Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines

Sep 7th, 2011 by Henny

Anyone looking for a definitive set of mobile accessibility guidelines will be a little disappointed if they’ve ended up here because the bad news is that there aren’t any publicly available ones. I’m involved in writing some and am aware of other organisations doing the same but until these are published all we have are generic resources and a few platform specific resources.

I often get asked what’s out there so I thought the next best thing would be to keep an updated list of resources. Hopefully the list below will be of some use and if you have any resources you’d like to add leave a comment and I’ll update the list.

Note: these are not general mobile accessibility resources but informal guidelines that relate to mobile and accessibility or are device specific guidelines.

General

Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 – best practices for mobile web design and development
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 – the definitive set of guidelines for building accessible content from the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative
Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – published by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative this document highlights the cross over between the two sets of guidelines based on the barriers of disabled users experience on the web and limitations of mobile
Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities – useful background information as to who is affected and how
Widget Accessibility Best Practices - written by Steve Lee these look at building standards compliant cross platform widgets that are accessible.
Mobile Website Guidelines – published by the University of Austin.

Android

Designing for accessibility - published by Android developers and covers apps
Android accessibility - from the Google Eyes Free project

Blackberry

Best practices designing accessible applications - published by the Blackberry Developer Centre

iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)

Accessibility programming guide for iOS – Apples guidance on making iOS apps accessible
Accessibility for iPhone and iPad apps – by Matt Gemmell this is a easier to digest reference for building accessible apps than the Apple documentation
iPad usability studies- two studies published over two years by Jakob Neilson

Nokia and Symbian

User experience checklist for touch (PDF – new window) - published by Nokia
User experience checklist for keypad (PDF – new window) - published by Nokia

Windows mobile

Design guidelines for Windows Mobile – published by Microsoft and also covers usability, navigation, controls and text guidelines
Accessibility and Ergonomic Guidelines – for Windows Mobile published by Microsoft

Tags: Accessibility, Android, Blackberry, iOS, Mobile, Nokia

Posted in Accessibility, Mobile

17 Responses to “Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines”

on 07 Sep 2011 at 10:17 am1Lisa

This is such a great list Henny, thanks for putting it together and sharing it with us all.

This is fantastic, thanks!

L

[Reply]
on 07 Sep 2011 at 11:49 am2Katja

Henny, this is fantastic. I’ve been trawling through the web and pumping all my contacts for knowledge on this subject area so it’s wonderful to find all this information all in one place. You are, as always, a legend!!
Thanks
Katja

[Reply]
on 07 Sep 2011 at 2:38 pm3Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines | Jason Haag

[...] Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines [...]
on 08 Sep 2011 at 7:54 am4Gary Miller

Thanks for this Henny.

You’ve just saved me hours of Googling!

Cheers!

[Reply]
on 14 Sep 2011 at 11:41 am5Priti Rohra

This is awesome!! Thanks Henny …

[Reply]
on 16 Sep 2011 at 1:16 am6Mozilla Hacks Weekly, September 15th 2011 ✩ Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog

[...] Swisher Henny Swan is collecting Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines. Check them out if you’re developing for mobile devices, and suggest any that are missing from [...]
on 21 Sep 2011 at 10:19 am7Some links for light reading (21/9/11) | Max Design

[...] Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines [...]
on 25 Sep 2011 at 3:28 pm8모바일 접근성 관련 주요 가이드라인 등 – Henny Swan 블로깅 의역을 중심으로 « 삐돌이의 웹 접근성 & IT Transformation

[...] 접근성 분야, 특히 모바일 접근성 분야 컨설턴트인 Henny Swan이 2011년 9월 7일 “Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines”라는 제목으로 블로깅한 글을 의역하고 제가 모바일 접근성과 관련되는 [...]
on 01 Oct 2011 at 3:45 pm9Steve Lee

Thanks Henny, I added this to our wiki page too.

[Reply]
on 04 Oct 2011 at 7:55 pm10Henny

Nice one Steve, thanks.

[Reply]
on 01 Nov 2011 at 8:08 am11ezsimplydesigns.com » Blog Archive » Some links for light reading (21/9/11)

[...] Resources for Mobile Accessibility Guidelines [...]
on 16 Dec 2011 at 4:52 pm12Top ten tests for alternatives on mobile | » Henny Swan's blog

[...] The tests below are just a subset of mobile accessibility guidelines that should be followed and focuses purely on alternatives for screen reader [...]
on 23 Dec 2011 at 8:17 pm13Stella

Very nice list Henny i think that mobile technology is the future for manyyyy years.

[Reply]
on 30 Jan 2012 at 5:46 pm14wpcontent.net

Accessible Web Design – Creating a Website that everyone can look…

It’s easy to get carried away when designing a website. Web design is an art. One way to ensure you have a great website is more and more people to your website and gets more hits. Here are some tips to make sure your website works for everyone: …
on 02 Feb 2012 at 9:39 pm15Roger Hudson

Many thanks Henny for a great resource of info

[Reply]
on 16 Feb 2012 at 12:35 pm16Dostępność – siostra użyteczności | SeoPortal.pl: pozycjonowanie, web marketing

[...] źródła dot. mobile accessibility. [...]
on 14 Mar 2012 at 6:08 pm17Design for All, Smartphone et tablette | Le bloc-notes ; ergonomie & UX

[...] Resources for mobile accessibility guidelines Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) [...]

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