Native apps will become more popular

Jan Jaap de Groot was in Luxembourg last week. We met this recognized Dutch expert in mobile app accessibility.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

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When, and why, did you become interested in digital accessibility?

For me, it started during my third year at the university, in a class called Advanced Mobile Development. As soon as Android and iOS came out, I was interested in building apps. Around ten years ago, the Accessibility Foundation in the Netherlands had the idea to develop an accessible app for blind people. They were the first target audience, before releasing the app to everyone. The idea was to offer a city trip and, at some dedicated locations, thanks to the GPS you had an audio description of the place. At that time, I didn’t know it was possible for blind people to use a smartphone. It was my first project for people with disabilities.

You are a member of the Mobile Accessibility Task Force at the W3C: what is its current goal?

It’s difficult just to stick to the European standard EN 301 549 when you’re auditing mobile apps. This is the reason why we [at the Appt Foundation] have written our own methodology, trying to explain step by step how you can apply success criteria to mobile apps. A lot of people are using this methodology, however some of them think it’s the truth whereas, for some points, we just give our opinion.

It’s difficult to write guidelines, especially if you want them to be used not only in your company or in your country but also elsewhere. So, at some point, you have to collaborate. This eventually led to my participation, two and a half years ago, in the Mobile Accessibility Task Force (MATF), part of the W3C. I was appointed in January as the new lead of this MATF. Ten to twenty mobile accessibility experts are actively contributing and we expect to publish new guidance in December – it will be a first draft, but still it will be an event since not much has been published over the last ten years. The goal would be to create guidance that could be used worldwide, in order to fully apply WCAG to apps.

What is your view on app accessibility? Does it tend to improve over time?

I think so. This is what we see when we look at the national dashboard where the Dutch government tracks accessibility statements. You can have five statuses, from A to E. Anyway, it’s quite hard to get status A, many stay stuck in status B. This is particularly true for apps: you can have restrictions depending on your framework, especially if you develop cross-platform apps. I believe that native apps will become more popular because then you have full control and there is no limitation due to third party frameworks.

What are the most common issues you encounter?

Issues related to the WCAG criterion named “4.1.2 Name, Role, Value”. A lot of apps don’t have accessible names for interactive components. You can have a pin code screen where the ten buttons (1, 2, 3…) are just rendered by screen readers as “button”, “button”, “button” and so on. You must guess which button is which number. This is the feedback we get from audits and from our hotline.

Is developing apps for portrait and landscape mode really that complicated?

Landscape mode is clearly one of the most common issues. But users never complain about this. Landscape mode is much more difficult to support for a developer, especially if you design it after you have already released the app. For instance on Android, when you switch to landscape mode, the app “recreates” itself, so you have to add some logic. Example: the user is entering data, then they rotate. If the developer didn’t add support for caching the input, then it’s gone. It’s not that hard if you do it from the start.

You offer a software solution to analyze the accessibility of an Android or iOS app from macOS: how many criteria of the European standard can be automatically analyzed?

You can test around 20% of the criteria, but those criteria cover maybe around 50% of the issues. In the near future, with AI you can maybe push it a little bit further. Example: AI could visually determine if the screen contains a header, where it is precisely, and then check if this header is properly coded. It would otherwise be difficult to do it programmatically.

Do you notice a difference between public sector apps and apps from private companies?

It really depends: if the public app is built by a third-party commercial company, usually it is worse than if it is an in-house app built by the government: those are usually a lot better than commercial apps.

Do you plan to continue investing your time in app accessibility?

I really enjoy it. At the beginning I was not finding like-minded people. Very few people are exclusively focusing on building accessible mobile apps. And this is what I like with the MATF: the daily job of these people is to work on the accessibility of mobile apps. We also share knowledge in a Slack group: this is something that was missing.