Accessible Solitaire

Hi everyone,

This is just to say that, with the exception of hopefully some reduction in the amount of crashing that happens in the Accessible Solitaire app, work on the app is finishing.

I’ve spent the last couple of years working on the app, and despite it being the most rewarding thing I’ve worked on in the last 20-something years of building apps exploring contemporary accessibility, all the app’s problems have been a lot of worry for me, and a cause of me neglecting all sorts of other things I need to be doing, so I’m calling it a day. A strong catalyst for this decision has been my discovery last week that my Mac mini, which I need to build the iOS version of the app, is no longer sufficient. I bought this second-hand 2018 Mac mini a couple of years ago, and apparently it’s now too old to handle the updates to the various things I need to build the app.

I made a final call for suggestions for the app a few weeks ago, and I’m pleased that in response to players’ ideas I did manage to add an Undo feature and a Restart Current Game feature to the app. Sadly I won’t be able to follow up on other suggestions relating to adding new types of Solitaire games, or reinstating features that the app used to have which might have been of interest to players who are partially sighted.

While the app rarely crashes for me now on any of iOS, Android, or Windows, a couple of players have told me that the app consistently crashes for them when restarting one specific type of Solitaire in the app. And last week I was told by another player that the app crashes when trying to restart any of the games in the app. So clearly the app does have serious problems which don’t happen for me, and which I’ve never managed to get to the bottom of. If there’s one thing I would hope I can still improve in the app is to prevent these crashes.

That said, the app has gone down well with some players as I’ve received some very positive feedback indeed. And according to the Apple stats I have access to, the iOS version of the app has had 23,694 sessions this year, and that only includes the 25% of people who agreed to share usage data when they installed the app. Usage of the app on Android and Windows is noticeably less, as the highest daily active device count over the last thirty days on those platforms was 8 and 3 respectively, whereas it was 35 for iOS devices. I do like how the iOS usage has been mainly across five countries, as it’s always fun to have a global reach.

While those usage numbers are nothing compared to many apps, it really has been so rewarding for me to know that some players have enjoyed using the app.

Importantly, one of the main reasons for me to have built the app in the first place was to encourage other app developers to consider the accessibility of their own apps, and for me to emphasise the point that often it’s trivial for an app dev to make elements of their UI easy for everyone to use. In my various posts and articles about the app I’ve mentioned the player experience when using any of a screen reader, voice control, or switch control. And only a couple of days ago I posted examples of screen reader announcements when the app’s running on any of iOS, Android, or Windows.

My thoughts when building the app are all at Barker’s Articles, the app code’s up at Accessible Solitaire at Github for anyone interested in the app’s use of SemanticProperties, and the app itself is freely available at the various Stores at:

• Accessible Solitaire for iOS
• Accessible Solitaire for Android
• Accessible Solitaire for Windows

If really was such a blast for me to share some of my learnings and to invite other app builders’ ideas at a couple of dev get-togethers last year. I do hope all this sharing of my journey on building this app has influenced at least one app builder. That would be enough for me.

The picture below shows me demo’ing the Windows version of the Accessible Solitaire app at the TechMids developer conference in Birmingham in 2025.

Finally I’d like to thank all the players who’ve let me know when the app’s not working as it should do, and who’ve provided suggestions on how the games in the app can be made more usable and enjoyable for everyone to play. The app wouldn’t have achieved anything at all without you.

Guy