Lack of Responsiveness of Developers?

By Ekaj, 8 February, 2014

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy
Hey everyone. I have been curious about something. I'm not trying to be negative here or anything, but has there ever been an app developer who has either not responded at all to these requests for accessibility or if they have, the answer was very unsatisfactory? I guess I'm wondering this because in all my or anyone else's attempts at advocating for better services from my state, either the answer has been no or nobody has responded at all. I hope I'm making myself clear enough here. I realize these are 2 totally different situations, but I'm just rather curious.

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Comments

By Craig Werner on Saturday, February 8, 2014 - 20:09

Jake, some developers respond within hours; some don't respond at all. There can be all kinds of reasons for a lack of response, the most basic of which is that occasionally, email doesn't get delivered. Some developers are swamped and reply two weeks after an email has been sent; some have little time to devote to their apps and may not reply at all; and some, I rather imagine, have had little or no experience with VoiceOver and don't know how to frame an answer. My general rule is to email a developer and then wait a week before writing again. I have found that more often than not, my patience is rewarded. Craig

By Dave Nason on Saturday, February 8, 2014 - 21:42

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
It's very mixed really. Some developers are more responsive than others. You'll find that a lot of them are not familiar with VoiceOver at all and didn't even realise there was an issue, so a polite and informative email is the way to go. Twitter can be a great tool too in my experience, as you can reach out to customer facing staff and ask them for contact details where you can send your feedback. It can be really frustrating but it's great when they do pay attention and address the issues.

By Amir Rajan on Friday, February 21, 2014 - 17:14

This was how I found out about the accessibility capabilities of iOS. I'd try to find the public twitter handle for either the developer or the app itself, and send a tweet to both. With a tweet in place, having even a few friends to chime in or retweet will get the developer's attention.