Android MVVM It stands for Model, View, ViewModel. Putting everything in a View like Activity or Fragment would lead to difficulties in testing and changing/refactoring the original code. Hence, the use of separation of code and clean structure is recommended. 

Model: This has the data of the Android project. It cannot directly communicate to the View. Normally, it’s recommended to provide the data to the ViewModel by using Observables. 

View: It is the UI of the Android project without any business logic. It observes the ViewModel. 

ViewModel: It acts as a bridge between the Model and the View. It provides a way to transform the data from the Model. It also provides data streams to the View. It uses hooks or callbacks to modify the View. It’ll request for the data from the Model. The viewmodel is a key piece of MVVM as it brings the concept of Presentation Separation, or keeping the nuances of the view apart from the model. The ViewModel helps in keeping the view state, modify the model as the result of actions on the view and trigger events to reflect the changes into the view. 

In order to continue MVVM there is a concept of LiveData that plays an important role in MVVM. LiveData is an observable data holder class. Unlike a traditional observable, LiveData is lifecycle-aware, that means, it follows the lifecycle of app components for example – Activities, Fragments, or Services. This is the reason LiveData only updates app component observers that are in an active lifecycle state, that result in a healthy and crash-less application. 

Differences(MVP) 

• The Presenter in the Middle Layer is replaced by ViewModel. 
• The Presenter has dependency on the View while the ViewModel is independent of the View.
• The Presenter is responsible for updating the View by calling methods. 
• The ViewModel is responsible for sending data streams. 
• The Presenter and View are in a one to one relationship. 
• The View and the ViewModel are in a one to many relationship. 
• The ViewModel does not have the knowledge that the View is listening to it.

In Android, we have two ways to implement MVVM: 

• Data Binding 
• RXJava 

We’ll be using Data Binding here to implement MVVM in Android. 

Google has introduced a Data Binding library in order to bind data directly in the XML layout. 

We are creating a normal Login Example application that prompts for user credentials inputs. 

We will see how the ViewModel intimates the View to show a Toast Message without containing a reference of the View. 

Two Way Data Binding Two-way Data Binding is a way of binding objects to XML layouts so that the layout and the object can both send data to each other. 

Here, the ViewModel can provide data to the layout and observe changes as well. 

For this, we require a BindingAdapter and a user defined attribute in the XML. 

The Binding Adapter will listen to changes in the user defined attribute property. 

We will learn more about Two-way Data Binding by the example below. 

Enable the Data Binding Library for the Android Project 

Add the following code to your app’s build.gradle file: 

android {
  dataBinding {
    enabled = true
  }
}

This statement will enable Data Binding in the Android Project. 

Add the below dependencies in your build.gradle file : 

implementation 'android.arch.lifecycle:extensions:1.1.0'

Model The Model has the employee’s email and password. The below Employee.java class does it:

package com.qait.mvvmdemo.model; 
public class Employee { 
  private String email; private String password; 
  public Employee(String email, String password) { 
    this.email = email; this.password = password; 
  }
  public void setEmail(String email) { 
    this.email = email; 
  } 
  public String getEmail() { 
    return email; 
  } 
  public void setPassword(String password) { 
    this.password = password; 
  } 
  public String getPassword() { 
    return password; 
  } 
} 

The Two-way Data Binding provides us a mechanism to bind objects in the XML layouts such that the object can transmit data to the layout, and the layout can transmit data to the object. 

We use below Syntax for Two Way Data Binding 

@={variable}

Layout Following code represents activity_main.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layout 
xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" 
xmlns:bind="https://schemas.android.com/tools">
<data> 
  <variablename="viewModel" type="com.qait.mvvmdemo.viewmodels.LoginViewModel" />
</data>
<ScrollView 
  android:layout_width="match_parent" 
  android:layout_height="match_parent">
    <LinearLayout 
      android:layout_width="match_parent" 
      android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
      android:layout_gravity="center" 
      android:layout_margin="8dp" 
      android:orientation="vertical">
        <EditText
           android:id="@+id/inEmail" 
           android:layout_width="match_parent" 
           android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
           android:hint="Email" 
           android:inputType="textEmailAddress" 
           android:padding="8dp" 
           android:text="@={viewModel.employeeEmail}" /> 
        <EditText 
           android:id="@+id/inPassword" 
           android:layout_width="match_parent" 
           android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
           android:hint="Password" 
           android:inputType="textPassword" 
           android:padding="8dp" 
           android:text="@={viewModel.employeePassword}" /> 
        <Button 
           android:layout_width="match_parent" 
           android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
           android:layout_marginTop="8dp" 
           android:onClick="@{()-> viewModel.onLoginClicked()}" 
           android:text="LOGIN" 
           bind:toastMessage="@{viewModel.toastMessage}" /> 
    </LinearLayout> 
  </ScrollView> 
</layout> 

Data Binding should be declared at the top of the layout. Below ViewModel binds the user data to the View.

()-> viewModel.onLoginClicked() trigger the Button click listener lambda created in the ViewModel. The EditText modifies the values in the Model (by View Model).

bind:toastMessage="@{viewModel.toastMessage}" is a user defined attribute as we created for two-way data binding. According to changes in the toastMessage in the ViewModel the BindingAdapter would get called in the View. 

ViewModel Following are the code that an Android app development company normally uses for for the LoginViewModel.java: 

package com.qait.mvvmdemo.viewmodels; 
import android.databinding.BaseObservable;
import android.databinding.Bindable; 
import android.text.TextUtils; 
import android.util.Patterns; 
Import com.android.databinding.library.baseAdapters.BR; 
import com.qait.mvvmdemo.model.Employee; 
public class LoginViewModel extends BaseObservable { 
  private Employee employee; 
  private String successMessage = "Login was successful"; 
  private String errorMessage = "Email or Password not valid"; 
  @Bindable 
  private String toastMessage = null; 
  public String getToastMessage() { 
    return toastMessage; 
  }
  private void setToastMessage(String toastMessage) { 
    this.toastMessage = toastMessage; 
    notifyPropertyChanged(BR.toastMessage); 
  }
  public void setEmployeeEmail(String email) { 
    employee.setEmail(email); 
    notifyPropertyChanged(BR.employeeEmail); 
  } 
  @Bindable 
  public String getEmployeeEmail() { 
    return employee.getEmail(); 
  } 
  @Bindable 
  public String getEmployeePassword() { 
    return employee.getPassword(); 
  } 
  public void setEmployeePassword(String password) { 
    employee.setPassword(password); 
    notifyPropertyChanged(BR.employeePassword); 
  } 
  public LoginViewModel() { 
    user = new Employee("",""); 
  }
  public void onLoginClicked() { 
    if (isInputDataValid()) 
      setToastMessage(successMessage); 
    else 
      setToastMessage(errorMessage); 
  }
  public boolean isInputDataValid() { 
     return !TextUtils.isEmpty(getEmployeeEmail()) &&
            Patterns.EMAIL_ADDRESS.matcher(getEmployeeEmail()).matches() &&
            getEmployeePassword().length() > 5; 
    }
}

The strategies were brought in the design are executed in the above code with a similar mark. If the XML counterpart of the method doesn’t exist, we need to change the attribute to app:.

The above class can likewise broaden ViewModel. Be that as it may, an Android mobile app development company needs BaseObservable since it changes over the information into streams and advises when the toastMessage property is changed.

We have to characterize the getter and setter for the toastMessage custom quality characterized in the XML. 

Inside the setter, we advise the onlooker (which will be the View in our application) that the information has changed. 

The View(Activity) can characterize the fitting activity. 

BR class is auto-created from information restricting when you revamp the venture The code for the MainActivity.java class is given underneath:

package com.qait.mvvmdemo.views; 
import android.databinding.BindingAdapter; 
import android.databinding.DataBindingUtil; 
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity; 
import android.os.Bundle; 
import android.view.View; 
import android.widget.Toast; 
import com.qait.mvvmdemo.R; 
import com.qait.mvvmdemo.databinding.ActivityMainBinding; 
import com.qait.mvvmdemo.viewmodels.LoginViewModel; 
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity { 
  @Override 
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { 
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); 
    ActivityMainBinding activityMainBinding = DataBindingUtil.setContentView(this,
       R.layout.activity_main); 
   activityMainBinding.setViewModel(new LoginViewModel());
   activityMainBinding.executePendingBindings(); 
  } 
  @BindingAdapter({"toastMessage"}) 
  public static void runMe(View view, String message) { 
    if (message != null) 
      Toast.makeText(view.getContext(), message, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); 
    }
}

On account of DataBinding, the ActivityMainBinding class is auto-created from the format. 

The @BindingAdapter technique gets activated at whatever point the toastMessage characteristic on the Button is changed. 

It must utilize a similar characteristic as characterized in the XML and in the ViewModel. 

So in the above application, the ViewModel refreshes the Model by tuning in to the adjustments in the View. 

Likewise, the Model can refresh the view by means of the ViewModel utilizing the notifyPropertyChanged

Storybook is a user interface development environment and play area for UI parts that is used in React Native development. The instrument empowers designers to make segments autonomously and feature parts intelligently in a separated improvement condition.

A Storybook is an assortment of stories. Every story speaks to a solitary visual condition of a part. “Technically, a story is a method that provides something that can be rendered to screen.”

Storybook underpins a wide range of frontend view layers with all the more coming! React, Vue, Angular, Mithril, Marko, HTML, Svelte, Meteor, Ember, Riot and Preact are at present supported.

Exporting Storybook

Storybook gives an incredible designer involvement in its dev time highlights, like instant change updates via Webpack’s HMR.

Storybook is likewise a tool you can use to showcase your components to others. Demos of React Native Web and React Dates are a great example for that.

For that, Storybook accompanies a tool to export your storybook into a static web app. 

At that point, you can deploy it to GitHub pages or any static hosting service.

Add the following NPM script:

{
"scripts": {
  "build-storybook": "build-storybook -c .storybook -o .out"
 }
}

Then run yarn build-storybook.

This will assemble the storybook arranged in the Storybook directory into a static web application and spot it inside the .out directory. Now, you can deploy this directory content wherever you want.

To test it locally:

npx http-server .out

Additionally, you can deploy Storybook directly into GitHub pages and ZEIT NOW  with Storybook tools.

Storybook Start Guide

Get started using the automated command line tool. Use the below mentioned commands to get boilerplate files for Storybook in your project:

cd your-project-directory
npx -p @storybook/cli sb init

The tools check your package.json to figure out which view layer you’re utilizing.
If you want to create HTML snippets in storybook, storybook can’t determine that automatically. So to install storybook for HTML, use the --type flag to force that the HTML project type:

npx -p @storybook/cli sb init --type html

By default npx will use the latest storybook version, if you want to try out the specific version, Try the following command:

npx -p @storybook/cli@5.0.0-rc.6 sb init

In order to setup the project manually in React Native development, there is separate way to do that you can check that on storybook official website here: – https://storybook.js.org/

To Start Storybook App use:

npm run storybook 

It will start up storybook project and we can thereafter navigate to http://localhost:9000 to see stories. It will look something like this:

Also, Storybook is now available in the browser with a link provided in the console. So you can check that out too.

Conclusion

There are many benefits of using Storybook. It will make your component design and creation process more well organized, it will help as well a defined documentation for onboarding new developers in your project and also help you with applying/updating component design. The added benefit is that: – you can perform testing of your components  with ease and there are many community add-ons that will make your storybook experience more productive. It can also be useful with other frontend framework and libraries.

For Further reading

Here is the link to the Official docs on StoryBook

Thank you for reading!

In today’s market, wherein various tools and strategies whether it is AI or Robotics, have impacted the market and thus have changed the face of customer experience. The main objective of current companies now is to understand customer’s needs by focusing on customer engagement as customer experience is a key differentiator.

As we are living in a digital era, we just can’t have email only as the source of power pact communication. People aren’t always at their desks scrolling down a ton of emails. So here comes Marketing Cloud which is built on the number one CRM platform. There’s no hard and fast rule that one has to be a big company to use Marketing Cloud. Marketing Cloud can help grow any company with a marketing team of one or One Hundred or One Thousand.

Salesforce Marketing cloud gives you the power where you have the platform to plan, to know your customers better, to personalize and engage across the journey throughout.

How can you decide if Marketing Cloud is a good way to go for you or Your Organisation?

If you are keen to connect with your customers in a more personalized manner, then you’re on the right path. One can use this platform efficiently through Salesforce development services to reach its customer through various channels like email, mobile, social network, ads etc. 

Salesforce app development is enabling robust integration of marketing cloud to helps in building the relationship with your customers whether current, old or prospective customers.

Marketing Cloud Products:

Datorama

Datorama enables cross-platform marketing intelligence by unifying data sources, visualizing AI-powered insights.

Google Analytics 360

For seamless customer journeys, try using Google Analytics 360 with Marketing Cloud.

Analytics Builder

While using Analytics Builder, you can display the reports using bar graph, pie charts and other visualization techniques.

Content Builder

Use content builder to create, manage and track content across all the digital channels from a single location. It also provides smart content blocks with drag-and-drop features to create the content once and reuse it.

Personalization Builder

This builder has the power of personalizing each customer’s preference. and helps build profiles of customers while using those profiles for personalized content and deliver it across channels.

Audience Studio

It captures data from different sources and devices for creating valuable customers experiences.

Data Studio

Here in this, publishers can share second party data with marketers in a trusted way.

Interaction Studio

With real time interaction management, it visualizes, tracks and manage customer experiences.

Email Studio

Using this, helps in creating customer engaging emails where you can keep tabs on your email campaigns.

Mobile Studio

You can engage with customers by sending real-time alerts, notifications.

Advertising Studio

By using this product, you can fuel digital advertising and can manage ad campaigns across various platforms like Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.

Social Studio

It provides social listening tools to hear conversations from different sources and accordingly you can plan, execute, connect and track your social media campaigns.

Marketing Cloud integration with other Customer Success Platforms 

Marketing Cloud Connect is the product which works with other Customer Success Platforms, be it Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Community Cloud. It possesses great benefits to your customers, marketers, sales reps.

Image source: Trailhead

With Marketing Cloud Connect, you can access powerful Marketing Cloud Tools directly within Sales or Service Clouds. In addition, you can leverage all your sales and service data and thus can tailor every interaction directly from Marketing Cloud and deliver your messages across all channels and services.

How Marketing Cloud helps in defining Digital Marketing Strategy? 

Digital Marketing strategy plays a vital role in today’s growing companies as alone a technology nor a platform can solve all business problems neither can they caters the needs of customers fully. Thus start accessing your strategy by :

• knowing your customers better
• personalizing with intelligence
• engaging across the entire journey

According to Salesforce, while using Marketing Cloud, “Every interaction and engagement with customers is covered”. It is the platform for delivering relevant and personalized journeys across channels and devices, enabling Marketers to deliver the right message at the right time throughout all phases of the relationship.

Introduction

We are living in an age where we rely heavily on the Internet and Web Applications. It affects many aspects of our daily requirements including communication, banking, administration, entertainment, healthcare, education, and there are many more. The list will probably go on in the future.  With the increasing use there comes the increasing security risks of losing confidentiality, money, client’s data, customer trust and the market goodwill for a Web Application Development Company. Despite unrecoverable risks, Software Security is one of the least discussed topics in a development team as it’s a time taking process and requires a lot of effort, skills to research various algorithms and the threats.

There is a fundamental difference between the thinking of a developer and the attacker. The developer approaches an application based on what it is intended to do. On the other hand, an attacker has a different perspective, what an application can be made to do. The principle is very clear to an attacker any action that is not denied is typically allowed.

Software Security vulnerabilities can have a scope that are beyond the application itself and can include compromises to the application server, the operating system, other applications in the shared environment etc but as a development team and also as a Web Application Development Company, we can include Secure Coding Practices to develop a comparatively more secure and challenging application for an attacker. There are a number of points to explore three of them are following:

• Input Validation: Client side validations are not often enough and we should create an extra layer of security to manage validations. All validations should be conducted on a trusted system (e.g., The server). Data should be validated for data length, range and expected data types. All clients should be validated before processing, including all parameters, URLs and HTTP header. Data from untrusted sources like Databases, file streams should be validated before processing.
• Authentication and Password Management: In every application there are public pages, except these pages authentication and authorization should be implemented and must be enforced on the server. If possible only authenticated services should be established. If the authentication is failed then the failure response should show a generic message like ‘Error in signing in’ instead of revealing which part of the data is incorrect like ‘Invalid Username’. Use of only HTTP POST requests is recommended to send credentials for authentication. In case of successive failed authentication the account should be disabled to prevent brute force for guessing username or password and it should be auto enabled to prevent denial of service attacks.
• Error Handling & Logging: Logging is very crucial and important especially in the case of application failure or in the cases of security breaches. It’s very important to log input validations, attempts to connect with invalid tokens, timestamp and other information related to authentication failure. But it should be ensured that sensitive information like complete Credit Card Number is not logged. Any sensitive information should not be disclosed in error responses to the end user which includes system details or account information, instead generic error messages and use of custom error pages should be implemented. Ensure logs contain important log event data and its access is restricted to only authorized individuals.

Conclusion: It’s very difficult to share all Secure Coding Practices in one article. But it’s something that should be discussed in development teams of all Web Application Development Companies, included in the development practices and code reviews. There are a number of fields in Software Security that can be explored and researched. Ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability for a Web Application is a right that should be given and also a responsibility that must be fulfilled.

Hello reader, I am here to talk about Kotlin, Kotlin is a Russian island, located near the head of the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea, and also a programming language named after that island.

Kotlin is a statically typed, open-source, general-purpose programming language developed by JetBrains. It was first announced in 2011 and Kotlin 1.0 was released in 2016. It targets the JVM, Android, JavaScript, and Native, so Kotlin can be used everywhere where Java works. Kotlin also targets front end web development with Kotlin Script, and with Kotlin Native the developer doesn’t have to master another language(JS/Dart in case of ReactNative/Flutter) one can write code in Kotlin and build cross-platform apps that will run in both iOS and Android with their Native UI.

Now one would think why Kotlin? when we already have Java with all of its legacy, frameworks, and libraries. I’ll say there are many reasons(stay tuned for a detailed answer) for now just know that all of your existing Java code and libraries will work perfectly fine with Kotlin too, as Kotlin is fully interoperable with Java.

“Hello, World!” in Kotlin:

Notice the code conciseness here, Kotlin tries to reduce the number of lines of code required to accomplish a task. And as we know the number of bugs is directly proportional to the number of lines of code, the Industry average is 15 to 50 bugs per 1000 lines.

JetBrains claims that Kotlin can reduce about 40% of lines of code compared to Java, this improves code maintainability and readability. And one more thing, here semicolons are not required to mark the end of the line for statements. 

Kotlin for Android Development is better than Java(as claimed by many), Let’s understand why?

Google made Kotlin an official language for Android development: Google announced in Google I/O conference 2017, that it will officially support Kotlin on Android as a “first-class” language. Since then all Android tutorials(offered by Google) and Android documentation are available in Kotlin with JAVA. App development for Android in Kotlin is nearly flawless hence companies like Pinterest, Uber, Evernote, Kickstarter were one of the first to adopt Kotlin in the industry.

The Billion dollar mistake: Tony Hoare(Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare) in Qcon London conference 2009, apologized for creating Null Pointer reference. He said, “Null reference has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.”

The creators of Java adopted Null as the default value for any variable/object. Kotlin tries to solve this Billion dollar problem by making all objects of non-null type by default. To assign Null value to any object you’ll have to make it nullable using a special symbol(?)

and once you do that, that object becomes available for the compile-time check which means if your application is going to crash because of NullPointerException you’ll know it in compile-time itself, not in production. Kotlin also has some special keywords (lateinit and by lazy) to delay the initialization of an object and avoid assigning Null.

Data classes in Kotlin: Data classes make the code look clean and concise and avoids a lot of common boilerplate code. data class is a keyword in Kotlin which is used to create classes whose main purpose is to hold data. This generates all required getter, setter methods and overrides toString() , hashCode() and equals() all by itself.

Extension Functions: An extension function is a member function of a class that is defined outside the body of the class. One can use Class_name.method_name() to inject a method into the class body, you can write this in any file inside your project where that class is accessible.

Kotlin’s compiler: Kotlin’s compiler catches errors, mistakes such as NPE which one would only encounter while testing or in production. Kotlin’s compiler targets to fail fast, it performs many checks avoiding runtime errors and hence reduces the cost of error and fixes.

Where Kotlin lags behind?

Kotlin is a new language and Kotlin community is very young hence resources are also limited, finding an experienced guy to mentor your team is a little difficult. Kotlin takes more time to compile than Java in the majority of cases. If one is familiar with Java they can pick Kotlin easily, Kotlin’s concise syntax is an advantage but it requires some learning to understand what all is going on behind the curtains.

To sum it all up Kotlin code is concise, less prone to NPE, type-safe, and better overall but what all of this mean for you? If you want to learn Kotlin or write your existing code in Kotlin, I’ll say start slow, pick one small file/class which you think will be easy and write that in Kotlin as you’ll go forward you’ll understand what Kotlin has got for you in the store.

Kotlin is not going to replace Java anytime soon but it is here to stay as a better alternative to Java and personally, I believe that Java and Kotlin both can go hand in hand in a project as Kotlin is fully interoperable with Java.

Thanks for reading… Happy coding mate 🙂

AI will be the main driver of growth in economics and efficiency, and AI is changing the environment just as steam engines and energy have done in the past. There is no question that AI will bring a new phase to the learning and education domain and we believe that the roles of teachers will be replaced by machines in the near future.

Every student learns at their own pace and an effective teacher must deliver content in a way that it will be understood by all. Some students have problems understanding a complex process, and others may have difficulties in their community where their family members have not been able to concentrate much on their studies. Effective teachers should understand the hurdles of their students while satisfying the ever-changing curriculum requirements.

It is really hard for a teacher to work in his/her classroom to fulfill each student’s criteria (high performer, average performer, and low performer). AI-based Intelligent tutoring systems will be designed to adapt easily to every student’s learning needs and should address their strengths and weaknesses as well as provide students with a more meaningful learning experience. This system will also help those students who struggle with basic concepts. One example of such a system in education domain is “Carnegie Learning” which uses data to provide input and work directly with students.

Teachers may not always recall the gaps in their academic course, because of which certain definitions may leave the students in confusion. AI will be able to help solve this problem. This is already being put into practice by “Coursera”, a free online contributor and an open e-learning app development company. When an outsized number of scholars are found sending the wrong response to a homework assignment, the program alerts the professor and sends a tailored note to students that provide hints for the correct answer. With the introduction of E-learning App Development Services, the way in which education is delivered is changing which will help students learn compactly using an app.

Trial and error can be a vital part of learning, because sometimes the idea of failure is overwhelming, or perhaps not knowing the answer, others just don’t like being put on the spot ahead of their peers or some form of teacher-like authority figures. Artificial intelligence helps students experiment and learn in a comparatively judgment-free environment, especially when AI tutors offer improvement solutions that help students perform better.

This is the reason that advanced eLearning app development services are leveraging AI and ML to make the online experience more immersive and intuitive. A capable eLearning app development company will always leverage the capabilities of artificial intelligence to ensure students are able to learn through advanced methods.

Create School Curriculum + Learners Interact (AI Model) + How to Prepare Students

Educators are a vital part of the education that leads the system. We wouldn’t be going anywhere without our teachers so they should not believe that the advancement of technology in the field of education will weaken their positions, but we can not overlook the possibilities and opportunities that AI can bring with dramatic improvements in the education system. If the students have a teacher using AI, they may potentially do wonders that conventional educational approaches may not be unable.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – First Step in the Right Direction

The World Wide Web consortium (WWW) drafted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) with an intent to trigger a positive change for accessibility in web application development.

The guidelines ensured that the application is inclusive for people with disabilities and all users are able to successfully achieve their goals while interacting with the product. In a global population where roughly one in five people have some form of disability, a well-implemented application development standard can make a huge difference for all stakeholders.

The Need to go Beyond Guidelines

While the guidelines can be considered as a first step in the right direction, the ideology must be internalised amongst the product development teams – this makes the motivation to develop more accessible applications intrinsically driven.

When accessibility considerations are dictated by guidelines, quality improvement efforts would be fueled by prioritizing the requirements on the basis of expected impact and would be addressed at the end of a product’s design cycle.

A separate and unequal approach to achieving compliance leads to a solution that tends to be inferior in content and functionality and loses focus over time. Also, in this case, there are high chances that the quality of user experiences for people with disabilities could have very little impact on design considerations of the product.

Contrarily, having accessibility considerations from the start of designing an application has benefits beyond just being adherent to the guidelines – it brings in multiple business advantages too. There is also a spreading awareness in this front and companies are starting to capitalise on the potential opportunities.

Tapping the Untapped Market

According to the World Bank, 15% of the global population (1 million) suffer from some form of disability. Having a well-defined representation of the people with disabilities in the usage demographics, substantially increases the size of the target market. Since age is also a potential contributor to impairments, older people are also a user base that benefit through the accessibility features in the web application. ‘

While 15% of the population consists of older people, when web application users are considered, a meagre less than 2% are above the age of 55. There is a huge scope for improvement here – developing applications that are better designed for older people would open up an untapped market.

Engineering an accessible application, enhances the overall user experience as it might be a general benefit, for non-disabled users as well. For example, having captions allows the user to watch videos without turning the volume on – a feature that could be used for all sections of users.

According to a recent report, only 12% of instagram users watch their newsfeed videos with the sound on. Also, it is observed that the reach of a captioned video is 16% more than an uncaptioned one. Web Accessibility features thereby benefit users without any kind of disability too, subsequently increasing the reach of the content.

Internalising Accessibility from the Start

Intrinsically driven to develop accessible web applications, web designers and developers have started leveraging different usability processes, methods and techniques to solve user interface problems. While this is not always included in general practice, caring about people’s disabilities is slowly getting integrated into the design of the user experience.

With the growing realisation of such benefits, application development teams are starting to develop processes to include accessibility features in the design from the start of the product development cycle. For example, to identify the requisites to make the application more accessible, the product development team defines a list of requirements based on recommendations of convenience and practicality, also including the basic needs of users with disabilities. The requirements briefly describe the tasks associated with flexible development, and also point out existing tools and standards that would be helpful during the development process.

Users of all abilities benefit from sites and applications that are intuitive for everyone to understand and use. Internalising the accessibility requirements from the development phase of digital products and services is beginning to demonstrate a wide range of general benefits. Hence developing an application that is accessible to everyone is not a burden to be compliant, but an opportunity to be more profitable.