Regional changes impact Top 10 of accessibility features - GARI Annual Report 2017

The GARI project continues to grow year by year and the 2017 Annual Report gives a compact overview of what is new and what has changed over the last year. We are happy to report that in 2017 the GARI website registered a monthly average of 42,000 unique visits, which is an increase of over 100% compared to 2016, as well as over half a million page-views per month, which equals a growth of over 50% on 2016.

15 new features in 2017

In 2017, the MWF carried out a 4th feature review of the GARI database and invited over 80 stakeholders around the world – including organisations of persons with disabilities, senior citizen bodies, consumer groups, national regulators, government agencies, accessibility experts, academics and industry representatives, to give feedback on the accessibility features listed in GARI as well as on the usability of the GARI user interface.

The detailed feedback helped us improve the usability of the GARI website and resulted in the addition of 11 accessibility features for mobile phones and 4 accessibility features for Smart TVs.

Spike in interest in Latin America

In 2017, we were really surprised to see that for the first time, the majority of visitors to the GARI online portal came from Latin America with 47%, overtaking North America with 23% and Europe with 15%.

This change also impacted the list of the top 10 most-searched-for features in GARI. While hearing features dominated this list over the past couple of years, it has become more diverse in 2017 with the 10 top accessibility features in GARI being:

• Internet Capability
• Hearing Aid or ‘H A C’ Setting
• Hearing Aid T-coil Coupling
• Supports ability to install third party applications or apps 
• Touch Screen
• External Keyboard Support
• Screen Reader 
• Braille Display Support
• Easy to Press Keys

We thank the many organizations, individual experts and other interested parties that have continuously helped us to make the GARI database ever more responsive and relevant to people’s needs -  and we look forward to continuing to grow the entire project over the coming years.

Audio version of GARI report

For this year’s report, we also have an audio version provided by Speech Code which can either be accessed through the “play” icon in the lower right corner of each page in the report or by using the links listed here below.

The following links provide the content to the GARI Annual Report 2017, page by page:

• Cover page: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/5f309335-b563-492f-82f6-d3eff4789f5e?size=72&title
• Index: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/261b6d9c-74d8-4b08-9a86-68502948a259?size=72&titile
• page 1: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/35557879-fce4-42dd-b5e2-b5a4474b89d1?size=72&title
• page 2: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/2ccead81-5ff0-4093-8642-1933a44ebc02?size=72&title
• page 3: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/97517344-e1c0-4f62-a56a-d2ba6349d472?size=72&title
• page 4: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/2fea469d-dc67-4012-9a61-9f4e9db78eff?size=72&title
• page 5: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/4cb52fce-bc07-4d74-bc9e-add098ad321f?size=72&title
• page 6: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/a240194d-2965-4304-b3f1-6e6a0e706ee8?size=72&title
• page 7: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/d7b8a3e1-fb5e-4b86-b3a2-788fc5076324?size=72&title
• page 8: https://speechcode.eu/embed/audio/e679f9bd-c20d-4b3b-9515-71d1a67b8bef?size=72&title

You can also download the 2017 GARI Annual Report in PDF format.