Designing the Swiggy App to Be Truly Accessible (Episode 2)

Swiggy saw 5x growth in accessibility sessions after fixing one critical UX problem: their Android app treated screen reader users like robots, not humans.

Swiggy's Android team shares 9 specific technical implementations they used to make their food ordering flow accessible. They applied the POUR principle (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) to serve the 46% of people over 60 who have disabilities.

Key Takeaways

• Grouped restaurant cards so users hear all info at once, not per element
• Replaced robotic 'double tap to activate' with meaningful actions like 'order' or 'subscribe'
• Used accessibility live regions for polite cart updates that don't interrupt navigation
• Added custom actions to multi-action views to reduce focus shifts
• Implemented smart OTP timer announcements that only speak when focused

The article includes actual code snippets showing exactly how they override accessibility methods and handle focus states for each pattern.