What is Mobile Accessibility? Understanding its Benefits & Importance

Mobile phones have become a vital part of everyone’s life. Around 6.92 billion people in the world use smartphones as of 2023. Out of this significant share, 270 million people are from the US.  Since approximately 86 percent of the world’s population uses smartphones daily, it becomes crucial to ensure that whatever mobile applications they use are easily accessible. Also, since 1.3 billion people live with some disability, ensuring mobile accessibility becomes even more critical.

Table of Contents:

• What is Mobile Accessibility?
• What are the Six Benefits of Mobile Accessibility? 1. Upholds Your Legal Responsibility 2. Enhances SEO 3. Builds Brand Recognition and Customer Retention 4. Increases Your Profits 5. Upholds Your Moral Responsibility 6. Offers a Great Degree of Independence
• Mobile Accessibility Testing
• Wrapping Up

What is Mobile Accessibility? 

Mobile accessibility refers to ensuring that applications and websites are accessible to everyone, especially people with disabilities who use smart devices. The latter typically includes mobile phones, tablets, wearables, Smart TVs, etc. Mobile accessibility helps people with visual, physical, auditory, cognitive, and other disabilities access your content with ease. It also provides them with a fair environment and better social integration.

Benefits of Mobile Accessibility

Having mobile-accessible applications and websites is very important and beneficial as well, in the following ways:

1. Upholds Your Legal Responsibility

With the use of smartphones and the internet on the rise, digital accessibility has become a civil right for people with disabilities. In this scenario, ensuring mobile app accessibility can save you from legal issues, such as lawsuits filed for discrimination. It also helps you adhere to the three laws and guidelines:

• Section 508: A US law that requires federal and associated companies to make technology and electronic data accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
• ADA: The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates businesses to make electronic content accessible to people with disabilities. 
• WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a standard set of guidelines explaining how to make your electronic content accessible to everyone. 

2. Enhances SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aims to bring traffic to your website and mobile applications by improving your ranking in search engines like Google. Along with expanding your reach, higher visibility increases the number of conversions.  Mobile accessibility enhances your SEO by making your content easy to find. It also makes your mobile applications user-friendly and improves their navigability. Easy-to-navigate applications and websites decrease the bounce rate, i.e., the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. 

3. Builds Brand Recognition and Customer Retention

Ensuring mobile accessibility showcases that you have a law-abiding business that is mindful of its customers and their requirements. Being inclusive of every single customer creates a reputable image for your brand. This fostering of a diverse culture attracts partners for collaboration, thereby establishing a good reputation for your brand in the industry.  The fostered inclusivity increases the access of people with disabilities to quality customer services. The provision of good customer services increases customers’ satisfaction and causes them to subscribe to your business and thus resulting in their retention. 

4. Increases Your Profits

Mobile accessibility equips your mobile applications with content that can be viewed in different ways, including videos, audio, alt-text, written transcripts, etc. This makes your content accessible to people who are experiencing age-related decline, are not fluent in English, are suffering from injuries, etc.  Thus, mobile accessibility enables you to reach a broader customer base with your services and products. This, in turn, improves your likelihood of increasing your sales and profits.  Also Read: What is Mobile Accessibility? Understanding its Benefits & Importance

5. Upholds Your Moral Responsibility

People with disabilities are an equal part of society, thus making accessible mobile applications and websites a moral responsibility of enterprises around the world.  The creation of mobile-accessible products, when done in a collaborative environment, results in the contribution of every employee in the company towards a noble cause. For example, a designer can work on the design elements of the application and ensure that they are appropriate for all users, a developer can work on developing the language for the application, etc. 

6. Offers a Great Degree of Independence

Mobile accessibility provides an opportunity for becoming independent to people who live with disabilities. With just a few taps, swipes, and voice commands, they can do things such as:

• Buy groceries and gifts
• Handle banking and finances
• Take an online course
• Purchase airplane tickets
• View event calendars
• Keep in touch with the current news
• Book a cab

Mobile accessibility encourages people with disabilities to participate in activities outside their homes. It makes them self-sufficient, supports active aging, and reduces the cost of senior care services. The reduced demand for special services brings economic benefits to the entire society.

Mobile Accessibility Testing

Now you know about the benefits and importance of mobile accessibility, how do you know if your mobile applications are accessible? Mobile accessibility guidelines can help you determine the accessibility level of your mobile applications and website. It is typically based on the principles of WCAG – perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. The checklist is made up of questions pertaining to:

• Whether the functionalities can be operated with a keyboard? 
• Whether the images have a high-quality alt-text? 
• Whether the color contrast ratio is appropriate? 
• Whether the videos and audio have proper descriptions (subtitles) 
• Whether the application page gives a warning before it times out? 
• Whether the language is readable and error-free? 
• Whether the mobile application has predictable and consistent features? 
• Whether the mobile application and website have the option for auto-filling forms? 

Besides an accessibility checklist, you can also go for mobile accessibility testing tools. They automate the task of evaluating your application’s accessibility level and offer personalized solutions to improve it as per WCAG criteria. Also Read: Mobile Accessibility: Creating Seamless User Experiences for All

Wrapping Up

Mobile accessibility comes with many benefits. It protects you from lawsuits, widens your reach, builds brand recognition, increases your profits, and improves the quality of life of people with disabilities. Since mobile accessibility is so important, you need to ensure that your mobile applications and websites are accessible. Reaching out to accessibility companies can make this otherwise time-consuming task a breeze for you. To begin with, you can reach out to Hurix Digital. Hurix has a team of top-notch IAAP-certified professionals familiar with global accessibility requirements. With the help of automated accessibility testing tools and manual intervention, we offer WCAG audit reports and VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) reports. Additionally, Hurix is the trusted partner of companies like Pearson, Wiley, Philips, etc. For more information on mobile accessibility solutions, Get in touch with Hurix.