Heuristic Method of Evaluating Accessibility of Mobile Applications for Air Quality Monitoring
Description
The accelerated advance of technology and the adoption of mobile devices pose new challenges in the area of accessibility. Traditional accessibility assessment techniques need to be adapted to the new guidelines. Heuristic evaluation is an inspection method based on evaluation by experts in mobile applications. It is based on checklists that traditional tools cannot detect as accessibility problems of mobile devices, so it must be done manually with the help of experts. In this article, we propose a compilation of heuristic evaluation checklists for accessibility taken from the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) 2.1, adjusted to users with low vision. The result is a checklist that is evaluated experimentally as a case study applied to mobile applications to monitor air quality. The results of this ex-periment can serve as a reference for future work related to accessibility in mobile applications.
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People with disabilities are not the only ones being excluded by technology. Accessibility issues must be considered by developers; this would have a significant impact [4] on the elderly population suffering from age-related disabilities. This study proposes (i) a set of heuristics to consider in order to achieve accessibility of mobile applications for the elderly. The checklist is the result of a review study of the literature and standards that are being applied in this area of knowledge, (ii) the use of this accessibility checklist aimed at older people, applies as a case study to mobile applications related to air quality. Therefore, this study proposes (i) a set of heuristics to consider in order to achieve accessibility of mobile applications for people with low vision. The checklist is the result of a review study of the literature and standards that are being applied in this area of knowledge, (ii) the use of this checklist of accessibility aimed at people with low vision, is applied as a case study to mobile applications related to air quality. In consequence, we will apply a heuristic method based on the barrier walkthrough proposed by Brajnik. The heuristic method is an analytical method based on trial and error explorations in which an evaluator considers a predefined number of possible accessibility barriers, which are interpreted according to the accessibility principles of WCAG 2.1. The barriers include elements according to the type of user, the purpose, the context of use and the website so that appropriate conclusions can be drawn about effectiveness, productivity, and [5] user satisfaction, with severity scores assigned to each accessibility barrier. The heuristic method applied to evaluate accessibility in mobile applications consists of seven phases: (i) select the applications to evaluate, (ii) select the type of users, (iii) identify the user scenarios, (iv) evaluate the application with the Barrier Walkthrough method, (v) record the results, (vi) analyze the results, (vii) suggest ac-cessibility improvements.
Institutions
- Universitat d'Alacant