Organizing a busy life can require a great deal of time and work. Many people rely on memory, voice recorders, daily calendars, or any number of tools to keep track of everything they would like to accomplish. Now that the information age is upon us, digital task management offers a new solution to the old challenge of organizing work and play. This article provides an overview of digital task management and assesses the accessibility of the products currently on the market.
Digital Task Management Advantages
Digital task management software has some advantages over traditional methods. One advantage many programs offer is keeping your tasks safely in the Cloud. Cloud storage allows your tasks to be read from many different devices that have access to the Cloud via the Internet. By having your tasks in the Cloud, if you misplace your device or leave it at home, you can still access your to-do list from another device. Anyone who has forgotten to bring his or her voice recorder or planner on a trip knows how frustrating the loss can be. With the Cloud, there are multiple avenues to viewing your tasks.
Another advantage to digital task management is that many programs can also actively remind the user of events and tasks. For example, you can set a weekly reminder to take out the trash the night before garbage pick up in your neighborhood. Some more advanced programs even allow you to set location reminders, like setting a reminder to pick up eggs when you arrive at the grocery store. Forgetting something at the grocery store, only to remember it at home, is an annoyance we've all experienced.
Beyond personal use, task managers also offer a way to keep businesses all on the same page. Many programs offer options to delegate tasks, keep track of teammates, and create subtasks. This is a great way to keep a department running smoothly make sure everyone stays on the same page. It can also create a sense of community. Tasks can be shared among your community of family, friends, and coworkers.
Comparing Traditional and Digital Task Management Strategies
People who are blind or visually impaired can benefit from accessible digital task management software. Such software provides a new alternative to traditional methods of task management. An improvement digital task management has over memory is that you can set up reminders that always remind you at the best time. It is common to remember to do something at work that you forget when you are at home. Digital reminders can help you remember at the right time.
Digital task management's advantage over voice recorders is that it offers a better way to store and organize tasks. It can be tedious to cycle through several recordings to find all of the reminders you recorded. Whereas digital task management keeps everything organized in neat lists or calendars that you can easily cycle through.
In comparison to heavy bulky planners or braille note takers, digital task management can be an improvement. Many people already carry a smartphone with them everywhere or otherwise have daily access to a computer, which means it is a simple matter of installing a digital task management program on a device that you already use, or of pointing your favorite browser to a website. Instead of having to carry and keep up with a planner or braille note taker, you offload that work onto something you already carry in your pocket.
Task Management Apps
There are many digital task management programs on the market with a wide array of features and pricing. We at AFB Tech decided to review some of the more popular app options. We evaluated digital task managers using the following criteria.
- Accessible: the software needs to be fully accessible
- Multiplatform: the software needs to be compatible with multiple platforms (iOS, Android, and Web, for example)
- Lightweight: setting up the software should be as simple as installing an app and creating an account
- Collaborative: the software needs the ability to create, share, and track tasks of others in your team or family
- Modular: the software needs the ability to break up tasks into smaller subtasks
Digital Task Management App Selection Process
We found about 30 potential task manager solutions in the initial search. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any solution that was fully accessible, so we chose programs that had potential on at least one platform or were representative of the market. We eliminated programs that were targeted to very specific audiences, such as programs designed to track and assign computer bugs. We also eliminated programs that were overly complicated. Our final list includes programs that have a mass appeal and focus on keeping everything simple and efficient. We narrowed our review to these four programs:
Product: Todoist
Contact: https://todoist.com/Support/
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Chrome, Firefox, Web, and some e-mail clients
Price: free with a pay-to-upgrade option
Product: Any.do
Contact: http://anydo.uservoice.com/
Platforms: iOS, Android, Chrome, and Web
Price: free with a pay-to-upgrade option
Product: Wunderlist
Contact: https://support.wunderlist.com/customer/en/portal/emails/new
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows, Mac, Chrome, and Web
Price: free with a pay-to-upgrade option
Product: TickTick
Contact: https://help.ticktick.com/forum Platforms: iOS, Android, Mac, Chrome, and Web
Price: free with a pay-to-upgrade option
These four programs offer collaborative options, are Cloud-based, and have various reminder settings. Some of these features may require an upgrade depending on the program. We chose not to include the upgrade pricing on these apps because most had different and difficult to compare price structures including one-time-pay upgrades, subscriptions, and business pricing.
Accessibility Findings
We were severely disappointed in the accessibility of these programs, and saddened to find that there was not one program that was accessible across the board on all platforms. Overall, we found that the Web versions of all of these programs were completely inaccessible. Missing headers, unlabeled images, and reading hidden actions were routine. The Android versions were similarly inaccessible with many unlabeled buttons and incorrect panel focusing. TickTick was the most accessible on Android, but still not recommended unless you enjoy a challenge. As for the iOS versions, they were mostly inaccessible too. Wunderlist on iOS was the most accessible but still had some issues to iron out.
It is disappointing to find so many inaccessible task manager solutions available on accessible platforms. The apps we found were flashy with fancy animations, and it is apparent that accessibility was never a consideration in the development process. If developers were to follow standard design and accessibility guidelines of iOS, Android, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for Web, their apps would be relatively accessible. AFB even offers usability consulting services to those who might need a little more guidance on how to make an app accessible.
Technology and Accessibility
As we discussed earlier in the article, digital task management offers many benefits. It is unacceptable that these programs and other, similar programs are inaccessible. Inaccessible digital task management programs can create hurdles to full inclusion in work and social settings, limit personal productivity options, and hamper full independence. Not to mention the denial of the benefits digital task management offers. Inaccessibility simply harms everyone. When certain portions of the population have barriers to full participation, we as a society lose the talent and creativity diversity brings. We want to see more developers take accessibility into their software designs plans as a beginning requirement instead of a final hurdle.
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