We’ve always viewed accessibility as a human right, and just like human rights are for everyone, we want our products to be accessible to everyone. - Tim Cook

Motivation

We want to create apps for everyone, which means that whatever software we write should be usable by anyone, regardless of their capabilities. Considering that one in seven people have some disability that can affect how they interact with the world around them (and, by extension, their devices and apps), we have introduced some guidelines for Android & iOS apps to follow when designing and developing with accessibility in mind.

This also provides added value for our clients because it unlocks a larger potential audience for their platforms while greatly benefiting users who need these features the most.

Applying accessibility principles to mobile apps ensures that people with disabilities can use them with a similar amount of effort as other people. To move closer to that goal, all apps should strive for simplicity, perceivability, and provide personalization options.

Currently, there is no standard for mobile accessibility or best practices for implementing it, so we started building a foundation on Level A to make our apps fundamentally accessible. That way, we established a mobile standard for the most commonly used mobile platforms that we’ll continue to build upon.

Guidelines

We have created mobile guidelines, the primary purpose of which is to define some accessibility standards for mobile apps. They are based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), an industry standard for creating web apps, and while reading them, you can find a link to the specific point of the WCAG that inspired each of them. We chose to base our mobile standards on the WCAG as it's already a well-developed and established entity, which is actively supported and expanded, with a legitimate organization behind it, and supported by existing legal standards and requirements defined by the US, EU, UK, and other laws.

Taking inspiration from it, we have structured our Accessibility Mobile Standards to contain the following:

• Accessibility features per platform, explaining what each platform offers to developers and users
• Accessibility guidelines, split up into several core principles, along with some common practices

We have made the guidelines a centralized place for all mobile platforms that we develop at the moment (Android, iOS, and Flutter), as the concepts and requirements are shared between them, with platform-specific implementation details added for each feature or principle.

Though the WCAG is extensive and covers many areas, we have decided to choose four core ones that are most applicable to mobile apps, and those are: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each of them is described in detail in the guidelines.

Conclusion

The Accessibility Mobile Standards are and should be a living matter, subject to changes, redefinitions, and expansion, and everyone's contributions are welcome and encouraged.