FotMob - Soccer Live Scores

For the most part, this works very well with VoiceOver. However, the current version (5.1 at the time of writing) does contain a number of issues which make some of the content difficult to access or understand when using VoiceOver.

The first improvement that could be made is to assign accurate and concise labels to all buttons and page elements. At the moment, the button labeling in FotMob isn't as consistently clear or intuitive as it could be.

For example, the button used in various places within the app to enable push alerts has the label 'Flute Off'. With only this label to rely on, it is not immediately obvious what this button does. Another example is the button used to mark a team as one of your favorites. With a clearer label, you would reduce the likelihood that a VoiceOver user will tap the button only to find that they have unwittingly removed the team from their list of favorites!

These are not major problems, and after some trial and error you can determine what most buttons actually do. However, it does negatively impact upon the overall user experience, and is something that the developers should be able to correct very quickly and easily.

There are places in the app where buttons have no labels, such as in team news feeds. I have found this area of the app particularly difficult to use with VoiceOver, as the list of articles is presented in such a way that makes it difficult to know what is happening on the screen. Each news story appears to have three page elements - the title of an article, its relative age, and an unlabeled button - but these are not consistently announced by VoiceOver in a sequence that makes sense.

Some of the images used in the app are reported by VoiceOver as being buttons, which makes you assume that something should happen when you tap on them. This does not always appear to be the case. An example of where this can be found is on the page where you filter which leagues you wish to be displayed in the app. There appears to be a background image used in the page header and images beside each league, all of which are announced by VoiceOver as being buttons. On this same page, it would be helpful if it was made clear, by a label, that the very first selection box will select or deselect all the listed leagues. A minor issue, but one that makes it less likely that somebody will inadvertently tap on this and find that they have just reset all of their selections.

When viewing a list of your favorite teams, the name of each team is not read by VoiceOver. Instead, VoiceOver reads what I presume to be the filename for the team's logo. This filename is also read by VoiceOver when the logo is used elsewhere in the app, so it would be great if all team logos could be labeled with the team's name.

Another problem to be found on the page listing your favorite teams, is that VoiceOver finds a large number of unlabeled buttons. These appear to be another instance of a news feed of related stories. But, unlike the one mentioned previously, in this case each story appears only to be represented an an unlabeled button.

One other issue that I have encountered, is that when viewing the team line-ups for a match, VoiceOver reads all the players as one uninterrupted list. This makes it very difficult to distinguish between the starting 11, substitutes, or even teams if you aren't fully familiar with the players in each squad.

Don't let the issues mentioned above stop you from trying this app, as a lot of the content that you will most care about - scores and tables - is very accessible. It's just that with a few tweaks and changes, this would be a great app for blind and low vision soccer fans!