A roadmap towards mobile applications with accessibility for visually impaired users: guideline and its evaluation

Abstract

When applications intend to support accessibility, several aspects of interface design and usability must be reviewed to adapt or extend common functional requirements that are implemented to ensure easy use of applications. However, initiatives to develop guidelines for accessible mobile applications are recent and several approaches present only suggestions rather than a concrete list of requirements. It is becoming increasingly apparent not only the need for social and digital inclusion of people with disabilities but also the urgency to make devices and applications truly accessible to anyone. This work focuses on accessibility requirements for visually impaired users and it is part of a broader effort that involves different types of impairments. Our research method was based on three main steps. First, from an initial set of 1014 scientific and technical articles, 46 were analyzed to identify requirements that are related to visual impairments. Second, we carried out an observation-based analysis to confirm the importance of these requirements, considering a set of accessibility tests with impaired volunteers. Third, the Design Thinking process was used to implement an application prototype, considering the most important requirements that were identified along with the two first steps. This application was submitted to a user-centered evaluation with volunteers, which also supported the evolution of our requirements. We sought to include prior knowledge aligned with all pre-identified requirements, culminating in something that would add to the procedure greater validation. As the main result, this paper presents the complete roadmap of this process, which resulted in a guideline and evaluation method to support the integration of accessibility aspects into mobile applications.

A Importância Da Prototipagem No Processo De Design E Suas Relações Como Mídia Do Conhecimento

“…Os testes geram o feedback permitindo avaliar e selecionar o que levar adiante, por isso, a prototipagem deve estar presente em todas as oportunidades do ciclo de projeto. Corroborando com Brown (2010) em testar as ideias o quanto antes, utilizando os materiais mais simples e baratos que tenha disponível, e progressivamente aplicar-se a resolução mais aproximada e refinada da solução final (Brunnet, 2015;Martins et al, 2016;Scherer et al, 2017, Correia et al, 2019Ricaldoni & Rezende, 2020).…”