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Validation of Toolkits for developing third-generation Android accessible mobile applications

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Abstract

This manuscript presents the results of the trials that have been realized with student developers in the context of the AEGIS Integrated Project of the 7th European Framework. The aim was to evaluate the added value and the expected impact of two open-source toolkits that have been developed within AEGIS, aiming to support developers in the creation of accessible mobile applications, namely the Android Accessibility Designer Toolkit and the Accessibility Advisor tool. Furthermore, this evaluation process allowed collecting comments for further optimization of the tools before their final release. Evaluation concerned the assessment of the tools themselves by student developers participating in the trials, but also of the accessible applications that student developers were requested to develop with these tools, which were then provided to expert low-vision users for further assessment of their accessibility. Developers were equally distributed into two groups: one Control Group and one Experimental Group. Developers from both groups were given the same exercise and had to meet the same requirements. The Experimental Group tried the AEGIS toolkits for their developments, whereas the Control Group developers freely chose other, non-AEGIS tools. Results showed that 18 % total development time was saved when AEGIS tools were used, and that these developer tools have a big potential to help developers create easily accessible applications.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the participants of these experiments for their valuable contributions to this work. This work was partially funded by the EC FP7 project AEGIS Open Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards; http://www.aegis-project.eu, Grant Agreement No. 224348.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT), Athens, Greece

    Maria Gemou & Evangelos Bekiaris

  2. Life Supporting Technologies (LifeSTech), Universidad Politénica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain

    Juan Bautista Montalva Colomer, Maria Fernanda Cabrera-Umpierrez, Silvia de los Rios & Maria Teresa Arredondo

Authors
  1. Maria Gemou
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  2. Juan Bautista Montalva Colomer
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  3. Maria Fernanda Cabrera-Umpierrez
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  4. Silvia de los Rios
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  5. Maria Teresa Arredondo
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  6. Evangelos Bekiaris
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Gemou.

Appendices

Annex 1: Pre-assessment questionnaire for developers

Annex 2: Post-assessment questionnaire for all developers

  1. 1.

    Which are the major problems/difficulties that you encountered while developing the application? Please be as specific as possible with the task during which you encountered difficulties.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 2.

    Which are the major problems/difficulties that you encountered while implementing accessibility into the application? Please be as specific as possible with the task during which you encountered difficulties.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 3.

    Which are the major optimizations that you recommend to the developers’ tools to make it easier to integrate accessibility into the applications?

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 4.

    Will you use again the developer tool(s) you have tried? Please explain your answer.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 5.

    Please annotate the time that you have used in the deployment of each activity. Please be honest; time employed is not going to affect final mark of the exercise.

Activity

Time employed

Searching/Learning about Android development

 

Searching/Learning about accessibility

 

Searching for suitable developer tool/platform

 

Learning about how to use the developer tool/platform

 

Designing the user interface of the application

 

Developing the application

 

Implementing accessibility into application

 

Testing the functionality and the accessibility of the application

 

Annex 3: Post-assessment questionnaire for developers–AA

  1. 1.

    Did you find difficult/confusing to navigate through Accessibility Advisor? In which parts/steps in specific? Please be as specific as possible with the task during which you encountered difficulties.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 2.

    Do you think Accessibility Advisor helped you to implement accessibility to your application? Please explain your answer.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 3.

    Was it difficult for you to specify the user and context in first three steps of Accessibility Advisor? Please explain your answer.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 4.

    Have you used personas before during your development process? If yes, please explain in which context (give a brief example).

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 5.

    Have you learned new facts related to accessibility during usage of Accessibility Advisor? Please explain your answer.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 6.

    Have you searched also for other alternative recommendations or tools (via Google, etc.)? If yes, please detail them.

……………………………………………………………………………

  1. 7.

    Have you considered recommendations given by Accessibility Advisor as sufficient? Please explain your answer.

……………………………………………………………………………

Annex 4: Questionnaire for sample applications evaluation for expert users

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Gemou, M., Montalva Colomer, J.B., Cabrera-Umpierrez, M.F. et al. Validation of Toolkits for developing third-generation Android accessible mobile applications. Univ Access Inf Soc 15, 101–127 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0377-9

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