Depending on where you might be reading this post, the idea of the mobile web might be new or old, often traveled or furiously avoided, anxiously anticipated or an exercise in new types of fear. No matter where you stand on the idea of the mobile web, that is – the internet through a mobile device that has a screen smaller than 5in, you do have an understanding that the mobile web is a polarizing subject.
It only gets to be a bigger challenge for those persons in markets where the idea of a mobile web is a dream that is ever so slightly out of reach. From the price of cellular data connections, to the reliability of those connections, to the price of the mobile devices, and the internet that they connect to; for many persons in these developing/emerging markets, the mobile web is just as much a chore for them as it is for some to find a pen and paper to write a snail message.
That’s why its good to see reports such as this one by Shikoh Gitau, Gary Marsden, and Jonathan Donner who looked at some of the challenges that persons in emerging/developing markets face when trying to live to the mobile web, but do so from a paradigm of use that’s mobile-only. Here’s a quote pulled from the report:
We found that the majority of the web-based e-mail operators do not support mobile-only origination of email addresses. For example, when trying to sign up for a Gmail account, we were instructed “Want a Gmail account? Go to www.gmail.com on your computer” To circumvent this obstacle, we prompted the participants to use Opera Mini to access to the full version of the website. However, even this presented some challenges; one of the participants’ applications for an email addresses was blocked when they could not use the image-based authentication employed by the registration system. The following message was displayed: “If your mobile does not correctly display the image below please login successfully on the desktop to enable your mobile login again. Enter the correct password above and then type the characters you see in the picture below.” Of course, the handset did not display the image correctly, but she could not access a desktop device.
Read the rest of this report here (PDF).
And while I can admit that some of the issues do stem from this idea of trying to extend the internet to something beyond a content-carrying medium, the fact of the matter is that there’s something a good bit wrong with our approaches to accessibility and usability – even for those persons who have multiple types of economies and devices – when simple things such as signing up for an email account or inputting device settings is problematic.
When we are looking at challenging our brothers and sisters towards creating solutions that work, and we are using the web as that source, we need to make sure that we are not taking for granted in the checks and balances of our development or services that there is access to “the same kind of environment that we have.”
There are more people using the mobile web than ever before (over 1.2 billion people globally, and growing really fast in the Far East). If we are going to use the mobile web to set a bar towards enablement and access, then it also makes some sense to make sure that we also have made it as easy as possible for mobile to remain a handshaking moment for those who’d like to engage.
Beyond that, it would help that we also start living more on the side of mobile-only (mainly) so that when developing these services and ideals, we can have a better frame of reference towards how to address problems that prop up.