Google's announcement this week of its App Inventor tool that allows ordinary consumers to build their own apps for Android-based mobile devices has the potential to greatly expand the universe of accessible/accessibility apps.

It also raises concern about a possible proliferation of apps that do not provide sufficient accessibility to people with disabilities.

Google's App Inventor allows would-be Wozniaks to build applications using visual building blocks that tell the various functions (GPS, directory, text-to-speech function) of the mobile device to do something.

See the New York Times news coverage for details: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/technology/12google.html?_r=1

The Times quoted Harold Abelson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on sabbatical at Google who led the project, “The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” said Harold Abelson.

This makes sense. For people with disabilities, it is potentially liberating. They can build the apps that work for best for them. After all, nobody else knows more intimately the accessibility challenges and general app needs of people with disabilities.

The potential concern however, is that many other home inventors will create apps that are insufficiently accessible because they have little training in accessible design, and these apps will crowd out the ones that are more accessible.

Who knows how such a diffuse and dynamic development environment will unfold. It's an exciting time for wireless technologies. It's also a time when accessible design is even more critical.