This post is for android developers and anyone who is interested in mobile app development.
What is Accessibility?
Accessibility is practice of making apps accessible by everyone, i.e., specially-enabled people should also have access to apps. It includes people with (but is not limited to):
- blindness / low vision
- deafness / impaired hearing
- confined motor hearing
- color blindness, etc.
How are android apps made accessible?
- For people with blindness / low vision we have screen-reader apps like Talkback which basically reads out the entire screen of android apps and provides spoken feedback based on which person can also interact with the app.
- For people with deafness / impaired hearing there are services like Live Transcribe, Sound Amplifier which provides captions in apps or increases the volume of any audio output in app
- For people with confined motor skills android has services like Magnification, Switch Access, etc which makes it easy to use apps
- For people with color blindness android has services like Color Inversion / Correction which provides range of color change options.
So in short for each form of disability android provides some form of alternate so that the apps can become accessible.
Why should we care?
- 15% of world’s population has some type of disability
- they depend on accessibility apps/services to communicate, learn and work
- accessibility is not just for those with disabilities. *Example *: Driver can give instructions to maps app using voice command, person doing exercise can get instructions from app by audio feedback.
Developer Tips
- Accessibility is written as a11y or A11y or A11Y in short.
- "a", then 11 characters in between, and then "y"
Next ?
Hope this post does explain what accessibility means and why we should care. Feel free to suggestion changes or ask questions in comments.
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