App Accessibility - Do you put any design though into it?

[timobrien]

I am a legally blind iPod Touch user (not a developer). I have been blogging about the the accessibility of the apps (see iPhone Access). Many people initially react with a "Who cares?" attitude as in why would blind people use an iPhone/Touch. Not all blind people are profoundly blind. I have some usable vision and use that to the best of my ability. This includes getting the most out of my Touch.

I find most apps difficult to use. No surprise, right? Wrong! The iPhone platform offers some great features that many apps could take advantage of, but do not. Landscape mode, multitouch zoom, adjustable font sizes and high contrast color schemes are all features that can be built into most apps (some obviously not).

Have you ever thought about these issues? Should you? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Please visit my blog's iPhone Access page for more details. Let me know if you would like me to review an app.

[wadesworld]

Tim,

I certainly understand your difficulty. A friend of mine is legally blind and faces the same issues.

However, I think the chance at having a rousing success of lobbying application developers as a whole for those features is not likely to meet with success.

I think two other approaches are more likely to be successful:

1) Lobby Apple to include more accessibility features into the iPhone / iPod Touch much as they do with OS X. Then for a large number of the features, the individual developer doesn't have to do anything. If you'd like, I'd be happy to submit a bug report on your behalf if you'll do a detailed writeup on the missing features. It needs to be in text format, not a web page.

2) Lobby the developers of the applications you find interesting. I'd be far more willing to spend time including those features if I actually new there was a user that needed them, rather than including them "just in case."

Just a thought....

[timobrien]

@wadesworld
You make excellent points.

I have already started lobbying Apple. They have an accessibility page for their products and make available a contact point on these issues. I regularly send my thoughts to them. Usually, they reply that my message has been forwarded to someone, but that is as far as it gets.

I am reviewing each and every app I think I can use on my blog. As I review each app, I post the review to the App Store and forward it to the developers when possible. Some have been responsive, others not.

I know that Apple has consulted with some of the national organizations for the blind. The focus there tends to be on issues relating to the profoundly blind. Text-to-speech and other non-visual interfaces are the focus of those talks. The issues I am trying to raise affect those of us with functional vision between 20/40 and 20/400. Perhaps this quest is quixotic.

What I would like to see is that landscape mode and zoom be enabled by default in each and every app and mobile web site. I think this ought to be simple, but I can't find the person who could make this happen. In addition, when feasible, scalable fonts and alternate color schemes ought to be offered. I see this as less likely as it requires more thought and design work.