Mobile Accessibility, developed by CodeFactory, consists of a suite of 10 accessible applications for everyday online activities such as email, phone calls and contact lists, SMS, calendar and web. It also has a screen reader that works with these applications, as well as outside the suite to navigate the standard interface.
The volunteer-based project provides an easy way for people with disabilities to make complaints about inaccessible websites. Funded by Nominet Trust, Fix the Web has successfully addressed issues on 36 sites, with 60 website owners acknowledging access issues and a total of 83 owners informed.
Websites that have addressed accessibility issues on their sites after Fix the Web reports include the BBC, Facebook, Coventry Building Society and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
Under the Government’s rules, these channels are exempt from the captioning requirements that cover the primary channels. The only programs which must be captioned on them are those which were previously screened on the same network’s primary channel with captions. The survey shows that, in general, the commercial multichannels are only captioning the bare minimum they are obliged to do.
The iOS 4.3 update has seen some bug fixes to accessibility features. Apple has now fixed the issue preventing controls from being dismissed in some cases, and where the keyboard could not reappear when highlighting and browsing search results. Apple has also adjusted VoiceOver so that it reads entire charts in the ‘Stocks’ app when it is in landscape mode.
Features to the iPad 2 itself that may improve the accessibility for some users include:
