16 February 2020
Accessibility in Mobile Apps
While the US Department of Justice’s application of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) goes back to 2014, the first legal case that expressly extended Title III of the ADA was decided last year by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In the case, Robles v. Domino’s Pizza LLC, the blind Robles alleges that he tried multiple times to order customized pizzas on Domino’s mobile app, but that he “was unable to place his order due to accessibility barriers of unlabeled buttons that do not conform to Apple Inc.’s iOS accessibility guidelines.”
Since US Supreme Court denied Domino’s petition for certiorari in October 2019, there has been an increase in the number of ADA digital lawsuits. In the first half of 2020, 20 percent of ADA digital lawsuits in US federal court claimed mobile apps were inaccessible. There are a wide range of accessibility requirements; in short, a blind person or person with poor vision should be able to perform every action a person with good vision can perform in a mobile app.
Wingman’s Commitment to Accessibility
In November of last year, we announced the release of Business Card Scanning Image Stabilization, technology we released technology to help people with health conditions like Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s Disease scan business cards.
Our release today takes the next (small) step to help people with poor vision scan business cards and view their contacts. We went through each of the screens in the Wingman app and tested them with varying font size adjustments from the device settings.
Wingman with Adjusted Font Sizes
This video shows the main screens within Wingman and how the font changes size to make it easier to read text for the visually-impaired.
We will continue to improve different accessibility aspects of Wingman, so it is a pleasure for everyone to use.
