There are some amazing things about the iPhone 3GS’ “white on black” accessibility features. A great move by Apple and eagerly awaited by many.

Firstly, it works really well in the browser and applications like the BOM radar where you can zoom into pages – but less well with apps that haven’t catered for zooming or often the actual infrastructure of the iPhone itself – such as the keyboard, input fields and user feedback. Each of these are detailed with examples below in this first take review.

iPhone Safari, white on black mode

“White on Black” actually simply inverts the whole phone. Which means all screens be it white on black or black on white and it does so indiscriminately across the page attributes.

Inverting works well when you can zoom into web pages as items generally need to be larger for most users of this feature. I think even the horizontal scroll that is created by enlarging text, (while less than ideal) is much easier to manipulate on a gesture interface than the desktop experience which forces users to engage with the horizontal scroll bar. However, the user is unable to zoom into the browser itself, which means the buttons along the bottom of Safari and the input fields at the top can’t be enlarged for better viewing. The browser and similar interface elements throughout the application become black on brown, which is less than ideal from a high contrast perspective. (As most of the infrastructure is a mid blue on grey by default)

In the screen capture below you can see the safari browser with the keyboard active. Again, these infrastructural elements are still not enlargeable. The cancel button to exit out of the keyboard, and the url text erase buttons (that little cross in the input field) are also not only very poor contrast, but they are closely positioned as well meaning that the wrong button can be easily pressed with frustrating results.

iPhone Safari - active keyboard

Vocal Search

Google Vocal Search comes with the iPhone by default and it is a great resource for an alternative for search input. While this means that users will need to switch between the Google and Safari applications to perform searches, it provides a learn-able alternative to using the keyboard. (Unfortunately, I’ve only found evidence of external keyboards courtesy of DIY kits, hacks and jailbreaking)

iPhone Google Voice Search

Google’s Vocal Search interface also suffers from poor contrast and does not allow the user to zoom. When inverted the progress messages such as “Speak now”, “Working” or “Didn’t get that” become a black on white dialogue box sitting on top of a pale grey background, making it impossible for many people to see.

While this app would be learn-able and is supported by a “speak now” sound, it is hard to tell what has happened once any input has occurred. Generally speaking, vocal search really relies on feedback as it doesn’t always work. In this case, the feedback is unfortunately unusable.

More examples

Below are a few screen shots which highlight the inverted default iPhone interfaces which don’t stack up as well as they should for visually impaired users in “white on black” mode. Each of these examples are of standard interface elements.

Accessibility settings page

This is the accessibility settings page. You can not zoom in on this page. The navigation elements (back buttons) are poor contrast. The on switch provides good contrast and visibility, but the off toggle does not. These same features are found thoughout the iPhone application.

iPhone Accessibility Settings

Notifications

The default Apple standard notification is white on dark blue, so when inverted it becomes black on orange. It is also has very little contrast against the background especially because of the semi-transparent design – meaning some users in this mode may not see the message at all.

Ebay Notification

When the background is black by default

In white on black mode, (shown below) screens which are have a black background become white. This is particularly not useful with applications such as the calculator (second image) which would be best seen in standard mode. It is impractial to expect users to switch modes depending on the application, particularly given the settings pages are not ideal. Although, the calculator comes with nice big numbers and high contrast when in standard.

iPhone Homescreen in White on Black Mode

iPhone Calculator in White on Black mode

How to access the settings

Accessibility settings can only be found on the 3GS by going into Settings> General > Accessibility.

What about the voice over functionality?

The iPhone 3GS also provides a voice over function which reads out interface elements when tapping the screen. Because a single tap reads out the element – the interaction inputs are very different from the factory default. Check out the apple video to learn the input mechanisms:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/accessibility.html#video

More accessibility resources:

Media Access Australia

Media Access Australia’s iPhone Features Outline

W3C’s Web Accessible Initiative

Accessability Programming Guide for iPhone OS

Blind wikia’s iPhone accessibility pages provides information and resources for users and developers.

#iphoneaccess on twitter

Special thank you to Scott Hollier, Media Access who helped me write this post. We’ll be working together on hints and tips to make the most of the iphone with the accessibility features are enabled. If your interested, let me know and I’ll be sure to shoot you an email once we’ve pulled it together.