Summary: How to Apply WCAG 2.0 to Mobile Devices

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This post simply serves as a summary of the 4 posts published recently that distill the information from the W3C about how the guidelines and principles of WCAG 2.0 apply to mobile devices.

I thought it would be useful to have a single post with links to each of the previous posts. The posts take the 4 POUR principles and explain what they mean in terms of mobile application.

POUR

Mobile Accessibility and the Robust Principle

Mobile Accessibility and the Robust Principle

The W3C wants to help developers understand how WCAG 2.0 applies on mobile devices. They recently issued the first working draft on the topic. The guidelines and principles of WCAG are explained using the POUR method: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

In this post I will distill the W3C information on the Robust principle.

The Keyboard

Set the virtual keyboard to the type of data entry required.

Data Entry

Make data entry as easy as possible by,

  • On-screen keyboard
  • Bluetooth keyboard
  • Speech or Touch
  • Use select menus, radio buttons, check boxes or automatically enter known information (e.g. date, time, location)

Support the Platform

Don’t disable the device’s platform characteristics such as zoom, larger fonts, and captions.

Mobile device image: William Hook

Mobile Accessibility and the Understandable Principle

Mobile Accessibility and the Understandable Principle

The W3C wants to help developers understand how WCAG 2.0 applies on mobile devices. They recently issued the first working draft on the topic. The guidelines and principles of WCAG are explained using the POUR method: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

In this post I will distill the W3C information on the Understandable principle.

Orientation

  • Support both landscape and portrait orientations
  • Changes in orientation must be programmatically exposed to ensure detection by devices such as screen readers

Consistent Layout

  • Within a particular size and orientation, repeated items should be placed consistently
  • Consistency between different screen sizes and screen orientations is not a requirement

Positioning before the Scroll

Position important items before the scroll.

Group Operable Elements

When two elements (e.g., an icon and a text link) perform the same action, group both items within the same actionable element.

 Be Clear About Which Elements are Actionable

Actionable elements such as links or buttons should be indicated by more than one means. Use combinations of shape, color, style, positioning, text labels, and conventional iconography.

Custom Manipulations and Gestures

Provide easily accessible instructions to explain what gestures can be used to control a given interface and whether there are alternatives.

Mobile device image: William Hook

Mobile Accessibility and the Operable Principle

mobile accessibility and the operable principle

The W3C wants to help developers understand how WCAG 2.0 applies on mobile devices. They recently issued the first working draft on the topic. The guidelines and principles of WCAG are explained using the POUR method: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

In this post I will distill the W3C information on the Operable principle.

Touch Target Size and Spacing

  • touch targets should be at least 9 mm high by 9 mm wide
  • touch targets close to the minimum size should be surrounded by a small amount of inactive space

Touchscreen Gestures

  • Gestures should be as easy as possible to carry out and two-step gestures should be avoided
  • To prevent unintentional actions, “elements accessed via touch interaction should generally trigger an event (e.g. navigation, submits) only when the touchend event is fired (i.e. when all of the following are true: the user has lifted the finger off the screen, the last position of the finger is inside the actionable element, and the last position of the finger equals the position at touchstart).”

Device Manipulation Gestures

These suggestions are for manipulations such as shaking or tilting:

  • Developers should still provide touch and keyboard operable alternative control options
  • Provide onscreen indicators that remind people how and when to use device manipulation gestures

Button Placement

  • Place interactive elements where they can be easily reached when the device is held in different positions or by different hands
  • Flexible use is the goal

Mobile device image: William Hook

Mobile Accessibility and the Perceivable Principle

Mobile accessibility and the perceivable princple

The W3C wants to help developers understand how WCAG 2.0 applies on mobile devices. They recently issued the first working draft on the topic. The guidelines and principles of WCAG are explained using the POUR method: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

In this post I will distill the W3C information for the Perceivable principle.

Small Screen Size

Guidelines include:

  • Use a responsive design and minimize the amount of information that is put on each page
  • Use fewer images
  • Focus on the features needed to operate in the mobile environment
  • Use a “reasonable” default size for content and touch controls to reduce the need for zooming
  • Make sure link text does not exceed the width of the device
  • Put form fields below their labels

Zoom/Magnification

The suggestions include:

  • The user should be able to zoom to 200%. Do not block this with the page’s viewport meta element.
  • Support system fonts that follow platform level user preferences for text size
  • Support options on the page to allow the user to change text size

Contrast

Mobile device content is viewed on smaller screens and in different conditions so the allowable ratio for lessened contrast on larger text on desktop devices must be considered carefully for mobile apps. Therefore, the W3C suggestion at this point is that developers should strive to apply the lessened contrast ratio only when text is roughly equivalent to 1.2 times bold or 1.5 times (120% bold or 150%) that of the default platform size. Even then, the user must be able to zoom to magnify the text.

Mobile device image: William Hook

New Tool: Responsive Image Breakpoints Generator

Responsive Image Breakpoints Generator

A new open source tool, Responsive Image Breakpoints Generator, should be at the top of your to-do list of new things to learn to use. Developed by Cloudinary and offered to web designers for immediate use, the tool describes itself,

Responsive websites, even the most modern ones, often struggle with selecting image resolutions that best match the various user devices. They compromise on either the image dimensions or the number of images. It’s time to solve these issues and start calculating image breakpoints more mathematically, rather than haphazardly.

After you choose what you want the breakpoints generator to do for you, you can then download a zip file which contains the HTML5 code which uses the srcset attribute of the img element to set up the responsive breakpoints. The zip file also contains all the images that are referenced in the srcset attributes.

For a longer description of the tool, see this excellent article at Smashing Magazine, which explains a bit more about the tool.

Gather Content Offers a Free UX Guide

A Guide for UX Designers

Gather Content, an online software tool that allows people to streamline their web content production, is making their UX Guide available as a free download.

The book, UX Design And Content Strategy: The Project Guide, is described as a hands-on resource for all UXers and a project guide to UX design and content strategy that explores the relationship through a website project. The book is a 64 page PDF document.

I haven’t read the book myself, but if you are interested in a project based approach to user experience, it certainly is worth a look.