A systematic literature review on the usability of mobile applications for visually impaired users

Abstract

Interacting with mobile applications can often be challenging for people with visual impairments due to the poor usability of some mobile applications. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the developments on usability of mobile applications for people with visual impairments based on recent advances in research and application development. This overview is important to guide decision-making for researchers and provide a synthesis of available evidence and indicate in which direction it is worthwhile to prompt further research. We performed a systematic literature review on the usability of mobile applications for people with visual impairments. A deep analysis following the Preferred Reporting Items for SLRs and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines was performed to produce a set of relevant papers in the field. We first identified 932 papers published within the last six years. After screening the papers and employing a snowballing technique, we identified 60 studies that were then classified into seven themes: accessibility, daily activities, assistive devices, navigation, screen division layout, and audio guidance. The studies were then analyzed to answer the proposed research questions in order to illustrate the different trends, themes, and evaluation results of various mobile applications developed in the last six years. Using this overview as a foundation, future directions for research in the field of usability for the visually impaired (UVI) are highlighted.