Development of Automatic Evaluation Tool for Mobile Accessibility for Android Application

As the number of mobile services grows, mobile users who gain access to the Internet via mobile devices are increasing. Accessibility refers to providing functionality to smart phone apps (and web) so that all human can access contents/service/products on the Internet regardless their age and disability. Accessibility support is essential for mobile users owing to the unique nature and capabilities of mobile devices, such as smaller screens, touch and gesture interface, and built-in screen readers specific to operating systems. The latest mobile device usage statistics showed that between the two different mobile channels, mobile apps and mobile webs, consumers spend most of their time in mobile apps. Accessibility of apps in a smartphone is more important than ever as more people use a smartphone apps to consume content/ service/ product on the Internet. Automated tools for mobile apps that evaluate compliance with accessibility standards are still scarce. This makes it difficult for developers who are unfamiliar with accessibility needs to ensure their apps are accessible by everyone. While the prototype does not include all the functions, it demonstrates that it is feasible to develop a full version of an automatic assessment tool for smartphone apps, which is an under-researched area.This paper designs an accessibility evaluation tool that checks mobile apps for conformance with accessibility standards, and develops a prototype of the evaluation tool. The proposed tool verifies the existence (or nonexistence) of alternative text for non-text content, which is an important accessibility factor for visually impaired users. It discovers missing alternative text by checking the contentDescription attribute of the ImageView element in Android XML files.