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Re: Testing mobile Apps on PC

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From: Steve Green
Date: Oct 6, 2021 11:41AM

One of my team has a severe visual impairment and mirrors mobile devices onto his PC to test them. The main benefit is that it avoids the eye strain and migraines he gets when looking at a small screen for any length of time - he uses a 32 inch monitor at low resolution, so the image is huge.

I have not heard of the applications you use. We have been using Mobizen for Android and LonelyScreen for iOS. Mobizen is going to be discontinued in February 2022, so we will need to find a replacement.

You can certainly use ZoomText or any other screen magnifier, but screen readers will not work because the PC just receives a picture of the app, not the individual components. Some mirroring apps let you use the PC to control the app you are testing, but I suspect they are using x-y coordinates to convey the pointer position.

This approach is ok for some things, but you still need to use the screen reader on the mobile device to do a lot of the testing. You also need to connect a Bluetooth keyboard to the mobile device to text keyboard navigation.

As discussed previously in this forum, it is currently difficult or impossible to make accurate colour contrast measurements because the colours you see on your PC are not the same as the colours in the app. This is due to the compression that is used in the communications.

One of the issues my tester has is that he sometimes fails to report colour contrast issues when the contrast is very low, because he cannot perceive the text or object at all. It is sometimes possible to identify such text or objects if the app has a high contrast mode - you really need to compare two devices next to each other. Another clue is if the screen reader announces something that you can't see on screen.

Windows 11 supports the installation of Android apps, so it will be interesting to find out how much testing it is valid to do that way. Maybe we will finally be able to make accurate colour contrast measurements. However, it is certain that some testing will still need to be done on an Android device.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd