A First Look at the iPad – Pt. 2 – Mail

by Josh de Lioncourt

<- Part 1 | Part 3 ->

In part 1, we took a look at accessibility in general on Apple’s new iPad device. In this part, we take a look at Mail, the built-in email application included on the iPad. In future installments, we’ll look at other included and third-party apps and their accessibility.

Reading email on the iPhone works quite well in a pinch, but the small screen makes for some tedious navigation. It’s a great interface for a phone, but it’s not really designed for doing all your email perusing on. The iPad, on the other hand, is very, very good.

In the landscape orientation, which I’m rapidly discovering is nearly always the best way to use the iPad, you’ll find a list of messages in a column on the left. On the right, there is a pane to display the selected messages content. As a VoiceOver user, double tapping any message immediately makes it viewable on the right. This makes for extremely fast navigation. Both the messages in your mailbox, as well as the content of the selected message, is always a single touch away.

An "Edit" button is available above the messages column, which allows you to select batches of messages for deletion or relocation into another mailbox. I’m happy to see that, unlike on the iPhone, this feature works flawlessly with VoiceOver every time. I still wish there was a "SelectAll" option, to rapidly clear out unwanted messages from a mailbox. Alas, I’m still waiting for that feature.

At the top of the column of messages is also a search field. You can search through the messages via a variety of options. For example, you can search for a string of text that appears only in subject lines or senders, if you wish.

In a reversal of the iPhone layout, the controls to reply, delete, or otherwise manipulate a message appear above its content, rather than below. Again, I found myself needing to avoid falling into the trap of expecting things to be laid out the same way on the iPad as on the iPhone/iPod touch.

Like on the iPhone, you must back out of a mailbox to switch to others within your IMAP account, and still further to switch from account to account. In this case, VoiceOver‘s new "Scrub" gesture to back out of a function is exceptionally useful, and it makes the process seem less cumbersome than on the iPhone.

I’ve taken some time to compose some lengthy emails using the on screen keyboard set to the touch-typing mode. Over time, I’m finding my accuracy and speed increasing, though it is obviously quite a different experience from typing on a physical keyboard. Still, it works plenty well enough for email.

It is when composing an email that another new VoiceOver feature really has a chance to shine. The rotor’s new "Lines" option for navigation makes working one’s way through an email in progress infinitely easier, not to mention more efficient. Like "Words" or "Characters", you simply select "Lines" from the rotor and use the flick up/down gestures to move backward/forward through the text.

Is Mail perfect? Almost. The two main things that prevent me from using it exclusively as a primary email client are being addressed in the iPhone OS 4.0 update unveiled on 08/April. One of these is the ability to more quickly switch between inboxes on multiple accounts. More importantly, though, is the ability to display conversation threads. If you subscribe to high traffic email lists, Mail on the iPad may not quite cut it for you.

That being said, I’m finding myself using the iPad for email management nearly as often as my MacBook. Come the 4.0 upgrade, available this fall for iPad users, I suspect Mail on the iPad will become my primary email client.

It’s clear that a tremendous amount of care went into insuring the accessibility of the Mail app. Everything works exactly as you would expect. All controls are labeled, and I have run into no strange behavior whatsoever. Despite the lack of conversation threading, I still find it efficient and satisfying to manage email. With the forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0 update, Mail will be more than adequate for nearly all users, and potentially more efficient than desktop clients for VoiceOver users in particular.