New IBM Tool Helps Make Your App Accessible for Disabled Users
There are more mobile devices out in the wild than there are people in the world. Think about that, or say it aloud until it sinks in. In an unbelievably short window of time, mobile has taken over. But there’s a significant segment of the population who is not being catered to when it comes to phones and tablets.
At least, they weren’t until now. Vision-impaired, hearing-impaired, and otherwise disabled users make up a significant portion of the mobile user base. It’s estimated that, worldwide, a billion people who use mobile devices have some type of impairment that makes accessing different features a struggle.
To remedy this, IBM’s Mobile Accessibility Checker was created for iOS and Android devices in order to point out common issues that could prevent users with disabilities from properly using an app. It acts as an automated test to help improve software accessibility features and is available as a service or software component from IBM.
Instead of examining an app after launch to determine what needs to be changed, this tool corrects issues early in the process so that optimization can occur before the app hits market. Concerns like color contrasting and keyboard navigation set off the checker, and recommendations on how to make the app more accessible are then given to the developer so that changes can be made.
Often, these alerts help to align the in-development app with basic industry standards or even government regulations that would have to be implemented at a later date.
There are tools available at this time that provide a similar service, but IBM’s chief accessibility officer, Francis West, argues that the competition fails to account for control spacing, button size, and font size. The ability to pinpoint multiple accessibility conflicts at one time is also a unique feature.
"We are constantly evaluating ways to efficiently ensure that any customer, citizen, or employee mobile application achieves the highest levels of accessibility and usability," West told eWEEK. "With mobile, the development cycle is much shorter compared to software development that designers and developers ignore, or in most cases, are unaware of basic accessibility conformance requirements—such as color contrast or ensuring they work with screen readers.”
There are some straightforward rules to keep in mind when developing an app, such as audio and video captions and alternative text for images. However, these new tools act as automated companions during the creation process. With so many other factors to keep in mind, having a tool watch for such critical details can be invaluable.
