#weather app
By Gary Moulton, Accessibility Program Manager
At Yahoo we are very proud of our iOS Weather app. For one reason, it is an Apple Design award winner.
You’d have to work for the Weather Channel to know more about your weather than you can get from our app. Temperatures and forecast, sure – and for five and ten days out AND hourly and daily. But the Yahoo iOS Weather app also provides humidity, UV Index, precipitation by time of day, wind and barometric pressure. Oh, and the Moon’s current stage (e.g. Waning Crescent), the Sun’s position and time to sunset. Feel free to do your own weather broadcast for family, friends and colleagues!
But now we have another reason to be proud – it’s also the most accessible, Apple award winning, Weather app.
Here’s how this weather-person-in-an-app works with VoiceOver and related assistive technology options to make checking the forecast a breeze. (Pun intended!)
Navigating an hourly forecast with VoiceOver to get to the daily forecast could be tedious by requiring a lot of swiping. Here’s a tip: While you are navigating hour-by-hour, the daily forecast is approximately mid-display. Touch anywhere in that area and begin navigating day-by-day.
Yahoo’s iOS Weather app is as easy to access for a screen reader user as it is for a user who is swiping a single finger up and down to get from the top (where you’ll see the current temperature) to the bottom of the app (where you’ll see an animated effect used to represent the rising and setting sun, one of our favorite features).
Using VoiceOver’s heading option the “Sun & Moon” section of the app is as easy to navigate as using several single-finger swipes. This section of the app provides information on the moon’s current phase and the sun’s apogee. The latter is represented visually as an animated arch from sunrise to sunset. But there’s no accessibility problem with this animation. Our screen reader label reads: “Currently the sun is at 30% of its apogee in the sky, there are 8 hours and 59 minutes until sunset.”
If you’re looking to prioritize the app’s weather modules, no problem. The order in which you see Forecast, Details, Map, Precipitation, Wind & Pressure and Sun & Moon are easily customizable. Next to these labeled headings is a “reorder module image.” Click and hold. A brief sound effect will alert you that you can drag the module up or down in the list.
Go explore the weather in your favorite places around the world with the Yahoo Weather for iOS. See and hear for yourself! You can download the latest version in the App Store.
