New technologies such as tablet computers and techniques such as online data analysis are heralding a new age of customised learning assistance for young people who are severely disabled, a practitioner has told E-Access Bulletin.

A draft set of standards and guidelines to make BBC web content and apps more accessible when viewed on mobile devices has been released by the corporation following a year of testing and development.

The Draft BBC Mobile Accessibility Standards and Guidelines were announced in a blog post by Henny Swan, senior accessibility specialist at the BBC. Up to now the BBC’s existing accessibility guidelines have been used as a basis for creating accessible mobile content, Swan says, but it was felt that more specific mobile standards were now needed.

By Henny Swan.

The BBC has now published a set of draft Mobile Accessibility Standards and Guidelines to the wider web development community, a ground-breaking project which has been in development for a year now [see also – news, earlier in this issue of E-Access Bulletin]. While written primarily for BBC employees and suppliers to use, the corporation’s hope is that they might be useful for any individual or organisation building mobile web content and native apps.

A mobile phone app allowing citizens in developing countries to fight corruption in development projects is one of four £500,000 winners of the Google Global Impact Challenge, which recognises technology innovations by non-profit organisations. The app is a mobile version of Development Check ( http://www.developmentcheck.org/ ), an online platform set up by international development charity [...]

The concept of digital accessibility simply as a means of catering for disabled users is out-of-date: in the modern world, digital inclusion must be understood as the need to serve everybody, whatever their access method or device, a leading accessibility specialist has said.

A free smartphone app that can help disabled people find and connect with others in their community and request social support has been launched in the UK.

MiFinder combines elements of social networking platforms with GPS satellite location, allowing users to engage and potentially meet with people nearby them who share similar interests. The app has a range of potential uses – including dating – but is unusual in promoting its use for social support, its owner says.

Up to 200 blind and visually impaired people are to be trained to use a package of smartphone apps that can help with communication and everyday tasks, with £14,000 of funding allocated by the UK government.

A Brazilian mobile app that translates Portuguese speech, digital text and photographs of text into sign language, all using an animated avatar, has been recognised at a global apps awards ceremony.

A Spanish developer who created an app to help his five-year-old autistic son communicate has won 50,000 euros at the second annual “Smart Accessibility” awards for Android smartphone apps, presented by the Vodafone Foundation.

Mobile apps that are designed to be accessible to people with disabilities are more usable by everyone, the London meeting of a group for usability professionals has heard. The insight will be valuable to many local authorities and other public bodies who are currently developing or thinking of developing smartphone apps. Henny Swan, senior accessibility specialist [...]

A new pilot project is allowing citizens to see local service information such as planning applications and food hygiene ratings of cafes projected live onto images or videos of their local area using “augmented reality” (AR) software. Data can be seen overlaid live onto locations by pointing a smartphone or tablet computer with a camera running [...]

UK local authorities are witnessing a huge upsurge in use of mobile devices to access their websites, delegates heard at this year’s Building Perfect Council Websites conference, hosted by E-Government Bulletin publisher Headstar. But Jamie Kirk, online knowledge officer at the Local Government Association, told the conference councils should not fall prey to the “shiny app [...]

A new series of apps has been developed to enhance accessibility features for Android-enabled smartphones for blind and visually impaired users.

Developers of mobile apps must build in “as much choice, adaptability and flexibility as possible” to their products to maximise accessibility for disabled people, or risk creating a whole new world of digital exclusion, a new report finds.

‘Moving together: mobile apps for inclusion and assistance’ ( http://www.onevoiceict.org/news/moving-together-mobile-apps-inclusion-and-assistance ) was written by E-Access Bulletin editor Dan Jellinek with Peter Abrahams of Bloor Research, on behalf of the OneVoice for Accessible IT Coalition.

Only 12% of council websites are easy to access and navigate from a typical mobile device, despite rapid increases in mobile web use, according to the latest “Better Connected” review of all UK council websites. Overall, however, standards of usability from mobile devices have improved over the past year. A total of 433 local authority sites [...]