Giving App Developers Guidance on Accessibility

By Jennifer, 13 September, 2012

Forum
App Development and Programming
I have recently begun testing apps which I do not expect to be accessible and have recently come across a few which could be accessible with a few minor changes. Is there a guide I can send developers when contacting them about this? What have other people found to be useful when trying to help a developer understand a problem which is not as a simple as a button being mislabeled, or not labeled at all? I apologize if this is addressed somewhere else on the website but I haven't been able to find anything. Thank you in advance.

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Comments

By David Goodwin on Monday, October 8, 2012 - 21:50

You could point them to the page we have here on AppleVis that contains links to a number of guides for developing accessible apps:

http://www.applevis.com/information-app-developers

When contacting any developer, it's always good practice to give them as much information as possible so that they can replicate the problem that you have encountered.

Tell them what device you are using, the version of either iOS or OS X, and the version of their app.

Tell them what you are trying to do, the steps that you take, what you would expect to happen, and what actually happens.

If a developer can replicate a problem, they are a significant way towards fixing it.

By Jennifer on Monday, October 8, 2012 - 21:50

Thank you David. I hadn't been able to dig up that resource page before via searching. This is exactly what I was looking for.

By cjsims on Monday, October 8, 2012 - 21:50

Hi to all of you. I thought that I would say that I have used these exact methods as outlined above, and …well I've had positive results to an extent. I, in this case, just pointed the developer concerned to the documentation on Apple's site to do with Voiceover. As this all took place just prier to IOS6 coming out, nothing further has taken place, apart from being invited on to a beta test team.

By Katrine on Monday, October 8, 2012 - 21:50

Hi all, Actually, I was thinking of writing a post exactly like the one Jenifer has just written. I contacted a developer for the first time last week and I was at a loss to explain the problem. All I could say was, "some of the dates in the calendar are not being read to me and I can't select them. I have no clue why, and good luck to you figuring it out knowing nothing about VO! (Obviously, I didn't write the last part, but that's how it felt). I was going to suggest that Applevis created a resource for developers, exactly like the one David has just posted (nice work!) So now, I'd only suggest that you make the information easier to find. I don't know, but perhaps you could add a link to some guidelines below the "I have contacted the developer" link in the directory providing short guidelines for how to describe the problem to a developer (like above) and suggesting that the person contacting the developer could add the link to resources to his or her message. Only a suggestion, but this certainly would have been useful to me! Thanks for a great site!