WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Android OS version

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Jan 22, 2020 2:10PM


Those figures are 9 months out of date. The stats at https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android/mobile-tablet/worldwide are only a month old. They show Android 5.x usage at 7.5%, which you may well consider too large to ignore. Android 6 is 11%, Android 7.x is 12.5% and Android 8.x is 22%. That means that 53% have lower than Android 9.

For Apple devices, it's worth noting that perfectly usable devices can be limited to quite old iOS versions. For instance, the iPad 4 can only be upgraded to iOS 10, yet it would be more than adequate for many people. In fact we have just given a perfectly serviceable iPad 3 to a good cause, and that's limited to iOS 9.

If you don't report the headings under 1.3.1, the "Technologies relied on" section of your conformance statement would need to include "android:accessibilityHeading".

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of <EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: 22 January 2020 21:07
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Android OS version

Hi Glen,

Hope you are well.

These are fully up to date, but here are the official stats for all users regardless of disability

https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards

Thankx,
Joe Humbert

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 3:46 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Android OS version

The WebAIM survey (https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/) is a nice resource but doesn't have granular details on OS versions. Does anyone have any metrics on what version OS Android users are using?

iOS is a little more stable as far as version numbers. You're almost forced to upgrade iOS. Sure you can delay the upgrade, but at some point things might stop working. I think iOS users in general run with the latest and there seems to be a clear division of which devices can support the latest OS. For example, iPhone 6 and lower is limited to iOS 12.
Everything else can be iOS 13.

With Android, it seems to be pretty disparate. There are so many brands and many models within the same brand. People seem to be using Android 5 to Android 10.

One of the reasons I'm asking is because in Android 9, a feature was added in the app APIs to allow headings (android:accessibilityHeading). Native iOS apps have had headings for a while but it's somewhat new for Android.
(Android 9 came out in Aug 2018 so it's a year and half old.)

When testing a native Android app, if something looks like a heading, it'd be nice to have the semantics of a heading. If the team that developed the app is using Android 8 or less, they don't have that option. If they're using 9 or above, they do. But if the user has Android 8 or less, they can't take advantage of it.

When testing native iOS apps, I'll report a 1.3.1 issue if a heading is not used when visually it looks like a heading because it can easily be fixed and all users will benefit from it. For native Android apps, I'm not sure if it should be reported. It is an issue so should probably be reported but quite often nothing can be done about it (if the dev team is using Android 8 or lower).