For as much as I laud Apple for their unwavering year-over-year commitment to improving Accessibility on iOS, there remains one area of the operating system that is in dire need of better accessibility, at least visually — the App Store.
The problem with the App Store's accessibility lies with its typography. It's way too small, making reading app descriptions and release notes difficult. Because there's no way to adjust the font size --- and I'd guess the App Store, as an app, doesn't support Dymanic Type --- I'm forced to hold my iPhone and iPad close to my face and squint in order to read about an app. Consequently, however, squinting so much makes my eyes tired and start to hurt, which in turn makes for a pretty terrible user experience.
Of course, the App Store isn't the only one of Apple's digital storefronts that are affected by ridiculously small typography; the iTunes Store and the iBookstore have the same issue. I mention the App Store in particular only because it's the store I use most. To be sure, it's been my experience as a visually impaired person that all three of Apple's stores aren't the best for reading.
In my testing, I've found VoiceOver does work well in reading aloud app descriptions and release notes, but that doesn't solve the problem of the small font size. What I'd like Apple do to remedy this --- what they should do --- is add a slider somewhere in Settings that controls the size of the font. Or, even better, update App Store.app to support Dynamic Type; this way, the app will support whatever font size users set system-wide. Put another way, I feel the App Store (and iTunes and iBooks) should bend to Dynamic Type's will in the same way that Mail and Messages do.
As it stands today, though, using the App Store on my iOS devices (especially on my iPhone) isn't the most pleasant experience. But when it comes to the App Store, while lots of people like to write about curation and top lists, I think the general accessibility of the Store often goes overlooked. In fact, in all the time I've been writing about Accessibility on iOS, I'm genuinely shocked at how I've neglected to mention this. It's also a curious oversight on Apple's part.
I often peruse the App Store every Thursday, when the front page is refreshed, and also enjoy reading through release notes to learn of changes and bug fixes. As things stand today, though, the small font makes these tasks feel more like work than play.
It's my hope that Apple will address this issue sooner than later.
Reader comments
Making the App Store more accessible
I think appstore is a hybrid of webviews and native... But that doesn't mean they can't support accessibility. Explore section is hard to use on iPhone6 because when you click on a category the view animates by separating up and down while new view zooms in the middle. Can't use swipe from left edge to right to go back because it opens up and down. You gotta tap the up-arrow button on the navigation bar which is hard to reach -- with reachability it requires more action from user -- and 'Unapple' like. Hopefully they focus on accessibility across all their apps even though most of Apple's apps support accessibility.
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Really interesting article and shows a problem for me with iOS. I have a visonn impairment and actually left iOS for android for a bigger screen which is easier to see. I want to come back but I still think it is limited by small fonts in places.
I'm interested, how do u handle websites that can't be zoomed in and have really small font? On android I can override that and zoom on any mobile page.
What do you think of display zoom? Seems a nice idea but I'm not sure having apps permanently zoomed up is the right solution. The scaling may meke it blurry and we may lose features compared to using standard mode. I think apps properly allowing adjustable font is best but when apple don't even support it in all their own apps, what incentive do developers have to do so?
I just downloaded ITunes and I'm a little disappointed with how it looks.
I was looking for something better looking. Why not, the iPhone, ipad, imac are beautiful device so, why not make iTunes better looking.
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App Store has also gotten a lot more difficult to use from a blind voiceover perspective since the release of iOS eight. iOS eight has been very buggy from an excess ability standpoint. I hope Apple gets these scrolling and focus issues with voiceover fixed very soon.
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As for Safari/web pages that doesn't support pinch to Zoom, I use Apple's Accessibility feature Zoom with 3 finger double tap! Then pan the screen around with 3 fingers or touch the edges for it to move back and forth or up and down. What I've recently found that is a huge help for me while I'm on my iPhone is I can't stand mobile web pages and prefer the desktop experience and learned you can change this! If you come across a 'mobile' web page, tap the searc bar at the top, then pull down on the page below the search bar and it'll have 2 options show up, Add to Favorites and Swithch t desktop site! Tap Switch to desktop site and you can pinch to Zoom without doing the 3 finger double tap! I'm currently using an iPhone 5 and this works great for me, but can't wait for my iPhone 6 Plus comes in! :) Hope this helps
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Thanks. Yeah switching to full web view is a good idea but then it just annoys me how you can't zoom as a quick pinch to zoom to view something more easily is better than having to do the 3 finger zoom or load the full site that will take longer. I find the default text size on safari unnecessarily small. Wish it could be changed
I've switched to iphone 6 plus after being an Android user for years. So far I'm loving ios but the only issue that will probably make me go back to Android is not being able to adjust font size on ios, I really miss how on Android all text adjusted to screen.