Authors: Jose Manuel Díaz-Bossini, Lourdes Moreno DSAI 2013: 5th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fightin Info-exclusion (November 2013, Vigo, Spain). Accessibility to mobile interfaces for older people

1. Accessibility to
mobile interfaces
for older people
Jose-Manuel Díaz-Bossini, Lourdes Moreno
Labda Group,
Computer Science and Engineering Department
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Vigo, 13 November 2013

2. Contents
 Introduction and Motivation
 Background
 Proposal
 Conclusions and Future Work
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3. Introduction and Motivation
 Exponential growth of the elderly population
that suffers from age-related disabilities
 This problem will be even bigger when
middle-age population becomes the new
elderly population.
 New technologies and devices evolves faster
than accessibility issues are addressed
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4. Background
 Accessibility and older people
 There is a lack of accessibility guidelines in
the mobile applications context: literature,
best practices and guidelines.
 W3C is working on providing guidance to
apply its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) via the Mobile Web Application Best
Practices (MWABP) and Mobile Web Best
Practices (MWBP) 4

5. Proposal
 A set of guidelines to keep in mind in order
to achieve accessibility in mobile interfaces
for older people.
 An accessibility study of three mobile native
Apps on android that modify the default
interface for another more accessible one.
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6. Proposal
Accessibility guidelines
 Accessibility guidelines of mobile Apps for the
elderly
 We propose an Accesibility Checklist for mobile
Apps for the elderly : set of 17 checkpoints
collected from 3 source research works:
① World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines.
② Android Accessibility Practices.
③ Age-centered Research-Based Design Guidelines
(2005, Panayiotis, Z. et al.)
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7. Proposal
Accessibility guidelines
① W3C criteria (7 criteria):
• Providing a text equivalent for every non-text
element
• Use clear and simple language
• Do not create periodically auto-refreshing
pages, unless you have informed the user and
provided a means of stopping it
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8. Proposal
Accessibility guidelines
② Android Accessibility Practices (4 criteria)
• Add descriptive text to user interface controls
• Audio prompts accompanied by another visual
prompt or notification
③ Age-centered Research-Based Design
Guidelines (6 categories)
• Provide larger targets
• Provide ample time to read information
• Highlight important information
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9. Proposal
An accessibility study of mobile Apps
 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
1. Object of study:
 An accessibility evaluation of 3 mobile native Apps
that modify the default interface, turning it into a
more accessible and friendly one for elderly
people
2. Experiment Context
• Nexus 4 Smartphone with Android 4.2.2.
• TalkBack services
• Explore by Touch system feature
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10. Fontrillo Mobile
Proposal
An accessibility study of mobile Apps
Big Launcher
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Accessibility for
Android
3. Sample Apps:

11. Proposal
An accessibility study of mobile Apps
4. Study parameters
• Accessibility Checklist
5. Evaluation method
• Each checkpoint was manually tested and
pointed between 1 and 5.
• The final result is the average between them.
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12. Analysis and Results
CHECKPOINT BIG LAUNCHER FONTRILLO THE MOBILE ACCESSIBILITY FOR
ANDROID
W3CP001 5 5 5
W3CP002 5 2 4
W3CO001 2 2 5
W3CO002 3 4 4
W3CU001 5 5 4
W3CU002 4 3 4
W3CO003 4 5 4
Android001 5 2 5
Android002 3 3 3
Android003 4 3 4
Android004 5 3 3
WDG-TD 5 5 2
WDG-UG 5 4 2
WDG-BWF 2 2 2
WDG-CLD 4 4 2
WDG-UCD 5 4 3
WDG-UCB 4 5 3
Final Score 4,11 3,58 3,47 12
Proposal
An accessibility study of mobile Apps

13. 13
Proposal
An accessibility study of mobile Apps
 Summary and Interpretation of Findings
 The results of study indicate Big Launcher is the
most accessible for older people of the three
applications.
 In the medium term, we’ve got Frontillo. It
accomplish with many of the criteria established.
 The accessibility for Android App is a good
application but it focuses mainly on blind people,
so it’s not the best option for older people.

14. Conclusions
 From this study, we provide:
• A checklist of accessibility guidelines to evaluate mobile
Apps for elderly people
• Evaluation of three mobile native Apps that modify the
default interface, turning it into a more accessible for
elderly people
 Apps should be accessible in order to prevent social
exclusion and to encourage the access of elderly and
disabled people to the technologies
 Accessibility requirements should be addressed early
on the design phase in the development process.
 Future work
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Jose-Manuel Díaz-Bossini, Lourdes Moreno
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION