The choice of an interface platform to develop mobile applications may have important implications to how accessible the resulting product can be for visually-disabled users. This paper aimed to analyze four platforms to develop native and web-hybrid mobile Android applications, and to verify the adequacy of their interface components to implement mobile applications, in order to identify the main accessibility problems that could be encountered by developers when using them, and the main strategies to overcome those issues. We built 5 prototypes of mobile applications with the aim of adhering as much as possible to accessibility recommendations. The applications were built using techniques of native applications developed with Android Studio with and without Web components and hybrid development using the frameworks Apache Cordova, Ionic and Appcelerator Titanium. We then performed an accessibility inspection of a sample of 30 Android interface components present in 5 prototypes of mobile applications, to verify their adequacy for working with screen readers. The results showed that the prototypes developed using web components were more compatible with accessibility criteria in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and with the screen reader TalkBack. The most frequent accessibility problems in native components occurred in tables, headings and multimedia elements. We conclude by showing initial evidence that webbased components in hybrid applications developed using webhybrid and native with embedded web components currently have better support for accessibility than applications with only native components.
Accessibility--> inspection methods provide an important complement to user evaluations in the development of interactive systems. However, many inspection methods tend to focus on violations of guidelines and are limited in conveying the impact of such problems when delivering their results. Drawing from the theoretical framework of Semiotic Engineering of Human–Computer Interaction, this paper presents SIM-SR—Semiotic Inspection Method Mediated by Screen Reader and an investigation to collect indicators about the method’s applicability and insights it can generate. In order to assess its applicability, we conducted three case studies employing the method, analysing how aspects of accessibility and communicability were approached and results generated. Regarding SIM-SR insights, we used WCAG 2.1 criteria to discuss how communicative breakdowns relate to accessibility guidelines and their impact. Our results show that SIM-SR went beyond identifying guidelines violations and led evaluators to consider the impact of accessibility issues on the system’s communicability and different levels of communicative breakdowns that users with visual disabilities could experience during interaction.
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