Accessible COVID-19 tracker

By winwiz1, 17 February, 2021

Forum
Low Vision Accessibility on Apple Products

Existing trackers display lots of data. Virusquery.com takes a different approach with two accessibility goals:

  1. Restrict the information shown so that anyone who uses a screen reader doesn’t have to listen to data not related to user’s locality. Depending on a country, locality could be a city, county or district etc.

    The country is detected automatically. The State/province and Locality can be set by typing their names. Full names are not required. You can type cal for California, New J for New Jersey or q for Quebec. Similarly with Locality, for example type su for Sutter County. This typing concludes once-off setup.

  2. Ensure fresh data can be fetched by refreshing the tracker webpage.

    The two ways of getting data are using a button or refreshing the page. More details are available at virusquery.com. The idea behind refreshing is that you keep the tracker opened in a browser’s tab and refresh it from time to time. Refreshing is especially convenient on portable devices since in can usually be initiated by a gesture.

I’m the developer. Feedback is welcome!

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Comments

By Jo Billard on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - 02:14

How is it different from the COVID Alert app used here in Canada? I havfe heard it's accessible and it sure seems to be, but I haven't had any alerts come up so I can't compare.

COVID Alert actively runs in the background (e.g. regardless of you using this app and your phone or not) and establishes 2-way communications with nearby phones with the same app installed. The purpose of this activity is to limit the spread of the decease by sending (when public interest requires it) the information received from other phones to the government.

Virusquery.com is a data reporting tool that allows you to run a data query and get back COVID-19 related statistics like case counts etc. It doesn't do any activity in the background and never gets in touch with other phones. It simply shows you the information which you have requested and only when you explicitly have done so.

By Brian Giles on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - 02:14

I can't get this to work on my iPhone. I can't expand the pop up that's supposed to let you choose anything other than your currently selected country.

This site seems like it would work better with a PC screen reader.

What am I missing?

By winwiz1 on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - 02:14

Thanks for trying and for the feedback!

There is a slider labeled ‘Advanced Settings’, it is one of the two sliders located under the Country selection. The slider controls the visibility of the other settings.

To toggle the slider, just tap on it. It should make the other controls visible. Once visible, those would be located at the right-hand side on a notebook screen. iPhone screen is too narrow, so the other controls will be placed further below instead. You will need to scroll down in order to see it.

As a side note, such a rearrangement is called Responsive Design and this how apps adopt to different screen widths.

Sounds like you cannot turn on the Advanced Settings. I just checked on iPhone and it worked. Please try to tap on the slider and let me know if it worked.