Mobile Phones Accessibility

Mobile communication and smart phones are the most common mean of accessing the Internet by majority of users including persons with disabilities for many obvious reasons such as design, interoperability and size. Most popular Mobile operating systems (iOS and Android) have also implemented even more features for e-accessibility than web browsers and are considered friendlier and more accessible. Smart phones using both operating systems include different important features for various disabilities. Users with vision impairment or no vision can enjoy hearing and vision support based features such as screen readers, translators, real-time transcripts and live caption to navigate their phones. Additional features employ assistive technologies to help different disabilities such limited manipulation and mobility, limited language, cognitive and learning abilities or any combination of multiple impairments. WCAG guidelines for web accessibility are easily mapped to mobile phones since most interfaces are very similar in terms of layout, colors, web pages and mobile Apps.

According to the latest G3ict report ^[11], the percentages of implementation for the various ICT accessibility areas show low overall implementation of 49% but with promising trend mainly in web and accessibility in education. Figure 1 below shows the global percentage of Implementation and outcomes for the various ICT accessibility areas.

Figure 1. Global Levels of Implementation and Outcomes of Accessibility Areas

Source: DARE Index 2020: Global Progress by CRPD States Parties

The data clearly indicates that web accessibility has gained the most implementation attention with 58% followed by inclusive ICTs in education. However, with low percentages of implementation, mobile and ATs accessibility have encouraging tendency towards implementing accessibility policies.