Improving accessibility in our apps

This year, I’m trying hard to improve accessibility for people with particular vision, hearing and motor requirements across all my apps. Up until now, accessibility has been something of an afterthought - little tweaks here and there. I’m sure it’s the same for many of us.

Does anyone have some starting points on how to really implement good accessibility in our apps? White papers, checklists of things we should be doing and so on?

Is there somewhere to submit apps that people with particular needs would be happy to test them and feedback?

@Gavin Smith — I worked in Oxford for one year in 1999-2000 and was amazed by the place of people with a handicap in the UK compared to France.

Anyway, I agree with you and we should all design our applications without always relying only on the System.

“The U.S. Access Board is a federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities through leadership in accessible design and the development of accessibility guidelines and standards for the built environment, transportation, communication, medical diagnostic equipment, and information technology.”

You might be able to get some thoughts from the following, especially Section 508, Subpart B:

https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/communications-and-it/about-the-section-508-standards/section-508-standards

On macOS the more you rely on the system, the more accessible your app is. That’s why I’m always telling people to try to avoid creating custom controls with Canvas - they’re not accessible. An example I saw elsewhere in the forum today: Don’t create your own scrollbar, use the built in one and it’s magically accessible to assistive devices.

@Tim Parnell — I agree with you. My explanation was inaccurate

Would be nice if we got new controls once in a while. Our two most recent control additions were SegmentedControl and ComboBox. And both are barely usable.

I create custom controls because I need to do modern things with Xojo.