Native Mobile App Accessibility
taught by: Jon Gibbins
Session Summary
Accessibility is one of the most important aspects of mobile app development. Operating systems like iOS and Android have improved accessible interfaces, making it easier and more cost-effective to make mobile applications accessible. However, mobile app accessibility is not a feature that you can add on top of an existing app. It takes planning and understanding of what accessibility means in the mobile context. Join this lecture-style training course to gain the understanding and skills you need to build accessible native apps.
Description
Starting with a high level view of accessibility, digital inclusion and empathy, the class will move quickly to practical screen reader demos and tips for testing accessibility during development. The class covers visual design, UX and editorial content as well as structure and layout, touch targets, color and contrast, and more advanced techniques.
We'll dissect the anatomy of an accessibility element and climb the accessibility tree. From foundational techniques through advanced topics, you will leave this class with new skills, improved skills, and ready to take on accessibility challenges in native apps of all kinds. There will be live coding as time permits.
Practical Skills
- Gain understanding of how to address and remediate common issues like missing or poor labels, incorrect roles, inadequate focus handling, unreachable components, and hidden elements receiving focus, missing context, unspoken error messages, inadequate touch target sizes, custom interfaces, and hybrid apps.
- Learn intermediate techniques to ensure accessible touch target sizes and spacing, support text resizing, create context appropriate keyboards, and checking that accessibility features are enabled..
- Introduction to advanced techniques such as responding to changes to platform settings, implementing custom actions, handling arbitrary announcements and live regions, and custom accessibility.