Madleen: My name is Madleen.
I'm blind since birth because I was born premature.
I'm a mum of three children.
All three are girls.
One is eight, one is four and one is one.
I'm surrounded by technology every day so it's really important that technology is accessible
for me.
Kevin: I'm Kevin McDonagh from Novoda and we're a
software development consultancy specialising in the Android platform.
Before you see those with sight impairments using applications you don't necessarily know
the challenges that they have to face day to day and so when you observe how they're
using the applications that you take for granted it makes you realise that it's your responsibility
to make that an equal ground to operate on.
Madleen: I feel frustrated by the fact that navigating
around an app has to be so difficult at times because it shouldn't be.
Apple built-in accessibility in voiceover and all the zoom settings and what have you
got.
It's very easy to switch voiceover on or off.
You can go into settings and then into general and then into accessibility.
Voiceover phone speech: Count messages, settings, general button,
general accessibility, general large text, voice over on.
Kevin: Android has been playing catch-up in terms
of accessibility but recently it's got a lot better and now with minimum effort you can
make quite a big difference with your application on Android.
There's some demonstrations of what would make an application more accessible are things
like TalkBack and magnification.
Magnification is the ability to change the size of the type on an application.
Talkback or speech ouput gives you some feedback on - some descriptive feedback of what it
is that you're touching and what the context is to move around in.
Talkback phone speech: Youtube: voice search
Madleen: I don't want a special app developed for me;
I just want that when developers are developing an app they develop it fully accessible for
everybody.
Voiceover phone speech: Button, find frames, results
Madleen: For me an app is accessible if it's very easy
to navigate around, find the fields I need to fill in and all the buttons are labelled.
There's an online retailer which I would prefer to use for my weekly shop but it didn't decide
to label the buttons in such a way that it's easily accessible for me.
Voiceover phone speech: Button, button, button.
Madleen: Now I do believe it's very easy to label these
buttons in the first place so that they don't say just button.
So I now decided to use another retailer instead I found out in the RNIB app of the month.
Voiceover phone speech: Go to items, shop button, offers button, favourites
button, book a delivery 10am to 11am.
Madleen: It will tell me everything what's on the screen,
it gives me all the top offers, it lets me book my delivery slot and it's actually quicker
than shopping on the computer to shop on my smartphone now.
Kevin: Absolutely everyone can be aware of how to
make an application more accessible through things like adding the descriptions to buttons.
You're going to lay out the buttons anyway, it's XML, it's one more line, no problem.
Then when TalkBack is on TalkBack will read out exactly what the button is and that will
make a big difference.
If you don't have that there then you just have to guess and imagine how frustrating
that must be to not be able to get to the place because nothing's marked and then eventually
you find it like treasure.
It shouldn't be like hunting for treasure using an application that everyone else can
use.
Natalie: My name's Natalie Doig and I'm campaigns officer
for an inclusive society at RNIB.
Making apps accessible for blind and partially sighted people is really important.
There are many blind and partially sighted people out there that now are relying on technology
like apps and mobiles to just do everyday tasks, just like everybody else.
Developers can reach a huge number of people by making their apps accessible.
We know that there are around two million people in the UK living with sight loss.
But when you think about the number of older people, people with dyslexia who are going
to use accessible apps.
Just the fact that generally is an app is accessible it's easier to use, it's more comfortable
to use and that basically makes it easier for everybody.
Tom: My name's Tom.
I work for John Lewis and I'm responsible for the development of our smartphone apps.
It's really important for John Lewis that all our customers are able to enjoy shopping
with us and that naturally means that we want blind and partially sighted people to be able
to access the same information and the same products that the sighted world takes for
granted.
Initially the app wasn't as accessible as it might have been.
We needed to work on some of the technical elements of how we built the app in order
to make it more user-friendly for blind and partially sighted users.
Voiceover phone speech demoed over the narration: John Lewis, scan button, search button, shop
finder button, history button, shop finder button, search button
We've learned that it's actually a lot easier to incorporate accessibility as business as
usual while developing an app rather than doing it at the end of a development cycle.
What we try to do is actually whenever we add a new feature we add in the accessibility
app contextual information as we go.
We find that is a lot easier and a lot more efficient.
One of the elements of the app is a scanner which customers can use in store to scan barcodes
of products to amongst other things see ratings and reviews which our other customers have
submitted online.
So today I'm going to meet Madleen who's blind and she's going to be using the app out in
one of our stores to scan some products and find out what other customers are saying.
Tom: OK so we are here in women's wear and there
are some tops in front of you now.
Madleen: It really changed my shopping experience.
There is a barcode on every article in the John Lewis store and through scanning the
barcode voiceover will tell you all the information.
Voiceover phone speech: Phase 8, made in Italy, pattern trim blouse,
rose, price match save, price match save 20%.
Madleen: So I'm able to determine what the item costs,
whether there is any offer, the colours - I can choose the colours of this item.
That's a quite huge leap they have made there and they've given me a great independence
in doing my own shopping.
Madleen: This is lovely.
I really like this.
Tom: With RNIB's guidance it was really quick and
easy to make the changes that we wanted to make.
I think it was probably only two or three days' development work.
Natalie: At RNIB we can offer developers lots of support
and advice about making apps and mobile websites accessible.
We can provide you with support, advice, workshops, we provide training and we can also provide
consultancy.
For many years RNIB has had an accessible website accreditation called Surf Right and
we're working on a new accreditation for apps which means that accessible apps can be evaluated
and awarded the RNIB accreditation.
Voiceover (person): We've developed some design principles for
developers to keep in mind.
These are:
1.
Standard user interface controls with associated labels and descriptions should be used where
possible.
2.
If your platform provides an accessibility API this should be used to make any custom
user interface controls accessible.
3.
All onscreen elements should be keyboard and/or touch accessible and have a logical tab or
swipe focus order with visible highlighting.
4.
Touchscreen targets should be a reasonable size.
5.
Font resizing and pinch to zoom should be supported and there should be good contrast
between foreground and background items including text and images.
Finally it's really important that you test your website or app with both automated tools
and disabled users.
To find out more about RNIB's services and our design principles for developers visit
rnib.org.uk/softwareaccesscentre or call our helpline on 03031239999.
RNIB, supporting blind and partially sighted people.