Mobile-PrivAccess: Method for analyzing accessibility in mobile applications from the privacy viewpoint abiding by W3C

Abstract

Despite accessibility is a right ensured by the legislation, it is still a challenge to People with Disability and Limitations (PwDaL), considering Limitations, for instance, those deriving from aging and low literacy. In Digital Systems (DS) restrictions on use by PwDaL are easily found which even more excludes them from society which preponderantly interacts with the technology. Recognizing the importance of ensuring accessibility and privacy to PwDaL we investigated the problems of accessibility and digital privacy in the context of mobile applications and proposed the Mobile-PrivAccess method. This method allows applying the W3C directives to assess the accessibility to mobile applications privacy resources, without the participation of PwDaL. The absence of these users spares unnecessary efforts at the preliminary stages of the application assessment. The method based on an inspection technique is a four-stage structured process with established goals containing support artifacts for specific phases. For applying the method, two professionals with knowledge on and or experience in digital inclusion for PwDaL and/or in the W3C standards are required. For verifying the viability of the method proposed an experiment was performed adopting the proposed method to assess the accessibility of the Waze App [13] in three operating systems, as follows: Android, iOS and Windows Phone. The results demonstrated the viability of the method indicating that Waze meets few success criteria and presents a number of accessibility barriers to different PwDaL profiles.