The first version of the Able to Include Social App is now available as an App to enable users to access the most popular Social Media Applications, such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. The Social App is the basis of the Able to Include pilot focused on “Leisure within the Information Society” to be undertaken in Belgium, Spain and the UK over the coming months. It was recently demonstrated at the ICT2015 conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Able to Include Social App empowers all people to access the complete Facebook and other social media apps, but provides safety through optional short videos from the SafeSurfing project. It operates like a value-added layer on top of the Social Media Application. Users’ feedback clearly indicated that they wish to use the full “real” social media services, and not “safe” cut down versions of them.
In use, the user simply clicks the Social App on their smartphone or tablet, and then selects their preferred Social Media application, such as Facebook. The user then uses Facebook in the normal way, but in addition they can click a block of text on the screen, a focus frame highlights that text, and using a Service Strip of 3 buttons the user selects simplification, pictograms or a spoken version of that text.
The Able to Include Social App has been developed based on a “web view” of the Social Media Applications. It is an extension to open source framework standards. The first version is focused on the Android platform so that the Able to Include “Leisure in the Information Age” pilot can proceed. However by using its open framework enables the Apple and Windows versions of the Accessibility Layer App to be made available on those platforms in due course, and include all upgrades and improvements that are implemented during the “Leisure in the Information Society” Pilots.