Only WhatsApp highly accessible for persons with disabilities; other 9 widely used apps fail to meet standards: Vidhi report

Only WhatsApp, one out of ten widely used apps examined, is highly accessible for persons with disabilities (PwDs), a report by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy has found..The other apps audited by Vidhi's report are PhonePe, PayTM, Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon, Flipkart, WhatsApp, Telegram, Uber & Ola.This unique study was conducted by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy along with I-Stem and Mission Accessibility. It included an evidence-based evaluation of the accessibility of the ten most widely used apps in India..The report found that PayTM and Flipkart, in particular, have several blocking issues that need to be resolved for PwDs. Further, common violations on both Android and iOS operating systems include elements that do not meet the minimum colour contrast ratio of 4.5:1 between background and foreground, tab order of elements that are not logical and elements which do not have accessible names.Moreover, none of the apps can be used in landscape mode..This is the case despite the fact that every service provider in India, whether government or private, is mandated to make their services disabled friendly under the Right of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and that technology is used for a whole range of daily activities today..The researchers rated the apps as ‘highly accessible’, ‘moderately accessible’ and of ‘low accessibility', based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)..The report titled Making the Digital Ecosystem Disabled Friendly was supported by the HT Parekh Foundation and the GSMA Innovation Fund. .It was launched by Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary, Department of Empowerment for Persons with Disabilities, Government of India at the Bangalore International Centre on January 13, 2023. An online community of thirty like-minded individuals has been set up to make the digital ecosystem more disabled friendly. Phase 2 of the project will be pursued in the next few months. .Based on the findings the authors of this report suggested that in order to create a truly inclusive digital ecosystem, websites and apps need to ensure they are designed in compliance with WCAG or Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) standards. .[Read full report]