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Mobile apps are failing users with disabilities
2025/4/21
Marketplace All-in-One
B
Ben Ogilvie
M
Megan McCarty Carino
Megan McCarty Carino: 报道指出，移动应用开发者在为残疾用户创建完全无障碍的平台方面仍有很大的提升空间。许多应用在屏幕阅读、文本大小调整、语音控制和多屏幕方向等无障碍功能方面表现不佳。
Ben Ogilvie: 许多开发者没有充分利用iOS和Android系统中内置的无障碍组件。问题在于缺乏意识、缺乏测试，以及在设计、开发、测试和发布过程中缺乏对残疾用户的包容。许多应用不支持横向显示，这在后期很难改进，因为这需要重新设计和修改应用中的组件，这对于拥有多年遗留代码的应用来说几乎是不可能的。我们建议客户从一开始就考虑横向和纵向方向，即使这只是他们以后可以继续改进的内容。
在测试的五个行业中，零售和购物行业的无障碍性得分最低，这令人惊讶，因为他们本应从构建人人可用的应用中获得最大的直接利益。流媒体行业表现最好，但这仍然有很长的路要走。我们认为，流媒体行业受益于多年来传统的广播媒体无障碍性法规，这或许使他们在构建无障碍内容方面获得了领先地位。
零售行业快速发展的文化导致无障碍性问题容易被忽视。如果无障碍性不被视为产品构建的核心文化的一部分，那么在快节奏的环境中，它很容易被忽视，或者与团队成员承担责任的可衡量成果和交付成果脱节。除非每个人都达成一致，并理解它符合更广泛的市场覆盖和更高盈利能力的目标，以及其他支持无障碍性的更软性的原因，否则无障碍性很容易被忽视。
虽然iOS和Android平台提供的工具越来越好，但建立无障碍性文化的重大转变仍然停滞不前。在测试的50个应用中，只有两个应用的无障碍性得分很高（85分以上），一个在健身领域，另一个在食品和送餐领域。这些应用在整个用户流程中都考虑到了无障碍性，并为多种辅助技术提供了持续一致的体验，包括支持横向和纵向显示，以及富有感染力的替代文本。
为了改进应用的无障碍性，建议：培训团队掌握无障碍性基础知识；在整个过程中引入残疾用户；如果刚开始接触无障碍性工作，则引入专家来帮助提升团队技能并加快学习曲线。改进应用无障碍性不仅是道德上的正确做法，而且在许多地方也日益成为法律要求。
supporting_evidences
Ben Ogilvie: 'A lot of developers don't take advantage of those native components.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'So I'd say it's a combination of lack of awareness, lack of testing, and lack of inclusion of users with disabilities in the design, development, testing, and release process all the way through.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'It's really difficult to go back and retrofit responsive design into mobile apps if it wasn't considered in the initial user experience journeys and in the original design flows.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'Of the five industries we tested, the retail and shopping industry performed the worst, which was really surprising.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'But that was still a 60 out of 100 score. So there's still a long way to go even for streaming.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'I have an idea that retail moves so quickly.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'And so while the iOS and Android platforms are providing better tools over time, I think the big shift in building a culture of accessibility is still kind of in the same place that it was a number of years ago.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'But two out of 50 shows that we have a lot of work to do.'
Ben Ogilvie: 'First is get your teams trained on the basics.'
Megan McCarty Carino: 'And Ben told us improving these apps isn't just the right thing to do morally or for financial reasons. It's also increasingly the law in many places.'
Deep Dive
A new report reveals that most popular mobile apps fail to meet accessibility standards, leaving disabled users with a poor experience. This is due to several factors, including lack of awareness, insufficient testing, and exclusion of disabled users in the development process.
- Three-quarters of tested apps had poor or failing accessibility experiences reported by disabled users.
- Many developers don't use built-in accessibility components in iOS and Android.
- Lack of awareness, testing, and inclusion of disabled users throughout the development process contribute to the problem.
- Landscape orientation support is a surprisingly common issue, often due to legacy code.
Shownotes Transcript