Most Common Accessibility Barriers in Native Mobile Applications Used in Ecuador

Aware that a significant portion of the world’s population suffers from some form of disability, a test was designed to evaluate the level of compliance with accessibility requirements of Android mobile apps randomly taken from the Google Play Store available in Ecuador. The seven-phase manual method was used to evaluate the apps, the results revealed that the most significant number of accessibility problems were: 1) the size and space of the touch target (47.5%); 2) the instructions for custom gestu-res in the manipulation of the touch screen (28.2%), and 3) contrast problems (9.2%). The limiting factors in this research were the number of applications evaluated by the proposed method and the tests with end-users with some disabilities. Based on this analysis, applying this method is recommended to complement the automatic review method for future work. The study also suggests that there is still much to be done regarding public policies, regulations, and initiatives to improve the accessibility and inclusion of people with disabilities.