Accessibility: what you need to know about mobile app development for people with special needs Rosberry Follow Dec 14, 2017 · 6 min read

By Anastasia Egorina, UI/UX designer at Rosberry

Mobile technologies are developing in leaps and bounds changing the world around. So it’s no surprise they are now used in educational and rehabilitating programs for people with special needs based on accessibility. The whole thing seems pretty basic now, yet we have no doubts its future is bright. That’s why we could not miss the chance to try and contribute to the movement.

Last year our company was invited to deliver an iOS mobile app for people with special needs called DIY (Do It Yourself). The project was initialized by The Home Modification Information Clearinghouse (HMinfo) within the Faculty of the Built Environment at UNSW.

The key idea of the app is to help elderly people and people with special needs modify their home environment in accordance with their specific needs which are: vision problems, motor disorders, and dyslexia (a specific learning disability in reading).

Most of modern mobile apps are poorly adapted for use by disabled people. So it’s been nothing but a challenge for us to do this project. iOS has special Accessibility features built in, however to make them work properly the app interface should meet the following requirements:

Easy-to-Read Text

Since the app users have obvious issues with image and video content perception, it was a logical decision to represent most of in-app information (up to 80%) textually.



There are some important rules how to execute text information for people with vision problems: