Pocket: Save. Read. Grow

Submitted by Unregistered User (not verified) on Wednesday, April 18, 2012.

Last modified

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Description of App

Pocket is your place to quickly save, discover, and recommend the stories that interest you. -- SAVE FOR LATER: The next time you find an article, video or link you want to read or watch later, just save it to Pocket. It’ll sync across your phone, tablet, and computer so you can come back to it whenever and wherever you’d like, even when you’re offline. You can save to Pocket from pretty much anywhere, including your computer, Safari, email, and your favorite apps like Facebook, Twitter, Flipboard, and Feedly. BEAUTIFUL READING EXPERIENCE: Read and watch everything in Pocket in a clean, easy-to-view layout that’s free of distractions. You can customize Pocket to match your reading style. DISCOVER STORIES YOU’LL LOVE: Quickly discover new stories you’ll love with personalized recommendations hand-picked by Pocket and the people you follow. RECOMMEND THE BEST OF YOUR POCKET: Recommend the most interesting stories you’re reading and watching in Pocket to your friends and followers. PLUS: • Unlimited storage • Tags to quickly get organized • Listen to your articles with Text-to-Speech • Save with one click using Pocket’s desktop browser extensions for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox -- “Stop emailing yourself links and just install Pocket.” - The Verge “Pocket makes subway reading possible. No longer do your lingering Safari pages refresh mid-commute, leaving you staring at a blank, hopeless screen that cannot connect to the Internet.” - Slate --- Upgrade to Pocket Premium for a more powerful Pocket experience ($4.99 monthly, $44.99 annually): • Permanent Library to keep a personal backup of what you save • Full-Text searching to find anything in your list • Suggested Tags to get organized fast. Price may vary by location. Subscriptions will be charged to your credit card through your iTunes account. Your subscription will automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. To end a subscription, disable auto-renewal and allow the current period to end. It will not be possible to immediately cancel a subscription. Refunds are not available for unused portions of a subscription. Pocket Privacy Policy: http://getpocket.com/privacy Pocket Terms of Service: http://getpocket.com/tos

Version

6.3.0

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

9.3.2

Accessibility Comments

Mostly accessible. Although there a few places where you will find a unlabeled button but overall it rather easy to use and navigate.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all 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/us/app/pocket-formerly-read-it-later/id309601447?mt=8&…

Developer's Twitter Username

@Pocket

Developer's Website

http://help.getpocket.com/

Recommendations

0 people have recommended this app

Options

Comments

My findings

After some time experimenting with this app, I'm not sure if it is closer or further away from being accessible.

I do believe, however, that I have identified most of the unlabelled button, plus the way to make some of them work.

So, lets start on the app's main screen, where the list of all your saved articles is shown.

The button in the top left corner appears to give access to some options to filter what is shown. However, the double-tap does not work. Well, it does, but you have to hold your finger down at the end of the second tap for about a second before lifting it. This will cause a menu to appear in the top third of the page that contains the following buttons:

All Items
Articles
Videos
Images

The second button on the top menu bar is labelled "aaaaaaa". Again, the only way that I could activate this button was with the method described above. This will again display a menu. This one contains:

Home
Favourites
Archive
Options
Help

When going into the Options page, most of the toggle controls for the various settings did not appear to be accessible with VoiceOver.

Back on the main screen, the unlabelled button in the top right corner activates the edit mode. This allows you to select articles. Unfortunately VoiceOver provides no feedback on the selection status of articles.

When you have selected at least 1 article, 4 buttons become available at the bottom of the page. All are unlabelled, but appear to have the following functions:

Archive
Favourite
Delete
Add Tags

When not in edit mode, a swipe to delete gesture across any article title causes it to be replaced with 5 buttons. This element is not recognized by VoiceOver. The buttons displayed appear to be:

Add Tags
Archive
Favourite
Delete
Share

When viewing an article there are initially 5 unlabelled buttons across the bottom of the page.

The first of these takes you back to the main screen and works with the double-tap. To make the other 4 buttons do anything you need to use the method described earlier.

The second button archives the article, whilst the third toggles the favourite status.

The fourth button changes things around a little at the bottom of the page. 5 buttons are now shown above a slider control for changing the brightness level. The buttons are:

Archive
Favourite
Delete
Add Tags
Invert Colours

Moving VoiceOver focus onto the text of the article will revert the display back to the original 5 buttons, the last of which opens a menu with options to share the article.

And that is about all that my exploring has found so far.

If you have any additional tips on how to make this app usable, please post them below.

Now completely inaccessible

I use Pocket with a combination of Voiceover and my remaining vision and until now I could easily identify open and read the articles I saved. After the latest update to version 4.6, the articles are not longer selectable via Voiceover. You just hear dings and you move your finger across the screen. This is true both for the iPHone and iPad version of Pocket.

Accessible Update on the way

This is the response I got from Pocket. They didn't forget about us. We’re sorry that this update is a step backward from the previous version. The fact is that we rewrote the entire list back-end, and our developers were not able to re-implement VoiceOver options on time. This will return in Pocket 4.6.1, which is in development and will be finished soon. Thanks for using Pocket. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Accessibility doesn't seem to be a priority

I have reported a number of accessibility issues to the Pocket support team such as the unlabeled buttons in the iPad version and the lack of VoiceOver support for the articles list in the Mac version. Their responses are always polite and supportive but the fixes and improvements do not seem to appear. Looks like I will need to switch back to Instapaper.

4.6.1 is out and looking good

Happily this time they seem to have taken accessibility into consideration. I've just downloaded the update on my iPad 3 and so far all buttons seem to be well labeled and of course access to the articles is back. The only thing I was unable to do is batch edit, as VO doesn't indicate weather an item is selected or not. I guess this doesn't change anything on the Mac though.

Version 5.0 hit the App Store

I have never used Pocket due to mixed reviews about its accessibility but I did notice that version 5.0 for the IPhone and Mac hit the app store today. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but would be interested to hear what long time users of the app have to say.

Pocket for iPhone

I have been able to read articles by emailing links to add@getpocket.com and then go into the app and tap the title I wish to read. I have been unable, however, to get the app added to Twitter as a source from which it can read later.