América Latina: promovendo acessibilidade móvel, um app por vez

Em novembro, a União Internacional de Telecomunicações (ITU) organiza o evento Accessible Americas, na Colômbia, e também realiza um desafio de apps de acessibilidade na América Latina e Caribe. Em entrevista ao blog do GARI, Bruno Ramos, diretor regional da ITU para a América Latina, falou mais sobre o evento, o desafio e a acessibilidade móvel na região.

Qual é a motivação da ITU para realizar a competição regional “Mobile Applications for Accessibility” na América Latina e Caribe?

Bruno: Vou começar contando um pouco sobre o evento. O Accessible Americas é dedicado a explorar como fornecer ferramentas às pessoas, para que as telecomunicações fiquem mais acessíveis a pessoas portadoras de deficiências físicas. O objetivo é colocar os principais interessados em acessibilidade com o núcleo de pessoas da ITU, que vêm das telecomunicações, e criar um ambiente onde seja possível discutir abertamente sobre como melhorar a acessibilidade em telecom. Essa foi a motivação para o primeiro evento Accessible Americas, em 2014. Nossa ideia foi realizar três eventos, onde nós decidiríamos sobre ações e atividades concretas a serem tomadas e mostraríamos os resultados no evento do ano seguinte, sem esquecer que as Paralimpíadas vão acontecer no Brasil em 2016. Por isso, nossa ideia inicial quando começamos a pensar sobre esses eventos em 2013/2014 também foi propor algumas ações concretas ao Comitê Paralímpico.

Falo isso porque a competição regional Mobile Applications for Accessibility na América Latina e Caribe é algo concreto e um resultado do evento Accessible Americas de 2014. Decidimos organizar essa competição e encorajar os desenvolvedores a criarem aplicações que possam melhorar a dia-a-dia das  pessoas portadoras de deficiências físicas.

Quais são suas expectativas em termos de resultados do desafio e impacto a longo prazo na região?

Bruno: Nosso primeiro objetivo é promover a ideia da acessibilidade nas telecomunicações e criar uma rede. Um dos desafios na nossa região é a falta de coordenação. Temos muitas atividades relacionadas à acessibilidade, temos várias instituições lidando com isso, mas normalmente há uma falta de conhecimento sobre o que os outros países estão fazendo na mesma área. Por isso, uma das primeiras ideias foi criar uma base de dados com os nomes dos principais interessados em acessibilidade na região. E tivemos êxito nessa tarefa. Temos uma base de dados relevante. Um dos resultados do segundo Accessible Americas poderia ser a criação de uma lista de distribuição, e o compartilhamento de notícias e informação.

Nosso segundo objetivo é aumentar a conscientização de desenvolvedores de apps e encorajá-los a criarem apps para pessoas com deficiências.

Quem você espera que participe do desafio e como vocês avaliam os apps inscritos?

Bruno: No começo, não tínhamos uma lista de desenvolvedores que tivessem foco em desenvolver apps voltados à acessibilidade. O caminho, portanto, foi usar a cooperação com a Samsung, que tem uma grande base de dados de desenvolvedores de apps na região, para distribuir a informação sobre a nossa competição entre eles. Por fim, recebemos quase 50 propostas da região toda. Recebemos várias boas contribuições, tanto de desenvolvedores experientes quanto de pessoas comuns que ainda não poderiam ser considerados desenvolvedores, mas que tiveram uma boa ideia e que não dispõem de condições financeiras para implementá-las. No futuro, poderemos dividir a competição em dois segmentos: um para apps já desenvolvidos e outro para projetos/ideias.

Como vocês avaliam os apps?

Bruno: Dividimos o processo de seleção entre o pessoal da ITU que tem experiência com acessibilidade, pois na ITU temos um departamento que trabalha com telecomunicações para pessoas com deficiência, e os especialistas da Samsung. Nesse comitê havia também uma pessoa com deficiência. Mas para a próxima edição nossa ideia para a competição é convidar algumas das organizações de pessoas com deficiência a participar e ajudar no processo de avaliação. Eles são os que melhor podem avaliar o que pode ser útil na vida real das pessoas com deficiência.

Quais são os planos futuros em termos de acessibilidade no ecossistema móvel na América Latina e Caribe?

Bruno: Queremos colocar o Accessible Americas na agenda da região. Por exemplo, na última reunião da Comissão Interamericana de Telecomunicações (CITEL), o Peru pediu para organizar um encontro sobre acessibilidade junto com a próxima reunião do PCC1 (PCC1 é um dos comitês da CITEL que lida com atividades reguladoras na área). Nossa ideia seria fazer isso no âmbito do Accessible Americas e realizar uma reunião conjunta ITU-CITEL, criando um fórum na região onde todos os interessados em acessibilidade nas telecomunicações possam estar juntos. É importante uni-los e também lembrar que as telecomunicações hoje não são o objetivo, mas a base para a criação da acessibilidade. Se conseguirmos boas propostas nesses encontros e feedback positivo dos países, então continuaremos a organizar o evento também nos próximos anos.

Que tipo de ações/medidas você acha que permitiria que as telecomunicações se tornassem acessíveis para todos?

Bruno: As telecomunicações estão mudando tudo e transformando-se constantemente. A cada dois ou três anos, enfrentamos novos desenvolvimentos. Não acredito que existam somente um elemento mais importante que possa fazer a acessibilidade avançar. Na verdade, precisamos incluir a acessibilidade na agenda da região como um tema importante, além de motivar apoiar os países a criar estruturas jurídicas ao nível nacional e regional. Temos que assegurar o envolvimento das organizações de pessoas com deficiência, pois apenas eles sabem o que necessitam, o que já existe e o que ainda precisa ser desenvolvido. Temos também que trabalhar junto aos provedores de infraestrutura  e temos que trabalhar com os fornecedores de infraestrutura, visando aumentar o entendimento de que, juntamente com o aumento da banda larga e da cobertura das redes em áreas rurais, a acessibilidade também é um item importante a ser incluído em sua pauta.



Dos seis finalistas no desafio Mobile Applications for Accessibility, um participante ou grupo participante será selecionado para participar e apresentar seu app no evento Accessible Americas, na Colômbia, entre os dias 4 e 6 de novembro de 2015.


O desafio “Mobile Applications for Accessibility” da ITU-Samsung na América Latina e Caribe: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regional-Presence/Americas/Pages/NEWS/ITU-2015-MobAppforAccesibility.aspx


Accessible Americas II: Informação e Comunicação para todos: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regional-Presence/Americas/Pages/EVENTS/2015/1104-CO-2ndAcce.aspx

LATAM: Promoting mobile accessibility one app at a time

Most news related to the South American countries are published in Spanish or Portuguese, and we therefore do not read so often about activities to promote mobile accessibility in LATAM. But this fall, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is organizing the Accessible Americas event in Colombia and in conjunction carries out an accessibility app challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean. In an interview for the GARI blog, Bruno Ramos, ITU’s Regional Director for Latin America, told us more about the event, the app challenge and about mobile accessibility in his region.

What is the motivation for the ITU to carry out the Regional Competition for Latin America and the Caribbean “Mobile Applications for Accessibility”? 

Bruno: Let me start with a few words about the event. Accessible Americas is dedicated to exploring how we can make telecommunications more accessible for persons with disability. The idea of the event is to put key stakeholders in accessibility together with ITU’s core people which come from telecommunications, and to create an environment where they can discuss openly about how to improve accessibility in telecom. This was the motivation for the first Accessible Americas event in 2014. Our idea was to have three events, where we would decide on concrete actions and activities to be taken and show the results in the next year’s event, keeping in mind also that the Paralympics will take place in Brazil in 2016. So our initial idea when we started thinking about these events back in 2013/14, was also to propose some concrete actions to the Paralympics Committee.

I mention all this because the Regional Competition for Latin America and the Caribbean “Mobile Applications for Accessibility” is something concrete and an outcome of the Accessible Americas event 2014. We decided to organise this competition and encourage developers to come up with concrete applications that can improve the day-to-day life of people with disabilities.

What are your expectations in terms of outcome of the challenge and longterm impact on the region? 

Bruno: Our first objective is to promote the idea of accessibility in telecommunications and to create a network. One of the challenges in our region is the lack of coordination. We have several activities related to accessibility, we have many institutions dealing with this topic, but often there is a lack of awareness what the other countries around are doing in the same field. So one of the first ideas was to create a database with the names of key stakeholders in accessibility in the region. And we did succeed in that, we have now a relevant database. One of the outcomes of the second Accessible Americas could be to create a distribution list and share news and information.

Our second objective is to raise awareness among app developers and encourage them to create apps for the different types of disabilities.

Who do you expect to participate in the challenge and how do you assess the submitted apps? 

Bruno: In the beginning, we did not have a list of app developers that were particularly focused on developing accessibility related apps. The idea therefore was to use the cooperation with Samsung, who has a big database of app developers in the region, to distribute the information about our app competition among developers. We finally received almost 50 proposals from the whole region. We received several good ideas, both from experienced app developers that already have developed apps, but also from ordinary people who cannot be yet called a developer, but had a good idea and do not have the necessary funds to create an app. In the future, we might actually divide the competition into two segments: one for already developed apps and one for app projects/ideas.

How are you assessing these apps? 

Bruno: We split the selection process between ITU staff that have experience in accessibility - ITU has a department that works on telecommunications for persons with disabilities - and experts from Samsung. In this committee there was also one person with a disability. But for the next edition our idea is to invite some organisations of persons with disabilities to take part and assist us with the evaluation process. They are the ones that can better evaluate what is helpful in real life for persons with disabilities.

What are your future plans in terms of accessibility in the mobile ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean region?

Bruno: We want to get the Accessible Americas on the region’s agenda. For example, in the last meeting of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), Peru requested to organise a meeting on accessibility in conjunction with the next PCC1 meeting (PCC1 is one of CITEL’s committees that deals with regulatory activities in the area). Our idea would be to do this in the framework of the Accessible Americas and hold a joint ITU-CITEL meeting, creating one forum in the region where all accessibility and telecommunications stakeholders can be together. It is important to bring all of them together, and also to remember that telecommunications today is not the goal but the basis for creating accessibility. If we get good proposals out of these events and positive feedback from the countries, then we will continue to organise the event also for the coming years.

What kind of actions/measures do you think would enable the region’s telecommunications to become accessible for all? 

Bruno: Telecom is changing everything and is changing itself constantly. Every 2-3 years, we are facing new developments. I don’t think that there is one main element that can move accessibility forward. Rather we need to make sure to include accessibility on the region’s agenda as an important topic and motivate and assist countries to create a national and regional legal framework, and we have to make sure we involve the Organisations of Persons with Disabilities because they know what they need, what is already there and what still needs to be developed, and we have to work with the providers of infrastructure to increase the awareness that along with the extension of bandwidth and network coverage in rural areas, accessibility too is an important issue to be included in their agenda.


Out of the 6 finalists in the Mobile Applications for Accessibility challenge, one person/group will be selected to participate and present their app at the Accessible Americas event in Colombia from 4 to 6 November 2015.

"High quality, affordable hearing solutions are available"

Hearing is essential for our social live and, as more and more studies show, our cognitive functions. While many of us are or will be confronted with hearing loss, technologies have developed that can help us manage our individual levels of hearing. One of these technologies are personal sound amplifiers. To understand how they work with mobile phones and why they are different from hearing-aids, we have talked to Shawn Stahmer, Vice President, Business Development at Sound World Solutions, who designs, manufactures and markets high quality, affordable hearing devices that help people rediscover the power of connection, regardless of geographic location or economic circumstance.

Can you explain what Personal Sound Amplifier Products (PSAPs) are, and who they are designed for?

Shawn: The category of Personal Sound Amplifier Products covers quite a broad range of devices. Generally speaking, if the product is several hundred dollars (as opposed to less than fifty dollars) you can expect a hearing device that provides many of the same technical features and similar performance to hearing aids that cost thousands of dollars. PSAPs are a consumer product, not a medical device, and therefore are typically sold through consumer retail channels. The FDA provides the following guidance on the distinction between hearing aids and PSAPs.

"Hearing aids and personal sound amplification products (PSAPS) can both improve our ability to hear sound," says Eric Mann, M.D., Ph.D, deputy director of FDA's Division of Ophthalmic, Neurological, And Ear, Nose, and Throat Devices. "They are both wearable, and some of their technology and function is similar."

Mann notes, however, that the products are different in that only hearing aids are intended to make up for impaired hearing. The distinction is primarily on the marketing claims that can be made. When marketing hearing aids, discussion of degree of hearing loss is appropriate and permitted. When marketing PSAPs, no mention of hearing loss can be made, as PSAPs are not classified as a medical device, and therefore are not considered appropriate to treat a medical condition such as hearing loss.

Hearing-aid users often complain that they cannot really hear well on the phone. Do PSAPs work well on the phone? If yes, what makes the difference? 

Shawn: As a general rule, PSAPs will often have the same challenges and successes that hearing aids have. Those that offer Bluetooth technology (like our Sound World Solutions products) allow the user to connect the hearing device directly to the phone, permitting them to take and make calls where the audio is sent from the phone to the hearing device, resulting in a more direct and clear signal. Users can also take advantage of the Bluetooth link to stream audio podcasts or music directly from their phone to the hearing device.

Does the quality of the mobile phone used play a role in the quality of the user experience with a PSAP? 

Shawn: Because our products interact with the phone through the Bluetooth link, the quality of the microphones or speakers in the phone does not have a direct impact on the user’s experience with our personal sound amplifiers.

What would you need or expect from the mobile phone manufacturers in order to mainstream PSAPs for people with hearing loss?

Shawn: The biggest challenge in getting more affordable hearing solutions, including PSAPs, into the mainstream is creating awareness in the minds of consumers that high quality, affordable hearing solutions are available. There are tens of millions of people in the U.S. and Europe (and many more in emerging markets) that would benefit from a solution that provides help with their hearing but have chosen not to acquire hearing aids from the traditional channel. Many of these consumers can be helped by the new technology solutions that are available. Mobile device manufacturers are in a unique position to communicate directly with their existing customers about the availability of these new solutions and the benefits provided.

In addition to PSAPs, are there other efforts underway to increase affordable hearing care options?

Shawn: There is currently much debate, particularly in the U.S., on how to make hearing care more affordable and accessible. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) earlier this year convened a committee on Affordable and Accessible Hearing, which sought input from a variety of sources and is expected to make recommendations in the next several months. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) also took up this issue recently, and is similarly expected to make their recommendations in the next several months. Industry watchers speculate that the recommendations will include changes to the FDA hearing aid regulations, greater consumer access to PSAPs and other hearables for the mild to moderately impaired and possible Medicare coverage of low cost hearing devices.


Learn more about Sound World Solutions: soundworldsolutions.com

Sound World Solutions has also developed the CS Customizer app, which allows users of Sound World Solutions' CS50/CS50+ Bluetooth Series personal sound amplifier, Companion, or Sidekick products to personalize their settings and control the device via Bluetooth link from their smartphone.

See the CS Customizer app on GARI: http://www.gari.info/findapps-detail.cfm?appid=261

Guiding app developers in ensuring accessibility

The Accessibility Testing Criteria that the App Quality Alliance (AQuA) has been working on, are published and ready to be used by all app developers who would like to ensure that their apps are accessible to persons living with vision, hearing, speech, cognition or mobility impairments. Feedback from a number of organisations of persons with disabilities, mobile industry, app developers and accessibility experts has been very valuable in developing these Testing Criteria.

“We are pleased to publish our first set of Accessibility Testing Criteria (for Android*). There is nothing like this out there in the industry and the reaction we have received tells us that this should be a great help to developers who want to make their apps widely accessible to all. The Testing Criteria are designed to guide developers to test their app from the point of view of people with restrictions in vision, hearing, dexterity or cognition and to test the developers' assumptions about their users. Some 20% of the world have some sort of restriction in ability and AQuA’s Accessibility Testing Criteria opens up that audience to every app that passes the tests,” says Martin Wrigley, executive director, AQuA.

Mobile accessibility is important given the impressive figure of one billion people (according to WHO) wo live with some sort of disability. But we also talk about a huge potential market for app developers. According to a report by Chris Lewis**, people with disabilities and their families and caretakers dispose of an annual budget of about 3.5 trillion dollars that they could potentially use on assistive and accessible technologies.

A good understanding of the motivation behind the Testing Criteria as well as its contents and intended use, can be gained by listening to the recording of AQuA's webinar. It explores the target market in terms of the number of people who have accessibility needs, dives deeper into how to use the Accessibility Testing Criteria and pulls out some examples of the specific tests.

The Testing Criteria have been broken down in different sections:

• usage with limited vision (including usage without vision)
• usage without perception of colour / minimising photosensitive seizure triggers
• usage with limited hearing (including usage without hearing)
• usage with limited manipulation or strength (including usage with limited reach)
• usage with limited cognition 

The Testing Criteria then further look into a set of functional areas including navigation (how you move around within the app), control (how actions are executed within the app), feedback (how the user is informed that an app has started for example or that the app is doing something), display (how the app is laid out), any adjustments or settings (how the user can change to a high contrast display for example), and external devices (how the app can interact with switch controls etc.).

Download the Accessibility Testing Criteria: http://www.appqualityalliance.org/Accessibility_Testing_Criteria 

* Accessibility Testing Criteria for other platforms will follow.
 ** "Digitising the disabled billion. Accessibility gets personal." Chris Lewis, Lewis Insight, March 2015: https://chrislewisinsight.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/digitising-the-disabled-billion-accessibility-gets-personal-2015-final.pdf

Spotlight on… the accessibility of apps

Only last year when we attended app developer events, we were astonished to hear intense discussions about how to reach more customers, how to expand market share, how get more users focusing solely on server capacity, stability of the app and so on….  without accessibility ever coming up. However, if apps are not accessible they are effectively not usable for a large group of users that might live with some sort of disability. The statistics are impressive: the WHO estimates that over 1 Billion people in the world are or will be effected by disability. And while a majority of this people live in developing countries, there are also a large number of persons effected by disability in developed countries, influencing according to LewisInsight a spending power of over $3.5 trillion, and more than $8 trillion when combined with the spending power of friends and family around them.

Accessibility in apps made easy - AQuA’s Testing Criteria 

Accessibility in apps does not have to be complicated. All major OS platforms provide accessibility guidelines for developers, but still for newcomers to the topic, it can be intimidating. To help overcome this hurdle and help developers perform a simple check of their app to see whether basic accessibility requirements are fulfilled, the MMF teamed up with the App Quality Alliance (AQuA) to develop App Accessibility Testing Criteria.

These Testing Criteria are meant to be a checklist that app developers can work through step by step. Some of the checkpoints are for example:

• Verify that audio feedback of multiple elements is not confusingly similar
• Display schemes and content should avoid using known photosensitive seizure triggers

A first version of the App Accessibility Testing Criteria has been published for Android and is still submitted to public consultation; take a look and download it here. Once finalised, the Accessibility Testing Criteria will also be adapted for other platforms.

If you have questions, want to learn more or have constructive criticism or ideas for ameliorating the Accessibility Testing Criteria, we invite you to register for the free AQuA webinar on Tuesday 30 June 2015 at 5pm CEST / 4pm BST.


Report by LewisInsight: http://chrislewisinsight.com/2015/02/26/disability-accessibility-and-the-emerging-digital-world-a-personal-and-professional-perspective/digitising-the-disabled-billion-accessibility-gets-personal-2015-final

App Accessibility Testing Criteria: http://www.appqualityalliance.org/Accessibility-Testing-Criteria

AQuA webinar: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2697317894127187714

Mobile Innovation: Smarter Living for All - M-Enabling Summit 2015

A lack of information about existing mobile accessibility solutions among those who would benefit the most from these features (persons with disabilities and seniors) is still the major issue. That is the conclusion from policy makers and representatives of persons with disabilities from Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia sharing their experience on promoting mobile accessibility in their countries at the M-Enabling Summit 2015 that took place 1-2 June in Washington.

The first day opened with keynotes speeches and panel discussions with speakers of mostly technical background. From discussions around the Internet of Things and how it might serve to make the lives of persons with accessibility needs easier, to the efforts by major mobile phone manufacturers to make their mainstream devices accessible and wireless carriers to offer services such as text relay nationwide, passing by the presentation of a smartphone that can be operated entirely without touch developed by an Israeli startup, technological developments for accessibility do not seem amiss.

Kevin Carey, Chair of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK, challenged his panel by asking how to leverage the economic aspect of making all these pits of generic technology work for accessibility. One possible answer to this was given by Lama Nachman from IntelLabs who was part of the team working on the upgrade of Stephen Hawking’s communication system. In a fascinating talk about how they worked with Stephen Hawking to adapt the system to his needs, she explained that in the process the team realised that they often did not need to invent new features from scratch but that they could build on accessibility features that existed in other contexts (such as predictive text in mobile phones). Her short answer to the question how to make generic technology work for accessibility was therefore “integrative systems” - systems that integrate already existing accessibility solutions and bring them to the persons who need it most. Intel also decided to make the system they developed for Dr. Hawking open-source so that more researchers and technicians around the world might work on adapting it for people suffering from motor neurone disease and quadriplegia.

Trained assistance versus crowd-sourced help

The afternoon session on Assistive Mobile and Wearable Solutions for Blind and Low Vision discussed the fast expanding sector of mobile apps and services available to users with visual impairments.

An interesting discussion ensued about a payable service that TCS Associates is working on where an app would connect blind users to "visual agents" for remote visual assistance versus free services such as BeMyEyes that connect blind users with sighted volunteers that lend them their eyes via the smartphone camera. The visual agents of TCS Associates receive specific training to best help low vision and blind users and they can build relationships over time with the persons they help more often, which makes helping them more efficient as needs are better understood and can be anticipated. BeMyEyes on the other hand crowd-sources help and puts someone in need of assistance in touch with a random volunteer willing to help. Both system clearly have advantages and disadvantages and only the personal preference of the user can decide which one is better for a given situation. But both solutions empower blind people and allow them to finally “just be friends with their friends” instead of feeling the need to use their eyes, as one woman from the audience put it.

The closing session was dedicated to the US Federal Communications Commission’s fourth annual Awards for Advancement in Accessibility (FCC Chairman’s AAA) which recognises and honours innovative achievements in communications technology that benefits people with disabilities. We were happy to hear that the Award for Augmented Reality went to one of the apps listed in GARI: BlindSquare. The app uses GPS and a compass to help blind travellers navigate routes, discover points of interest in the environment and network with friends around venues of mutual interest.

More information on the FCC Accessibility Awards: http://globalaccessibilitynews.com/2015/06/03/winners-of-us-annual-awards-for-advancement-in-accessibility-announced
More information about BlindSquare: http://www.gari.info/findapps-detail.cfm?appid=200 
More information about Intel working on Stephen Hawking’s communication system on wired.co.uk: http://bit.ly/1JKkUrP

Mobile accessibility: step by step

Mobile accessibility is tricky as it needs for three dimensions to work together: hardware, software and third party applications (apps). While the hardware has evolved to the point that a great number of mobile phones and tablets integrate accessibility features by default, and also the major mobile software platforms cater for basic accessibility, apps still seem to lag behind. Out of the thousands of apps in the app stores, only a minority is accessible.

Is your app accessible? Soon, it will be easy to check  

To help remedy this problem and raise awareness amongst developers about the importance of making their apps accessible to all, including persons with disabilities, the App Quality Alliance (AQuA) and the Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF) are working on a set of Accessibility Testing Criteria for apps. The Testing Criteria will allow for app developers to run through a checklist that can help them verify whether their app is accessible to persons with vision, hearing, speech, mobility or cognitive impairments. 

Some of the tests check for example if the app can be used with screen readers like TalkBack, if audio prompts are available for all content (including pictures, graphs….) or if on the other hand the app can be used entirely without audio, if the app offers different contrast levels, if the app offers alternative inputs for navigation for persons with mobility issues or a simple mode for persons with cognitive impairments. 

The Testing Criteria are currently submitted for stakeholder feedback. If you would be interested in getting a preview and test the criteria for yourself, please get in touch at sabine(.)lobnig(@)mmfai.info. 

About AQuA

The App Quality Alliance (AQuA) is a global association focused on helping the industry continually improve and promote mobile app quality, across all platforms. It is led by the Core Members: AT&T, Motorola,  and Microsoft, , who work together on projects of mutual interest, thereby minimising the work needing to be done by each one. AQuA also acts as a referral and endorsement body, accrediting the quality of players (specifically developers and testing service providers) within the industry, and also their apps. http://www.appqualityalliance.org 

About the MMF

The Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF) is an international association of telecommunications equipment manufacturers with an interest in mobile or wireless communications, including the manufacturers of mobile handsets and devices, as well as the manufacturers of network infrastructure. The association has a scientific purpose. Its members include Alcatel OneTouch, Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, Motorola Solutions, Samsung and Sony. www.mmfai.info