Firsts steps of accessibility testing on a published mobile app

When starting as qa on a mobile app project that is ready and/or published, when running accessibility tests it's expected to come across a universe of guidelines and standards to check.

For turning this testing phase in a fluid way, having the lowest cost as possible - financial and time for the company and for the developers - I suggest applies the tests 'from the broadest to the most specific' and always users-centered.

Here are some simple, quick and basic suggestions on how to test if an application meets the minimum requirements according to WCAG guides turning into more accessible and usable by as many users as possible.

1.Check font size on all over the app;

Small fonts can be problematic and turn your app unusable, so first check if you application support text resizing. In case it does not, at least should follow the standards required for font sizes.WCAG 2.0 standards recommend following the minimum font size of 18pt and 14pt for Bold text.

If you application is on iOS, the apple in its Human Interface Guidelines recommends setting the minimum size for Body text to be 17pt.. in case of an android app, the Android Developer Academy recommends setting the minimum size for Body text to be 48dp.

2. Touch target size and spacing?

Small touch targets are a common problem, especially when they are presented next to other focusable elements. If a series of buttons are small and close together it becomes hard to accurately touch the button you need. A common example of this is on screen keyboards where text on buttons is small and adjacent to other text.?

WCAG requires that the size of the target for pointer inputs is at least 44 by 44 CSS pixels, ensuring that touch targets are at least 9 mm high by 9 mm wide..also touch targets close to the minimum size should be surrounded by a small amount of inactive space.

Apple human interface guideline recommends provide ample touch targets for interactive elements. Try to maintain a minimum tappable area of 44x44 pt for all controls, same recommended by Android developer academy.

3. Check color contrasting to improve readability

Poor color contrast can affect a wide range of users including many people with visual, cognition, and learning disabilities. It?can also impact users on mobile?devices in bright environments. Lack of sufficient contrast prevents people from being able to perceive the information that the content is attempting to convey. This in turn causes barriers to interaction, as users may be unable to identify their location on a page, the state of the interactive elements (links and controls), read text, or identify the content of images.

Human interface guidelines overall minimum contrast ratio suggested by apple and by Android Developer Academy is 3:1.

WCAG guideline says that:

The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1.

4. Translation support

Apps tends to be globally tools and have the option to translated the application to others languages turns the app more accessible not only to people that needs assistive technology but to people without any disability.

5. Links, input fields and actionable elements should have icons and colors states

There are an estimated?300 million?people in the world with color vision deficiency. All errors or acceptance states, links and elements should not only be indicated by the colors - commonly used red/green and blue - but also have icons as cross, ticker and alternative texts to indicate the failure or success of the action, so color blind people can understand and be able to use the application without any issue.

There're many more elements and informations to test and confirm your application level of accessibility but I strongly recommend you starting from the major changes and moving forward accordingly your user's needs.

No automated evaluation tool can tell you if your site is one hundred percent accessible, or even compliant. Evaluation tools can only test some of the accessibility requirements that do not need human intervention. For example, an evaluation tool can identify if an image has a missing text alternative but can not tell you if that text alternative is appropriate in the context where it is present. Testing done by a human is essential to ensure an accessible user experience.

Here're some tools that may help you when running this tests on mobile apps:

• Accessibility scanner app for android mobile apps
• Accessibility scanner shortcut on iOS general settings