Accessibility Isn’t Optional on Mobile Either
Mobile accessibility often gets less attention than web accessibility, despite mobile devices being many people’s primary or only computing device, and despite mobile operating systems providing genuinely mature, well-supported accessibility APIs. Building accessible mobile apps isn’t dramatically harder than building inaccessible ones — it mostly requires knowing what to do and building it in deliberately from the start.
Screen Reader Support: VoiceOver and TalkBack
Both iOS’s VoiceOver and Android’s TalkBack rely on your app providing meaningful accessibility labels for every interactive element. A button showing only an icon needs an explicit accessibility label describing its actual function (“Add to cart,” not “shopping cart icon”), and images that convey meaningful information need descriptive alternative text, exactly as with web accessibility — the same underlying principle, expressed through different platform-specific APIs.
Touch Target Sizing
Both platforms recommend a minimum touch target size — roughly 44×44 points on iOS, 48×48 dp on Android — to accommodate users with motor impairments or anyone using the app one-handed while otherwise occupied. Small, tightly packed interactive elements are a common, easily overlooked accessibility failure that also happens to frustrate ordinary users navigating on smaller devices or in less-than-ideal conditions, like a moving vehicle or while walking.
Color Contrast and Not Relying on Color Alone
The same principles from web accessibility apply directly to mobile: sufficient contrast between text and background, and never using color as the sole indicator of meaning or state. A form field showing only a red border to indicate an error, with no accompanying icon or text, fails for color-blind users and for anyone using the device in bright sunlight where subtle color differences become genuinely hard to distinguish.
Dynamic Type and Text Scaling
Users who increase their device’s text size for readability expect your app to respect that system-level preference, scaling text accordingly rather than truncating or overlapping content at larger sizes. Testing your app at the largest supported system text size, not just default settings, reveals layout issues that are otherwise invisible during typical development and casual testing at default sizes.
Focus Order and Navigation
Screen reader users navigate by moving focus sequentially through interactive elements, and that focus order needs to follow a logical, predictable reading order matching the visual layout — not the arbitrary order elements happen to appear in your underlying code, which can easily diverge from the visual arrangement, especially in complex layouts built with overlapping or absolutely positioned views.
Testing with Real Assistive Technology
Automated accessibility scanning tools catch some structural issues, but genuinely navigating your own app with VoiceOver or TalkBack enabled — with your eyes closed, not just glancing at the screen — reveals problems that automated tools reliably miss: confusing announcement order, missing context around what an element actually does, or interactions that are technically labeled correctly but still don’t make sense navigated purely by voice and gesture.
Platform-Specific Considerations
iOS and Android have genuinely different accessibility conventions and APIs, and a cross-platform framework doesn’t automatically guarantee equal accessibility support on both platforms without your explicit attention — React Native and Flutter both provide accessibility APIs, but they require deliberate, explicit implementation per component, not automatic accessibility support you get simply by using the framework.
Practical Checklist
- Add meaningful accessibility labels to every interactive element, especially icon-only buttons.
- Ensure touch targets meet minimum size recommendations, with adequate spacing between adjacent targets.
- Test at maximum system text scaling, not just default settings.
- Verify logical focus order matches visual layout, especially in complex or custom-built screens.
- Test with an actual screen reader enabled, not just automated accessibility scanning tools alone.