Gmail
Description of App
Get the official Gmail experience for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
With the Gmail app, you can:
- Receive notification badges for new messages
- Read your mail with threaded conversations
- Organize your mail by archiving, labeling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam
- Keep track of important messages with priority inbox
- Auto-complete contact names as you type
- Send and receive attachments
- Search through all your mail
The Gmail app is available for devices running iOS 4+.
Version
Free or Paid
Compatibility
Device(s) App Was Tested On
Accessibility Comments
Yet another horribly inaccessible app from Google. Considering their size and supposed ethos, they really should be ashamed.
When tapping on the menu button (top left corner of the page), a menu slides onto the left half of the page. You will need to tap into this area to move VoiceOver focus onto menu items. However, it's still a waste of time, as double-tapping on any item in the menu (these are mostly your email folders) seems to achieve nothing. The right side of the screen still keeps on displaying whatever folder you are already in.
When VoiceOver is disabled, a tap on a menu item has the menu slide back out of site, and there you are, in your chosen folder. It's all very nice and slick, but not for us VoiceOver users.
When browsing messages there also appear to be a number of unlabelled elements. There didn't seem any point in wasting time trying to figure out what those might be, as the app won't be staying on my iPhone.
Back to the main iOS mail app we go.
VoiceOver Performance
Button Labeling
Usability
Other Comments
Did I mention that Google should be ashamed?
Comments
#1 version 1.1.1 is even worse
Version 1.1.1 is even more awful than the version reviewed in November. You can read messages just fine, but that's about it. When in a message, there are 3 buttons at the bottom of each, none of which are labeled at all. The first button is the reply button, but don't think that will actually allow you to reply to messages, because it won't. There is no way to type your message with VoiceOver, when you double tap on any of the edit fields. This also applies to composing messages. Indeed, this is an app I will not be keeping, and I have given feedback to Google about this. I'd encourage all of you to do the same.
#2 Version 1.3.1415 is looking better
Google have just released version 1.3.1415.
I've not had an opportunity yet to thoroughly test this, but it does appear to be far more accessible. The menu slider now works with VoiceOver, and although some button labeling and parts of the interface still leaves a lot to be desired, this is certainly edging towards being usable.
#3 About Time
Let me just say it is about time Google gets with the program and stops ignoring accessibility. I have long been disappointed by the whole Google Access Twitter account, and I am very happy to hear that Google is working on making their apps more accessible. My only question is has anyone started using the Gmail app? I have grown so accustomed to using the standard mail app on th eIphone, that I am not sure why I would stop. Would love to hear any benefits of using the native gmail app if anyone has any. Hopefully Google will start addressing accessibility on the mac.