BBC iPlayer Radio App review

This review has been written by Khafsa Ghulam in March 2013.

The radio app is a free service offered by the BBC.

About me

I am in my early twenties and I have no light perception, I therefore rely on speech when accessing my phone or my computer. Over the past 18 months I have been using an Apple iPhone with VoiceOver and I have really enjoyed trying out various apps that are developed by both Apple and external companies. Being an avid fan of Apple products, it was only a matter of time before I got an iPad and took the opportunity to compare how apps worked differently on the two devices.

Information about the service

The BBC iPlayer radio iOS app is designed to be used on the iPhone and the iPad.

This app was tested on an Apple iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1 and on an iPad 3 running iOS 6.0. At the time of testing, the App version was 1.1.0.41.

Setting up the service

The app is free to download accessibly from the App Store using VoiceOver.

Using the service

I use the BBC iPlayer Radio to:

• listen to my favourite radio stations,
• access podcasts
• as an alarm to help me get up in the morning.

Browsing the radio stations

Browsing the radio stations seemed a little confusing at first as when I initially opened the app, I could only access a few radio stations. On the screen, the stations are displayed on a wheel and in order to access more radio stations, you have to swipe to move the wheel. As a VoiceOver user, this process appeared to be inaccessible, however, I soon learned that a 3 finger swipe across the screen moved to the next station. I was then able to use this Gesture to browse through each station. As I moved through each station, I was read out information about what was currently being broadcasted and what was due to be aired. A 3 finger swipe to the left moved to the next station and a 3 finger swipe to the right moved to the previous station.

I found that I could browse the schedule of each radio station in one of two ways. I could either press the button to listen to what was being aired at that particular time, or I could select the radio station from the short list of radio stations located after the information of what was due to be aired next. When listening to a programme, I was able to access information about the programme by pressing the button that said 'info'. However, this element was not labelled as a button, so it didn't occur to me to press this at first. Similarly, when accessing the schedule of programmes for a particular radio station, only the schedule button was labelled as a button. All subsequent information (such as days, episodes and timings) was not labelled as buttons. If I had not known that they were buttons, I would have missed out on another feature of the app, i.e., the ability to set alerts for a future programme. However, once I had selected a programme that was due to be broadcast, I found that the button to set an alert was not labelled, VoiceOver read the element as 'button'.

However, if I wanted to, I could use the search feature to browse through the content on the App by either typing the name of the programme that I was looking for, or browsing through shows by category.

When listening to podcasts, I had no problem in locating a podcast and accessing the playback controls and the information related to the podcast.

Using the alarm feature

Accessing the alarm feature was possible, but not as straight forward as I would have hoped. For some reason, VoiceOver read the description of each button after the button. For example, when I was on the Alarm tab, VoiceOver would say 'button' then I would have to swipe one finger to the right and it would say 'time', then if I swiped again, it would say the time to which the alarm was set. However, the confusing thing was that all 3 of these elements were buttons that performed the same function, i.e. setting the time of the alarm. The same was found with the station, snooze and the Night mode.

The 'more' tab

Additionally, I encountered a few issues when browsing the 'more tab'. This section gives the user information about the App, and other useful information and any extra features. In the more section, there is a favourites button, again this is not labelled as a button, so it was down to me to take a chance and press it to see if anything happened. Even so, I could not work out how to add shows to my favourites, there was no obvious button when browsing through stations or the schedule to add a programme to my favourites. Additionally, there was a section which gives the user tips on how to use the App. Unfortunately, VoiceOver did not read any of this information, it just appeared to be a blank screen, but a sighted person confirmed that there was information on the page.

Advantages and disadvantages

Overall, the App is really good. The simplicity of the App and the layout of it made it really easy to use. However, one of the drawbacks of the App was the inconsistency in button labelling which did confuse me. Even so, for new VoiceOver users, this may affect their ability to use the app and take advantage of it's features.

Also, on every screen there was a message at the top which reads 'iPlayer has experienced a problem fetching data' then this was followed by a button which said 'retry button'. As a VoiceOver user, this is slightly confusing, as I am not able to access the rest of the screen without scrolling through, so the first message I get is the error message. Consequently, I did actually spend time trying to adjust my phone settings to ensure that everything was okay. After doing all this, I went back to the app and still found the message. A sighted person would be able to glance at the message and then at the rest of the screen and realise that all information seems to be loading fine, so this was one thing that really threw me as a blind user.

I would definitely recommend this app to blind users, although it has some accessibility issues, they are easy to work around once you become comfortable with your device and the App.

Any other comments

In order to improve the accessibility of the App, it is recommended that:

• all buttons are labelled correctly
• any elements with the same function are changed so that there is only one button for each function
• the information in the tips section could be made accessible
• the 3 finger gesture used to move between stations could be included in this information as it is not immediately obvious to a blind user what the screen looks like.

Conclusions

The BBC iPlayer radio App is available on the iPad and the iPhone. Overall, it is accessible with a few minor problems. Improvements could be made with the labelling of buttons, making the tips section of the app accessible and making it easier to add programmes to the favourites section. Nevertheless, I feel that the developers have done a good job and I would recommend this app to other blind users.

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