Welcome to our series on the ICT Symposium’s Mobile Site and Native App Accessibility Testing. For the next couple of months we will be posting a couple of times a week! We will be posting a series of articles to help testers and developers determine and improve the accessibility of their mobile websites and apps. All this information is already online in Word format, so if you can’t wait check out our page on Mobile testing. Our previous article was Mobile Site and Native App Accessibility Testing, Step 3: Test critical issues – Exit trap – Day Eight, or check out our page with links to all the published Mobile Site and Native App Methodology articles.
1.2: Swipe / scroll traps
Methodologies: Mobile Site and Native App
Applies to: Touch users
Ensure you do not override standard mobile touch functions (swiping, scrolling, etc.) on the majority of the page unless the entire screen is a map.
About this requirement
Some users can only access portions of a page at a time. When a large area of the screen is taken over by another feature with different functionality (such as the inability to scroll the page) these users can become trapped in the feature.
Exclusions
When there is no additional content below the visible screen, then it is not necessary for standard swiping to work. In this case, the user can use the swipe function to scroll the visible area (please see the Pass 1 (Exclusion)).
How to test
- Open each page.
- Scroll to the bottom by swiping from the bottom to the top.
- Scroll to the top by swiping from the top to the bottom.
Examples – Mobile Site
Pass 1 (Exclusion) – the entire page is a scrollable area (map)
In the Prime app, the entire map takes up the screen. In order to not scroll the map you must select the small row of icons at the top of the page.
 Figure 1: Exclusion – the entire page is a scrollable area (map) |
Pass 2 (Exclusion) – the entire page is a scrollable area (map)
In the Vic Emergency app, the map takes up the entire screen and there is no scrolling the page.
 Figure 2: Exclusion – the entire page is a scrollable area (map) |
Pass 3 (Exclusion) – the entire page is a scrollable area (map)
In the Fires app the map takes up the entire screen and there is no scrolling the page.
 Figure 3: Exclusion – the entire page is a scrollable area (map) |
Pass 4 (Exclusion) – the map portion is the only scrollable area
In the Find Friends app the only swipe capability is in the map.
 Figure 4: Exclusion – the map portion is the only scrollable area |
Pass 5 – Map does not take up the majority of the screen
In the Uber app the map does not take up the entirety of the screen. The majority of the screen responds to standard scroll.
 Figure 5: Map does not take up the majority of the screen |
Pass 6 – Two finger scroll on map
In this website although the map takes up a large portion of the screen, the user can still swipe up and down the page as it requires two fingers to scroll the map.
 Figure 6: Two finger scroll on map |  Figure 7: Two finger scroll on map (instructions) |
Up Next
Up next for Native App Accessibility Testing is Critical issue – 1.3: Layer Trap.
Contributors
This document was developed by the ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium Mobile Sub-Committee. Members include: Gian Wild (Co-Chair), Peter McNally (Co-Chair), Brent Davis, Corbb O’Connor, Karen Herr, Kathryn Weber-Hottleman, Kathy Eng, Laura Renfro, Megha Rajopadhye, Mona Rekhi, Morgan Lee Kestner, Rafal Charlampowicz, Ryan Pugh, Steve Sawczyn, Sunish Gupta, Tom Lawton and Chris Law This document was developed by the ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium Native App Sub-Committee. Members include: Gian Wild (Co-Chair), Jennifer Chadwick (Co-Chair), Kathy Eng, Ryan Pugh, Kathryn Weber-Hottleman, Brent Davis, Laura Renfro, Peter McNally, Karen Herr, Steve Sawczyn, Sunish Gupta, Tom Lawton, Sam Bouchat, Rafal Charlampowicz, Damon Wandke, Morgan Lee Kester, Mona Rekhi, Corbb O’Connor and Chris Law.