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Mobile A11y

Resources

··2415 words·12 mins
Author
Mobile A11y
This article is archived. The APIs, tools, or guidance it covers may have changed since publication.

This is a personally curated list of resources I have used and think others may find helpful too. I’m always looking for new high quality mobile accessibility and inclusion resources to add here. Please share any you find with me via email or Twitter.

Code
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Android
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iOS
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Cross Platform
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  • React Native Accessibility Is Pretty Bad
    I have no experience with react native, so can’t offer an opinion on if this is still the case. My instinct tells me that a UI designed for no particular idiom is likely not great on any platform.

  • iOS vs. Android Accessibility
    Now slightly out of date, Paul J. Adam’s guide and comparison of iOS and Android accessibility features and how they work for developers is still a good reference.

Tools
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iOS
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  • xiblint
    An iOS storyboard linting tool from Lyft. I haven’t been able to try this myself, but shifting accessibility left seems like it would be more effective than waiting to catch UI issues in testing.

Cross Platform
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  • Colour Contrast Analyser
    A PC and Mac application from The Paciello Group to determine the contract ratio between colours, and their conformance with WCAG.

  • Hemmingway App
    Hemmingway is an online grammar checker that highlights difficult to understand sentences and provides a reading grade for your written content.

  • Open Dyslexic
    A open-source, pay-what-you-like dyslexia friendly font

Guides
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Android
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  • Android: Basic Android AccessibilityTutorial
    A tutorial from Google with sample code that takes you through improving some common accessibility pitfalls.

  • Building apps for everyone: discover why inclusivity and accessibility truly matter
    A friend who works on the BBC Sounds app once challenged me to find accessibility issues with their iOS app. All I could find was one issue, so minor it could barely be called an irritation, and was probably a system issue rather than the app. This guide from a couple of the BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer Android devs gives you the lowdown on how they achieved an excellent level of accessibility. One tip I think often gets overlooked - Listen to user feedback.

iOS
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  • Apple Accessibility
    Apple’s customer-facing accessibility website with details on the system accessibility features on all of their platforms. Some of these you get for free, some you have to opt in to, and others you have to work with. Its worth taking a look through and familiarising yourself with the features available, and checking how they work with your app.

Cross Platform
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  • Accessibility Dos and Don’ts
    Posters produced by the UK Government with simple dos & don’ts for digital accessibility. Ironically in an inaccessible bitmap format, but still a great place to get started.

  • Handling Gender in Software
    A twitter thread from Aimee Gamble-Milner covering some good and bad examples of handling gender and sexuality in software.

  • Mobile Accessibility at W3C
    The mobile accessibility initiative at W3C.

  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1
    Wherever you are in the world, if you have some form of accessibility regulation governing what you build, the chances are its based around WCAG. WCAG are written for web, so need a little translation to make them work for mobile. They’re also seemingly endless, and a dry read. But they are the backbone of everything we try to achieve in accessibility, so are worth a cursory glance at the least.

  • Plain English Campaign Guides
    The Plain English Campaign works to remove jargon from written language. They have a range of free guides on their website that provide tips on how to avoid jargon and unnecessary complexity while keeping your language engaging.

  • BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines
    This guide covers design, coding, and content for iOS, Android and mobile web. Including sections on testing.

  • Orange Mobile Accessibility Guidelines
    A nice set of code examples for iOS and Android in Java, Kotlin, Objective-C and Swift. Guides on design & testing too.

Design
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Android
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iOS
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Cross Platform
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  • inclusive Design Principles
    The guiding principles of the inclusive design movement. A short introduction to creating designs that work better for everyone.

  • Microsoft Inclusive Design 101
    Microsoft’s design team are all in with supporting inclusive design. Their inclusive design page features a bunch of guides for different areas of inclusive design in software.

Articles
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  • Why Shortcuts Matter for Accessibility
    How automation on iOS makes a huge difference for accessibility users.

  • The business case for accessibility
    Sometimes getting accessibility prioritized in a business can be difficult, this article should help you make the case for why it’s important right now.

  • Stammering Accessibility and Testing for Voice Assistants & Devices
    Pradeep Soundararajan uses his own experience to test Google Assistant with stammering. As app developers we don’t have much control over how the device performs voice recognition, but that doesn’t make this piece any less interesting. Pradeep suggests the use of non-vocal sounds for common commands, such as a single clap meaning confirm.

  • Accessibility & Competing Priorities
    Ferran Poveda has been blogging about his experience as a mobile developer looking to improve his accessibility knowledge and skills. This post especially is an honest account of feeling overwhelmed by the vastness of the topic, and deciding when and where to start. I’m sure there must be many engineers in a similar position to Ferran, its never too late to start.

Anxiety & Mental Health
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Research
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  • UK Consumer Digital Index
    Every year the UK Government and Lloyds Bank produce a survey of the UK’s digital skills. The survey provides a huge range of statistics, covering age, gender, disability, digital disadvantage, and others.

Testing
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Android
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iOS
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  • New in iOS 13 Accessibility – Voice Control and More
    This post from Deque is ostensibly about the new accessibility features in iOS 13. For me the most interesting part is the ways Voice Control can be leveraged for faster, comprehensive accessibility testing.

  • Auditing your App with the Accessibility Inspector: Kilo Loco
    Kilo introduces us to Xcode’s Accessibility Inspector, or ’the little naked guy who wants to give you a hug.’ How to run it on your app, and how to understand what its telling you.

  • AppleVis App Directory
    AppleVis is a community of blind and vision impaired Apple users, their site is a wealth of information for both users and developers. One of the most useful resources is the AppleVis app directory. Users submit apps they have used and provide them a rating and a recommendation. If you’re looking to find out how VoiceOver users really experience your app, this is a good starting point.

  • AppleVis Bug Tracker
    AppleVis also maintain their own bug tracker of Apple system software. Unfortunately, like many developer-facing Apple bugs, accessibility bugs can sometimes languish. This database provides a list of accessibility bugs that have been submitted as radars. Many including detailed reproduction steps.

  • iOS Accessibility Testing for Devs using Voice Control
    A short video from Deque on how to quickly use iOS 13’s Voice Control feature to do accessibility testing.

  • A11yUITests
    An iOS library for XCUITests to add automated accessibility checks.

  • UBKAccessibilityKit
    An iOS library you can include in your testing apps to detect accessibility issues.

  • AccessibilitySnapshot
    AccessibilitySnapshot is a third approach to automated accessibility testing on iOS. Accessibility elements are highlighted in screenshots, with their accessibility values listed in the order they appear to your users. This doesn’t tell you when you have an issue, but lets you quickly visually tell if everything is as you expect, and know when something changes.

  • Setup iPhone or iPad for iOS mobile Accessibility testing
    Aaron Stephenson gives us this video showing how to prepare an iPhone for accessibility testing. It’s all great stuff, especially the Macintosh Classic in the background, but the showstealer here is Aaron’s use of NFC tags to toggle personas.

Cross Platform
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  • The Paciello Group Mobile Testing Guide (PDF)
    Easy to follow guide on manual testing for accessibility tools on iOS and Android.

  • Setting priorities for accessibility issues
    A guide for ranking the priority for any accessibility defects found in your app. I commonly see accessibility defects raised simply as improvements. Remember that while they may not affect all of your customers, for those it does mean the difference between being able to use your app or not at all. Plus, with accessibility, there are legal factors involved too.

Tweets
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Short tips from Twitter

Books
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Podcasts
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Talks
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iOS
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Cross Platform
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Meetups
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Twitter
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  • Mobile A11y Twitter
    The Mobile A11y Twitter account retweets mobile accessibility resources as well as updates from the site.

  • Mobile A11y Following
    Check out the Mobile A11y Twitter account following for recommendations for good mobile accessibility tweeters.