WW Weight Watchers Reimagined

Description of App

Take Weight Watchers Mobile along to help you stay in control and make smart and satisfying food choices. We’ve added brand new interactive tools so you can tap into the stick-with-it power of the new Weight Watchers 360 program anytime, anywhere. With our eTools or Online subscription, you get access to great features like: •Track your food, activity, and weight •Review your weight-loss progress with our interactive chart •Access your Spaces and Routines tools •Use the Snap & Track feature to capture and share your delicious food moments •Search more than over 150,000 foods, meals and recipes •Browse health and fitness content •Find a Weight Watchers meeting in your area (Don’t have a subscription? You can still access recipes, articles, and a few cheat sheets!)

Version

2.2.01

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

Accessibility Comments

There have been some amazing changes to the accessibility and useability of this app from when I first tried it 2 years ago. One area that has improved is the registration process. Under the old app and website, it used to be that you could not do this part without sighted assistance. It was a graphical screen and there were graphics that you had to click on for your height and weight. No part of this page used to work with screen readers like JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver. If you couldn't see where to click on, you had no way to go forward with anything else. I was able to resolve that issue with help from their customer service department. Now, the registration process has changed and I was able to complete the setup and registration part on my own without the need for assistance. When I started using this app on the iPhone with VoiceOver, it first wanted me to confirm that the information I entered was correct. I was able to do this on my own as well, again something that wasn't able to happen with the older version. The menus for the app work really nicely. The buttons actually tell you what they do now, something that the old app didn't do. The tracker is completely accessible. I can add foods and activities to it; I can look at recipes and read the ingredients and instructions for them; I can make changes to serving sizes if needed, and I can look through favorite items that I already have created and add that information to the tracker as needed. This really helps a lot to have all of my stuff in one place instead of having to do all of the writing and calculating myself. Overall, I have had a much better user experience with this app now than when I first tried it a couple of years ago. I wish I had some way to thank WeightWatchers for finally making their online materials more accessible and friendlier. I hope they will continue to keep accessibility in mind as future developments are made to this app.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver, but the interface could be easier to navigate and use.

Other Comments

This app is developed by Weight Watchers International. It allows you many of the functions that the Weight Watchers online site has. There are sections for non members and members only, and for the member sections you will need a login to access the material. As a member, you can do things like track your points for different food items that you ate, (something essential that you need to do to make the program work), track points for various activities, (again something that's important to make the program work), calculate your points for food products that you may not have eaten yet but are thinking about if it's worth the points to do so, and look at point values for various restaurant items. For non members, you don't get these options, but as a non member, you can still do things like find a meeting in your area, read weight loss articles, view recipes, and view some of the message boards. I like the Weight Watchers approach to foods because you don't really have to give up anything for a long period of time, you just don't eat as much of a food in one setting. I learned a lot about portion sizes and what a portion actually is. It's also a nice way to bounce off ideas about what other members like. I've gotten lots of good meal and snack ideas that I'd never heard of before, just from listening to what other people do. There are a lot of cookbooks that they have, through NLS, bookshare, RFB&D, and several iBooks that you can purchase, and the cost for these books isn't bad.

App Store Link

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weight-watchers-mobile/id331308914

Developer's Website

http://www.weightwatchers.com

Developer's Twitter Username

@WeightWatchers

Options

Comments

Alternatives for WW mobile App

Hi, I've been a Weight Watchers member since July. Here's my experience. I've found that the iPad app works much better than the iPhone. I also use the mobile website to track my foods, weight, Etc. You do have to do some button labeling with the iPad app, or you did when I got it back in July, but it wasn't too bad. I mainly use the mobile site for everything so I can't tell you a lot about the latest iPad app updates, but when I was getting started, I used the iPad app along with the mobile site. I hope this information is helpful.

update to Weight Watcher's Mobile app

I wrote the initial article describing my experiences with this app back in late 2012. Now, April of 2014, I would like to update the information. I am still a member of Weight Watcher's. At the end of last year, I got a really good deal that offered me a better price. Under this deal, I would have access to both the meeting and their eTools sections for a lot less of the cost than what I was paying for with attending meetings alone. So, I decided to give the app another try. I expected a painful process of having to go through my information and re setting up my online account. Under the old system, this was not accessible and you had to have someone help you if you couldn't see the screen. To my surprise, it didn't happen that way now. The registration process that just used to be graphical and where you had to click on these graphics now worked really well with a screen reader. I used JAWS 13 at the time. After successfully completing this necessary step of the setup process, I decided to give the phone app another try. When I first went into the app, it wanted me to confirm the information that I put in during setup was correct. This all read with VoiceOver. I successfully went through that part of the setup without the need for assistance. I next started using their food tracker. What had previously been an inaccessible and unuseable process before, now worked really wel. This is an important part of the plan because everyone is given a PointsPlus target and the idea of the program is to eat foods that help you meet this target without going over your Points. I could add foods to this tracker, make changes to serving sizes if I didn't go along with what their serving size was, and go into their menu to brouze information about foods, recipes, and restaurants for use at a later date. I could add items from anywhere into this tracker, and it would now calculate the PointsPlus values of those items for me. I can tell exactly what my PointsPlus target is for the day, how many points I had used during that day, how many I had left, and other information if applicable. It's really nice to be able to have everything in one place and not have to maintain separate written information. In addition, I can also look up the PointsPlus values for all kinds of activities and add them to the tracker as well, if the activity was something I did. I can add recipes, foods, and types of activities to my favorites, and go back through the favorites list and pick them out when I need them. The recipes are much easier to work with than how they were under the old app. It even kept things I had saved as favorites back when I tried this in 2012. There is also a weight tracker section where you enter your weight and it will give you a message depending on whether you gained or lost, and if necessary, change your PointsPlus target and recalculate it for you. I was also able to update information in this section without needing assistance. Under the old app, I couldn't have done that on my own. I have really put this new app through several weeks of testing. I wanted to do that first before coming back to update the information. Weight Watchers has done some amazing things with accessibility to make this work now, and I appreciate that it helps me to streamline the process. I hope they will continue to improve on parts of the app and eTools that are not accessible yet, and that they will continue to keep accessibility in mind for the future.