Education has shifted in the past years to various modes, and one of the most popular ways to get access to a learning content is a mobile application. However, mobile applications, being an affordable solution for the educational content, should meet accessibility criteria: for instance, in Kazakhstan, there are 719, 000 people with disabilities as of October 2023 according to Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the population of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In this study 15 apps designed in Kazakhstan and available in Google Play and App Store were selected. To analyze the accessibility, features from the current version of Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.2 to Mobile Applications (WCAG2Mobile) such as audio description, captions, sensory characteristics, color and contrast and others were used. For each app, an accessibility criterion from WCAG2Mobile was coded as a Bernoulli variable (1 = implemented, 0 = not implemented). The accessibility score for each app was calculated as the mean of these binary indicators. Findings suggest that not many applications used in Kazakhstan are accessibility-friendly and the app designers should take that into consideration and make adjustments accordingly.

Authors:
Gulmira Urazbekova, KIMEP University, Kazakhstan
Madina Kuvatova, KIMEP University, Kazakhstan

About the Presenter(s)
Gulmira Urazbekova, Senior Lecturer at KIMEP University, Kazakhstan, focuses on education effectiveness, policy, and academic English teaching, currently exploring accessibility of educational technology for diverse learners.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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