Making apps for people with a disability with Xamarin tells you about making apps for people with an intellectual disability. Former, people thought people with an intellectual disability cannot read, thus a smartphone isn’t really realistic for them. But nonprofits and startups started to explore this userbase and found out a way of apps people with an intellectual disability can use. Why is this important? Well there are two big reasons: first of all: If people with an intellectual disability can use your app, they can get info about their life-situation and that empowers quality of life. Smartphones by example uses Text-To-Speech and principal the need to “can read” isn’t there anymore. For you as developer or startup there’s also a big benefit of apps for these people: nearly every market is discovered for mobile apps. Every market has big concurrency. But the market of apps for people with a disability is quite less discovered, so if you are good, you can rule a hole market!

1. Making enabling apps
for disabled people
APPS WITH DATA FOR PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY
WITH XAMARIN FORMS

2. Who am I?
Dennie Declercq.
Founder of DDSoft vzw (nonprofit).
Volunteer developer in vzw Ithaka.
Obsessed about using technologies to make people with a disability their life better.
Maybe because I have my own disability (Autism).
Honored to speak here!

3. Technology we use
To show all the things, we create a simple Xamarin Forms project.
For practical reasons, we build only for Android at this time!

4. What this session is not about
This session is not a deep dive into building apps in Xamarin.
I assume at least that you are common with creating basic apps in Xamarin.

5. What this session is about
This session is to let you know, how you can wite apps for a new user-base with
programming techniques we all know.

6. Can you realize ?
That the things that we all do…
.. Are not common “life” for many people?
Reading a paper Watching a subtitled movie Ordering a pizza

7. There are about 5% People with disability
in Belgium
What means about 560.000 people cannot do everything the way
“we” do.

8. Two kinds of disabilities
Physical
•Can’t move the ‘normal way’
Intellectual
•Can’t think / speak / read / behave
(communicate) in the ‘normal way’

9. The little that exists
There are (very little) tech organisations that focus on people with
physical disabilities
And that’s good!
But there are even less tech organisations that focus
on people with intellectual disabilities.
That’s our (DDSoft nonprofit) goal.
But I hope…
To inspire many more!

10. What’s this?
An eating
schedule

11. What’s the purpose?
To let somebody know what’s to eat this week.
But what does that paper mean,
if you can’t read?

12. What’s a developer‘s purpose?
To make others’ life easier.
To automate things that humans cannot do,
or cannot do fast enough.
I hope you are all here for this reason!

13. Let’s learn to make apps for people with
a disability

14. Three basic rules
1. Simplify the layout
2. Use pictographs or pictures
3. Use Text-To-Speech

15. Demo Time ‘Emoboard’!
Use case:
Let’s assume you want to build an app to help them communicate about their mood.
Many people with a disability have difficulties to talk about their mood.

16. Demo Time – Starting point.
We start this demo with a solution, with the Xamarin Forms Template.
We have the file EmoBoard.cs
We create a MainPage (StartPage.cs)

17. Simplify the layout
1. Use a simple white
background color
(nothing is easier to read
than white)
2. Use a few accent colors
3. Color by function
4. Be consistent!
I can speak !
I can navigate !
I open an other page!
Color by function
I’ve created three button styles

18. Color by funtion (in code)
public Button DayButton; // I CAN SPEAK
public Button MealButton; // I CAN SPEAK
public Button PrevButton; // I CAN NAVIGATE
public Button NextButton; // I CAN NAVIGATE
public Button SettingsButton; // I OPEN AN OTHER PAGE
DayButton = new Button {
BackgroundColor = Color.Yellow,
TextColor = Color.Red
};
SettingsButton = new Button {
BackgroundColor = Color.Blue,
TextColor = Color.Yellow
};
PrevButton = new Button{
BackgroundColor = Color.Gray,
TextColor = Color.White
};

19. Demo
Demo Time
Making an accessible user interface for EmoBoard.

20. Use pictographs or pictures
What does the following mean?
酢飯
The answer is:
For some people with a disability,
who cannot read,
Lettres and words mean nothing.
Just like Chinese of Japanese
tokens for us.
Everybody (except people with
visual impairments) can see a
picture.

21. Use pictographs or pictures (in code)
Image imgSmile = new Image
{
Source = "smile.jpg"
};
btnHappy = new Button
{
Image = “Happy.png",
};

22. Sclera
A Good way to find pictographs in Belgium is from
www.sclera.be
It’s free but there’s a use policy

23. Demo
Demo Time!
Adding some pictographs and pictures.

24. Use Text-To-Speech (TTS)
For some people, pictures aren’t enough.
To reach them also, you can use TTS, Text-To-Speech
You have to do four steps:
1 Make a TextToSpeech Dependency Interface
2 Add the TextToSpeech Component
3 Make implementation of that interface for each OS you want to implement (in this
case only Android)
4 Call the implementation where needed

25. TTS – Add the Text To Speech
Component
In the Android Project, Right-Click on Components

26. TTS – Making a dependency interface
In the shared PCL add a new c# interface
 Add the speak function
** It’s a best practice to make a folder specific for dependency interfaces **
public interface ITextToSpeech
{
void Speak(string text);
}

27. TTS – Making the Android
implementation
[assembly: Xamarin.Forms.Dependency(typeof(TextToSpeechImplementation))]
namespace EmoBoard.Droid.DependencyImplementations
{
public class TextToSpeechImplementation : ITextToSpeech
public TextToSpeechImplementation() { }
public void Speak(string tekst) {
CrossTextToSpeech.Current.Speak(tekst);
}
}
}

28. TTS – Call the speak function
void DayButton_Clicked(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
DependencyService.Get<ITextToSpeech>().Speak(“string to be spoken”);
}

29. Demo
Demo time Text-To-Speech

30. A Note on Accessible apps in Dutch
People with an intellectual disability can’t learn other languages.
So if you want to reach people in Flanders, you have to make apps in Dutch.
Android an iOS supports TTS in Dutch
Windows (for pc’s and phones) doesn’t support TTS in Dutch, Only in a few
languages. Of course English is supported!

31. Recap
Today you have seen how you can make an app accessible for people who cannot read
or write due to intellectual disabilities.
You have learned to:
1. Simplify the layout with color by function
2. Use images and pictographs
3. Use TTS

32. Now it’s up to you
The journey of apps for people with a disability just starts here.
The next big thing is using data (like my own open data platform)
http://socialedata.ddsoft.be/
So you cannot only let them explain their feelings, but also let them inform about their
own life.

33. Q&A

34. Thanks!
Contact me:
dennie@ddsoft.be
Facebook.com/ddsoftvzw
www.ddsoft.be