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From: joe@a11yeval.com
Date: Jul 8, 2020 6:29AM

Hi Ramakrishnan,

IMO and as far as I can tell from reviewing mobile Apps and researching iOS and Android, WCAG SC 1.4.12 Text Spacing does not apply to Native mobile apps because there are no user settings that allow a user to adjust text spacing as of Android 10 and iOS 13 (I have also not seen this included in Android 11 or iOS 14). This SC could possibly apply to web-based content embedded in a web view, but right now I do not believe it does because neither Chrome or Safari mobile apps have a text spacing option currently.

As for 1.4.10 Reflow, while this probably cannot directly apply as there is some debate about whether the accessibility settings on iOS or Android can even reach 200% zoom (https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/674), let alone 400%, I generally apply the spirit of this SC to mobile apps by increasing the Font/Text size accessibility setting as high as it will go and ensure that both native and web-based content in a mobile application does not lose any functionality, lose any information or cause scrolling in two directions.

For 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose, I believe this one is the closest to being able to directly apply to mobile in the near future. Android currently has a similar attribute to the HTML autocomplete called autofillHints (https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/text/autofill-optimize), so you could theoretically meet this SC (or the spirit of it) on Android. But the SC is very specific to HTML and the autocomplete attribute. iOS is a very different story, while this OS does support some autofill capabilities (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/password_autofill/), it seems very limited in the types of autofill data that is supported (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitextinputtraits/1649656-textcontenttype) and mostly changes the software keyboard displayed.

I hope this helps.

Thankx,
Joe Humbert
Accessibility Champion
Android & iOS Accessibility Novice

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Ramakrishnan Subramanian
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 12:03 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Applicability of few WCAG 2.1 SC's for Native mobile apps:

Dear Members,
I request your thoughts on the applicability of the following SC's for a Native mobile app in both IOS and Android platforms.
1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (AA)
1.4.10 Reflow (AA)
1.4.12 Text Spacing (AA)
1. Whether these apply to native mobile app?
2. If Yes, how does one validate a mobile app against the requirements of these SC's?
3. How to meet the requirements?
--

Thanks and Regards
Ramakrishnan