Accessibility Evaluation in Mobile Applications for Air Quality
Description
This research evaluates accessibility in mobile applications with the Accessibility Scanner tool. The evaluated applications are related to the quality of the air we breathe. Several applications provide information on the level of contamination, the concentration of each pollutant, an index of international air quality according to the area and provide necessary recommendations on outdoor physical activity. However, despite the number of existing applications for mobile devices, not all are accessible. The study uses the Google tool when applying the Accessibility Guidelines for mobile applications using the Accessibility Guidelines for Web Content 2.0 and 2.1. Ten mobile applications were evaluated, the most frequent errors are related to the Text contrast followed by Touch target and Item Label. This study has limitations, but it can serve as a lesson learned to develop inclusive mobile applications.
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Steps to reproduce
Phase 1: Select applications. In this phase mobile applications are selected to measure air quality; these apps were taken from the Google Play Store considering the highest rating received by users. The applications (Apps) are Air Pollution, AirVis-ual, Plume Air Report, Air Quality Index BreezoMeter, Air quality, Air Quality: Moni-tor AQI, Air! World Air Quality, Clean Air Cast, Air Quality Meter - PM10 & AQI and, Air Pollution Check. The evaluation. The evaluation of each tool used in this research presented in Table 1. Phase 2: Install applications from the Google Play Store. In this phase, the ap-plications, selected in stage 1, were installed on a smartphone with version 7.0 of An-droid. Installed applications are shown in Table 1. Phase 3: Install and activate Accessibility Scanner. Install and activate Accessi-bility Scanner. In this phase from Google Play Store installed the Accessibility Scan-ner tool developed by Google. This tool allows evaluating the accessibility of mobile applications that allow measuring the air quality. Accessibility Scanner applies the standard of WCAG 2.0 and 2.1. To install and activate Accessibility Scanner the following steps were followed: In Google Play Store locate the application, select “Install.” On the screen the “Get start-ed” button is displayed, asking for permission to open the “Settings” screen with the “Accessibility” option of Android, select “Accept.” Activate the option for the tool in “Settings” of the Accessibility Test of “Accessi-bility Scanner.” When activated, it indicates the actions to be carried out and requests the permission to capture screens. After activating the tool, a blue button will always be visible on the screen to place in any area. From that moment on, the tool to open the app to evaluate. Phase 4: Open applications to evaluate. In this phase, each application is run to evaluate with the Accessibility Scanner tool. In this case, it is necessary to configure and activate the location of the mobile device so that the application automatically detects the geographical location to measure the air quality. The operation of the tool is effortless. Just open the app to evaluate, for example, “Air Pollution,” and press the blue button. Phase 5: Record the results. In this phase, the evaluation data of the apps with Accessibility Scanner are recorded in a Microsoft Excel sheet. Phase 6: Analyze the results. Finally, with the data obtained, they are located in the Mendeley dataset. With the data, a statistical analysis was made with the analysis tools of Microsoft Excel.