Another post in App a Month blog series by BarrierBreak to talk about Mobile App Accessibility! This time Bhavesh, who is blind chose to review one of the most popular music apps the Gaana. He shares his experience below.
I am back with another app review. This time I chose to review one of the popular music app amongst the music lovers called Gaana. The app is tested on stock android platform running KitKat 4.4.2 and Talkback. Talkback is an official screen reader for android OS that helps visually impaired access the android OS based on spoken descriptions. Why Gaana? Listening Music is my favorite hobby, and it works as the best medicine for me, whenever I feel stressed or I am upset. Even more, I always enjoy listening music for fun! And its best when I can listen to a collection of hundreds and thousands of songs on the go. The Gaana app lets me search and listen to songs. Users can listen songs by albums, artists, categories or playlists created by different users. One can create their own playlists too. Users can also listen songs from My history section in case they wish to listen to songs which they have recently heard. Note that I have tested the features available to the users before login, as somehow I could not register as a user. Review When I launched the Gaana app for the first time, Talkback only announced Next button which I did not understand. When I asked my sighted colleague, he told me that there was a tutorial. However, the information of the tutorial was conveyed using images only. As a blind person, I could not access the information conveyed using images. It would be really nice if the information conveyed in the tutorial is made available in text. This will enable screen reader users to access the tutorial with ease. Further I clicked on Next button, and then I activated Start using gaana option. When I accessed the Home screen of the Gaana app, at the top of the screen, Talkback announced two unlabeled controls, which were More options and Search. I came to know this only after activating them. If textual descriptions are provided to the unlabeled controls of the app, then the screen reader will announce the control type along with the textual description such as More options button which would enable screen reader users access the controls effectively. I accessed the next option on the screen, which was a Facebook social media widget. The screen reader did not announce anything. After that screen reader announced 2 buttons Top playlists and Top songs which I could understand by just hearing the descriptions of the buttons. When I accessed the Top playlists button, the focus directly moved to the content which was updated below and was really nice to here. The screen also contained songs by various artists, albums and categories, which Talkback announced, however these options were announced as static text. Screen reader users need to know whether the announced option is text or a control so that they can activate them. Specifying the control type such as button would enable screen reader users access the controls effectively. I could activate them by guess work. I accessed screen such as Settings, Search etc. However the title of the screen was Gaana, which was identical to the home screen of the app. I had to listen to the content of the screen in order to understand what the screen contains. Each screen of the app should have a different title. I launched the Sonu Nigam forever screen of the app, which was my favorite category. Screen reader announced an unlabeled control after each song name. When I performed a double tap on a song, the song started playing. I was disappointed when I could not access a single control of the app, as all the controls of the player were unlabeled. I had to pause the song in order to listen to my screen reader, but I couldnt, and I literary had to power off my tab in order to stop the song. Conclusion I hope that this app review would motivate developers of the Gaana app to make the app accessible. If accessibility is taken care off for the app, this will certainly become usable by more people including people with visual disabilities. Hope to see implementation of accessibility in the next version of the app! Time to meet up again! Register for AccessIndia Convention 2014: http://accessindia.org.in/harish/convention.htm Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
