Mystery Meat 2.0 – Making hidden mobile interactions accessible

Mystery Meat 2.0

  • Ted Drake, Intuit Accessibility
  • Poonam Tathavadkar, TurboTax
  • CSUN 2017
  • Slides: slideshare.net/7mary4

This presentation was created for the CSUN 2017 conference. It introduces several hidden interactions available within Android and iOS. Learn how these work and how to make them accessible.
Blue Bell Ice Cream Blue Bell Ice Cream web site with mystery meat navigationis a classic example still live on the web.

The user must hover over the different images to see what they represent. It uses an image map and lacks alt text.

Android Touch and Hold

A.K.A.: Android’s Right Click or Android Long Press to Add context-specific menus

  • Default: Touch and hold
  • With TalkBack:
    Double tap and hold to long press

Mint Transactions

This short video shows how you can use the touch and hold/long press to quickly change category or merchant name within the Mint application

Developers

  • onLongClick: Called when a view has been clicked
    and held
  • Define and Show your menu
  • Not for vital interactions.
  • This is a short
    cut.

It is possible to modify the default notification to the user

iOS 3D Touch

iOS 3D Touch was introduced on the iPhone 6S. It detects the pressure a person applies to the screen with their finger. I light touch is seen as a tap. A medium touch will
trigger a peek view. A continued firm touch will launch the peek’s content into a full screen.

This also allows a person to trigger a shortcut menu on app icons.

  • Peek:
    Quick glance at relevant information and
    actions
  • Pop:
    Open full content previewed in the Peek
  • Quick Actions:
    Custom task list from app icon

User Experience: A light press opens a hovering window so you can “Peek” at the content. When you press just a little bit harder, you will “Pop” into the actual content you’d just been
previewing in a Peek.

Developer info

Quick Actions

This short video shows how 3d touch is also available via the app’s icon for quick tasks.

Pressing and holding the ItsDeductible icon will trigger a menu with customized tasks. App Icon Developer resources

Developers

Swipe Revealed Actions

Alternative actions allow users to quickly make changes without having to open a detail screen. For instance, they can delete a transaction or change an email’s status. The standard interface is to display the options when a user swipes a row to the left. For voiceOver users, the options are announced as alternate actions

It’s Deductible Actions

This short video shows how the alternative actions menu is used in standard mode and how VoiceOver announces the options.

In iOS, editActionsForRowAtIndexPath defines the actions to display in response to swiping the specified row

  • Accessible by default
  • Define:
    • Target Action and Response
    • Visible Text
    • Background color

Swipe Based Navigation

TurboTax uses a custom swipe based navigation between views. It lacks button or suggestions to move back and forth. User testing has showed it to be effective for
sighted users, but required some extra work for accessibility.

Default Experience With VoiceOver

The default experience on Turbo Tax uses a custom swipe gesture that lacks navigation buttons.

TurboTax detects a user’s Screen Reader/Switch Control status to show navigation buttons on Android and iOS

This video shows the default and VoiceOver/SwitchControl experience.

Notice in the standard experience how the screen tracks the user’s finger movement. This is not a standard swipe gesture, so it will not work with VoiceOver enabled.

We detect VoiceOver and SwitchControl is running to display alternate back and continue buttons

Swipe Navigation

  • Animated transition between views
  • Next and Back flow with every screen
  • Eliminates navigation buttons
  • No buttons? Accessibility?
  • Have I reached the end of the screen?

Instead of a basic swipe gesture, this interface tracks the movement of the finger across the screen. This allows the animation to match the user’s finger speed for a more
natural transition.

However, the finger touch is intercepted by VoiceOver, so the custom navigation does not work when VoiceOver is enabled.

Detect Accessibility ON

UIAccessibility kit provides two methods

True == Show Navigation Buttons

These booleans always return true or false. We use this to insert navigation buttons into the screen.

State Change Notification

This does not solve for the more complex of when the user decides to turn it on/off in the middle of the flow of the application for changes to take place dynamically.

For that as well, iOS has great support. Fires an accessibilityChanged event that helps detect changes even when the user is in the middle of the flow and chooses to
turn voice over on/off.

User enables VoiceOver while on a screen

Detect the status change

TurboTax Helper Function

  • How can we refactor code to detect any
    accessibility related settings and address them
    together?
  • Helper function to the rescue!
  • NSNotificationCenter adds observers to track any
    settings that may require us to show buttons.
  • This is an OR logic. Example – if voice over OR
    switch control status changed, display buttons.

Code specifics

  • Boolean is assigned a value – true if buttons need to be shown.
  • Consider a React Native project, all this happens in the native code side (Objective C). This boolean is then handed over to the JAVASCRIPT side since it is not feasible
    for Javascript to get information directly from the device.

Author: Ted

Accessibility is more than making sure images have alternate text. I work with engineers, product managers, and designers to understand how accessibility impacts the users, set realistic deadlines, and create the solutions to provide a delightful experience to all users, regardless of their physical, sensory, or cognitive ability.

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