Source: ZDNet (original reporting by ZDNet Australia, published 4 February 2020)
UBank Open-Sources Its Internal iOS Accessibility Toolkit
Australian digital bank UBank has released an open source accessibility kit on GitHub, aimed at helping iOS app developers and contributors audit and improve the accessibility of their applications. The toolkit targets users who experience challenges such as low vision, cognitive impairment, or neurological impairment.
UBank’s digital banking chief product officer Peter O’Malley described the release as central to the bank’s mission of “making technology accessible to everyone.” Speaking to ZDNet, O’Malley noted a clear gap in the market: “There’s no easy tool available for developers or contributors to make sure their apps are more accessible, and so for us, we want to ensure technology is accessible and easy for people to use no matter who they are.”
From Internal Testing Tool to Public Resource
The kit was originally built as an internal testing tool by UBank’s in-house development team. By open-sourcing it on GitHub, UBank is making it available to the broader iOS development community — including developers, designers, testers, and product owners — who can use it to audit the accessibility of their own apps.
What the Accessibility Kit Does
The toolkit works by rendering a visual overlay directly on top of a running iOS app. This overlay highlights areas where the app meets established accessibility criteria, flags areas needing improvement, and provides actionable guidance on what changes to make.
According to O’Malley: “It takes all of the objectivity of building an app and what makes it accessible by design.”
Key accessibility checks supported by the kit include:
- Colour contrast levels: Verifying that foreground and background colours meet contrast ratio requirements for users with visual impairments.
- Label structure and wording: Checking whether UI element labels are correctly structured and appropriately worded for assistive technologies such as VoiceOver.
- Touch target accessibility: Assessing whether the app’s interactive elements allow seamless interaction without limitations for users with motor impairments.
Why iOS Accessibility Tooling Matters
Accessibility auditing is often treated as an afterthought in mobile development cycles. Many teams rely on manual review against guidelines such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines, both of which require significant domain knowledge to apply correctly. Automated overlay tools like UBank’s kit reduce the barrier for non-specialists — such as product owners and designers — to participate in accessibility reviews earlier in the development process.
Apple’s native UIAccessibility framework provides APIs that developers can use to expose accessibility metadata, but tooling that aggregates and surfaces violations at runtime in a visual format is comparatively rare in the open source ecosystem, making UBank’s contribution notable for the iOS community.
UBank’s Broader Digital Agenda
UBank, which operates under a banking licence provided by its parent company National Australia Bank (NAB), has been active in pursuing digital-first product development. Alongside the accessibility kit release, O’Malley discussed the bank’s plans to enhance its budgeting tool — developed in partnership with open banking fintech Basiq — describing it as “a cool fitness tracker for your finances.”
Future development of the budgeting feature is intended to aggregate customers’ financial data from other banks they hold accounts with, delivering a unified financial view. O’Malley framed accessibility as integral to this goal: “As we draw on additional data and additional insights from customers of different financial institutions, we hope we can provide one of the easiest and simplest experiences for customers to pull all their information in one place.”
Finding the Kit
The accessibility kit is published on GitHub under UBank’s open source account. Developers interested in iOS accessibility tooling should search GitHub for UBank’s repositories directly, as repository URLs may change over time.
Originally reported by ZDNet Australia. Peter O’Malley’s title was updated on 4 February 2020 to reflect his role as digital banking chief product officer at the time of publication.