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For Users With Disabilities, Paid Apps Lag Behind Free Ones in Accessibility, Report Shows

Advocates say they expect the discrepancies found in testing to lessen over time as digital accessibility becomes more familiar to developers

By Ann-Marie Alcántara | Dec. 20, 2021 1:58 pm ET  | Wall Street Journal


Many of the most popular paid smartphone apps are less accessible to people with certain disabilities than top apps that are free to download, according to a new report.


The digital agency Diamond, which builds accessible products for its clients, conducted manual and automated testing of 20 leading paid apps and 20 popular free apps in Apple’s App Store and in the Google Play Store as of October 2021.


Top free apps, which consist of bigger companies such as Meta Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram or Snap Inc.’s Snapchat, tend to include such accessibility features because they have more users providing feedback and greater resources to tackle problems, said Joe Devon, co-founder of Diamond, which is operated by StartupDevs Inc.


Screen readers, for instance, were able to help people use the core functions of 80% of leading free apps in Apple Inc.’s App Store, compared with 10% of paid ones, according to the report from Diamond. A screen reader is an assistive technology for people with vision disabilities that can read and speak text, images and buttons displayed on a screen.


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