Apps for Smart Phones and Devices

All smart phones typically have built in accessibility features and functions, which provide a platform on which applications (apps) can be built.

If you develop an app for the public, the content and interface options provided should follow the best practice guidelines developed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These include:

• Use cookies sparingly. Cookies are a common and effective means to store small amounts of information on the app user. These are typically used to personalise data and are commonly used to store a token representing a person’s identity in order to enable automatic sign in.
• Ensure the person is informed about use of personal and device information.
• Allow the person to control application behaviour that might not otherwise be apparent, such as access to the network and access to device data.
• Enable automatic sign-in.
• Minimise application and data size.
• Make telephone numbers ‘click-to-call’.
• Optimise the application’s start up time. Customer experience is strongly influenced by the initial start-up time of an application.

Customer Communications Toolkit for the Public Service – A Universal Design Approach

Digital and Web Based Communication Systems and Services

Mobile Web Content and Apps Checklist

Members of the public should be able to access content on a range of devices, regardless of differences in presentation capabilities and methods of access.

Assign access keys to the most commonly used functions.

Do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear.

Divide pages into usable but limited sized sections.

Make sure that the overall size of page is suitable to the memory capacity of the device. For apps - minimise application and data size.

Where possible avoid large or high-resolution images.

Make sure that information presented with colour is also available without colour.

Ensure there is good contrast between text and background colour combinations.

Send content in a format that is known to be supported by the majority of devices.

Provide informative error messages and a means of navigating away from an error message back to useful information.