Chosen Theme: Tools and Resources for Designing Accessible Mobile Apps

Welcome! Today we’re diving into Tools and Resources for Designing Accessible Mobile Apps. Expect practical toolkits, real-world stories, and clear next steps. If accessibility matters to you and your users, subscribe, share your favorite tools, and tell us what you want covered next.

Start with Standards and Platform Guidance

Use WCAG 2.2 as your north star, translating its principles into mobile realities like touch targets, orientation changes, and small-view constraints. Build a shared checklist that maps success criteria to concrete app behaviors, then revisit it during grooming, design reviews, and code handoffs.

Start with Standards and Platform Guidance

Study Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and accessibility documentation, plus Android’s Material accessibility guidance and Accessibility APIs. These official resources clarify behaviors for Dynamic Type, Reduce Motion, content descriptions, labels, and semantics that directly influence screen reader output and user comfort.

Screen Readers and Accessibility Inspectors

Turn on VoiceOver and navigate your flows using gestures, then verify labels, traits, and hints with Xcode’s Accessibility Inspector. Note rotor order, explore headings, and confirm that actionable elements have clear announcements and predictable focus movement across screens and states.

Screen Readers and Accessibility Inspectors

Use TalkBack to traverse the UI, checking content descriptions, state changes, and grouping. Run Accessibility Scanner to surface tappable area issues and low contrast. Pair this with Layout Inspector to verify hierarchy, ensuring elements are not hidden behind decorative views.

Color, Contrast, and Visual Clarity

Use Stark or Contrast to quickly validate text and icon contrast against WCAG thresholds. Test samples across light and dark backgrounds, different states, and small sizes. Validate in-device under bright sunlight, where marginal choices often fail users and hurt task completion.

Preview your UI with Sim Daltonism or Color Oracle to catch reliance on color alone. Add patterns, labels, or secondary indicators for status and charts. Invite readers to share their preferred simulators and tips for making data visualizations more inclusive and understandable.

Use Material 3 dynamic color and iOS semantic colors to maintain contrast automatically across themes. Store tokens in your design system, then verify contrast on all states—hover is rare on mobile, but focus, pressed, disabled, and selected must remain legible and distinct.

Figma Plugins and Annotation Kits

Leverage plugins like Stark and Able to check contrast and simulate conditions right in Figma. Use annotation kits to document names, roles, states, and Dynamic Type behavior. This reduces ambiguity at handoff and prevents last-minute fixes that disrupt schedules.

Design Tokens and Reusable Components

Define typography scales that respect Dynamic Type, spacing that supports larger targets, and color tokens with guaranteed contrast. Bake these into components with clear guidance, so every new screen inherits accessible defaults without extra effort or debate from the team.

Prototyping for Assistive Interactions

Prototype gestures with alternatives, such as on-screen controls for motion-restricted users. Annotate expected VoiceOver and TalkBack announcements, error messages, and focus order. Encourage peers to review prototypes wearing headphones and eyes closed to simulate auditory-first navigation.

Android Lint and Espresso Accessibility Checks

Enable Android Lint rules and Espresso accessibility checks to flag small touch targets, missing content descriptions, and low-contrast text. Make failures block merges, then post results to pull requests so the whole team learns from issues and patterns repeat less over time.

Learn More

XCTest, UI Tests, and iOS Audits

Write XCTest and XCUITest cases that verify labels, traits, and state announcements for critical flows. Use snapshot tests across Dynamic Type sizes and themes. Host a weekly audit where failures are reviewed, fixed, and documented in a changelog everyone can reference.

Learn More

Deque axe DevTools Mobile and Fastlane Pipelines

Integrate axe DevTools Mobile for deeper checks, and wire results into Fastlane to run on every build. Publish reports to your CI dashboard, track trends, and celebrate improvements. Tell us which CI integrations you prefer and how you visualize accessibility progress.

Learn More

Inclusive User Research and Testing

Partner with organizations that represent diverse disabilities, and compensate participants fairly. Share accessible invitations and consent forms, provide transportation or remote options, and test on personal devices whenever possible to reflect real-world settings and configurations accurately.

Use platforms like Lookback or Zoom with live captions, screen sharing, and clear audio. Prepare alternative tasks for different input needs. Record TalkBack and VoiceOver sessions, then time-stamp observations for your team to replay and learn asynchronously without losing crucial context.

Translate findings into actionable issues, prioritized by user impact. Share short clips and quotes that bring barriers to life. Invite readers to comment with their study templates or consent form tips, helping the community run more ethical, effective accessibility research.

Save Apple Developer Accessibility, Android Developers Accessibility, and the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. They provide deep guidance on APIs, patterns, and principles. Revisit them during planning, not just when bugs appear, to keep decisions aligned with evolving standards.

Learning Hubs and Community Support

Join accessibility communities, follow #a11y conversations, and attend mobile-focused meetups. Ask for critiques of tricky patterns like infinite lists or custom controls. Share your own learnings and tools in the comments below to connect with peers who can help you grow.