Author Archives: Edmund Baird

Design and Accessibility Considerations

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a11ylogo_highres

It is really important to create an app that is accessible to the widest possible set of users. Considering that 15% of the world’s population have a disability that affects their access to mobile technology, it is important to make small provisions that can make a huge difference to the user experience of someone with a disability (Narasimhan and Leblois, 2012).

Our app will be published with an Accessibility Statement that will express our commitment to accessibility. An important part of this is allowing a clear and easy way for users to contact us to make suggestions for improvement based on their experiences of using the app (Onevoiceict.org, 2015)

Our app will have the following accessibility features:

  • A help section describing how to use the app.
  • Ability to alter the text formatting.
  • Minimal or no use of red and green together for colour-blind users.
  • Simple and consistent design to help users with cognitive disabilities.
  • Ability to change the display (e.g. to increase the contrast) for partially sighted users.

Future improvements that could be made include:

  • All content on the screen being turned into speech for totally blind users.
  • A voice input feature as an alternative to a keyboard for users with upper limb disorders.

References

Narasimhan, N. and Leblois, A. (2012). Making mobile phones and services accessible for persons with disabilities. ITU.

Onevoiceict.org, (2015). First Seven Steps to accessible mobile apps | OneVoice for Accessible ICT. [online] Available at: http://www.onevoiceict.org/first-seven-steps-accessible-mobile-apps [Accessed 27 Apr. 2015].

Mockups

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These mockups show how Small.World would look on a smartphone, with the Nexus 5 used as an example.

After logging in, the user is taken to the ‘Friends’ tab, where they can see the friends that they are connected to (solid black line), as well as the friends of a friend (dotted black line). By tapping on a profile picture, a user can see the public profile of another user (e.g. interests, location)

Small.World_Examples2 Small.World_Examples3

The menu is accessed by tapping the button in the top left of the screen. From there a user can edit their profile, giving as much information as they want to, as well as being able to edit the display of the app. Users are also able to filter their friends by location or interest which would be useful for users with large numbers of friends.

Small.World_Examples4

The map view shows the location of a user and the location of their friends and friends of a friend within a certain radius. In the settings, the radius can be changed and the user can choose whether to see people or events. Again tapping on a user’s dot will bring up the public profile of another user.

Small.World_Examples5