Key findings

The main navigation and book navigation of the beook app are difficult to distinguish from one another visually. The contrasts are not sufficient everywhere. Another point of criticism with regard to the use of colour is that marked text passages are only identified by colour and not, for example, by underlining or any other form of highlighting. People with deficient colour perception or visual impairments may be unable to recognise the marked areas or to distinguish them from one another where different colours are used. Apart from a few exceptions, the focus guidance and the labelling with alternative texts meet the requirements for accessibility. Status messages are accessible in some places, while in other places screen reader users lack important information because they can only be perceived visually (for example, a visually greyed-out element is not displayed as inactive by the screen reader). Individual functions of the app are a bit cumbersome to find, but users can use the settings area and set bookmarks with a screen reader. The embedded videos do not contain an audio description or text transcription. From the point of view of accessibility, the so-called accessibility mode is the app’s biggest point of criticism: activating accessibility mode removes the search and comment features, among other things, instead of making them accessible.