BBC News | AppleVis

Submitted by Typical Janner, 30 July, 2010

Last updated on 25 November, 2022

Description of App

Get the latest breaking news from the BBC and our global network of journalists.

Stories are arranged in categories including top stories, UK news, world news, politics, business, technology and sport.

The app offers the BBC News Channel streamed live, social features and personalisation so you can re-order the news categories to suit your interests.

NB Please note that to refresh the app you should pull down on the main content area. See in-app help page for further details.

The BBC News app offers the following:
- Breaking news
- Top Stories and latest headlines
- Features and analysis
- Live BBC News Channel
- News clips embedded in stories
- An 'Edit' menu to personalise your experience and choose news that interests you
- Share news stories by email, Facebook and Twitter
- Font controls to increase or decrease the story text size to suit you
- Refresh controls to see the latest stories and updates

If you choose to receive push notifications, a unique identifier relating to your device will be stored by ProcessOne on behalf of the BBC to provide you with the service.

No other personal data relating to you (such as a username or email address) is processed. The BBC will keep your information secure and not share it with anyone else in accordance with the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/privacy. You can choose to unsubscribe from push notifications from BBC News in your device’s ‘Notifications’ screen.

Version

3.0.2

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Yes

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

8.1.2

Accessibility Comments

The latest update continues to address the issues that were introduced in version 3.0.0.

From my initial testing, it appears that the scrollable menu displayed on the home screen of the app and intended to give quick access to certain sections of the app is still invisible to VoiceOver.

Adding topics to your custom feed is now possible, although you will have to use a combination of the 3-finger swipe up/down and exploring by touch to access all of the available topics, as swiping by touch is unreliable.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

App Store Link

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bbc-news/id377382255?mt=8

Developer's Website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_8840000/newsid_8846000/8846077.stm

Options

Comments

BBC News accessibility

I can confirm I also had the same results. Very disapointing. I'm trying to make the BBC aware of this issue and issues with the beta version of the new Iplayer but am struggling to find an accessible way of sending my comments.

Much improved in 1.7.2

The latest update has explicitly addressed accessibility issues, and things are certainly much better for it.

One note for VoiceOver users though, is don't assume that there are only 3 news stories in each section.

It would be easy to believe this, as flicking through the list of stories will have VoiceOver announce a section heading (Top Stories, World, etc.) followed by 3 stories and then the next section heading. In fact there are 9 stories in each section, but only 3 are displayed on the screen at any time. You need to use the 3-fingered swipe across the screen to move between stories 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9. When they are visually present on the screen, VoiceOver will find them.

Just keeps getting better

The latest update includes a number of VoiceOver specific enhancements:

What's New in Version 2.0

The BBC News app has been updated to offer improved response time and faster display of stories and we've also fixed a number of bugs.

These include:

An issue that caused the app to get stuck for some users while updating
A problem where stories were sometimes duplicated within a category and one of the headlines would take you to the wrong story
The edit sections function is now available in iPad portrait view so that you can add or remove categories on the home screen

We’ve made a few other small changes including:

iPhone home screen has bigger images and the layout makes it clearer that you can scroll each category to see more stories
The portrait layout on the iPad shows more headlines to make it easier to find what you are interested in
You now pull down to refresh the home screen or stories
Better integration for sharing with Twitter and Facebook
Much improved integration with VoiceOver
An extra font size to provide a better experience for iPad mini users
Users can now copy story links to their clipboard