiTech For All and Dolphin. Very useful and in particular for kiosk applications. Often – the overall project codebase will include not only mobile but POS, kiosks and web. It is also worth noting that while no definitive stats the general consensus is that the disabled community grew up on iOS and uses it more than Android.

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