By Esther, 4 April, 2011
Forum
Other Apple Chat
There are occasions where it wuld be useful to be able to review the accessibility of an app series from a developer, or indicate that a particular app being reviewd is representative of a larger number of similar apps. Currently, there isn't a really good way to handle this in the checkbox categories or links. This typically happens with book apps, dictionaries, travel guides, and some related categories of services and language apps. For example, I had difficulty deciding how to post both the description and links to the latest App Deals gone free entry for the iStoryTime Kids Books by FrogDog Media LLC. In this case, prospective users of the app are likrly to be more interested in the fact that there are different storybook options that can be accessibly read by to a child with a Braille device or used by a child who is using a Braille device to read by themselves, or else played for a child (sighted or vision impaired) with nice Narrator voices (either by themselves or by an adult) with or without acess to the pictures in landscape mode, than in the fact that a specific book app is being reviewed.
It's also not clear what the best way is to provide links in such a case. In this instance, since all the free, limited time versions were sponsored by Yoplait yogourt, and there were also paid version of the same app (along with several dozen other books with similar format), I linked to a search on "Yoplait" and listed the free titles in the comments. There are several other instances where such generic categories of apps might be of interest, but no way of posting the more general information. For example, there is a series of traveler's medical assistance apps called the mPassport guides by HTH Worldwide. These give you access to the locations of hospitals, pharmacoes. emergemcy rooms, and Englsih-speaking doctors and dentists in different cities around the world with GPS and contact integration (e.g. based on your location). There are also drug equivalelency guides and frequently a medical translation guide with spoken phrases in both English and the language of the city. (The audio clips pronouncing the phrases require internet access to be played; everything else works independent of a connection and is accessible. Now there are at least 40 some cities covered since the original apps for Pairs and London were issued. If it were posted as a single app, users would only check whether the city listed in the sample app was one they were interested in visiting.
There are several other apps in this class. For example, none of the Iceberg reader books (several hundred book apps) are accessible. The Electronic Arts game apps (Monopoly. Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and several others) are not accessible. Perhaps we cannot review by developers, but certainly series of apps are an item for which there are no good classification fields/alerts. The only way to handle this at present is within the user comments -- and it is not practical to list all the other entries in the same class.
I'm not sure the best way to handle this, but there should be at least a separate flag, and maybe a cross-referenced entry in a series category subsection.
Esther
Comments
Will ponder this
Hi Esther,
Thanks for the suggestion. I plan to give this more thought, but it's difficult to see a usable and reliable way of doing what you describe within the constraints of this site.
In practice, are there many 'series' of apps where a verdict on the accessibility of a number of apps can be reached on the basis of trying just a single one. I can think of a few book-based examples, but I would be concerned about people making the leap that any app from the same developer has the same level of accessibility.
For the time being, perhaps the 'other comments' section available when posting to the App Directory might be the best place to comment on associated apps.
There are also problems with posting links to iTunes search results, as these appear to be only accessible to users of the same regional store. For instance, I was not able to view the link you posted to the apps in the Yoplait promotion.
David