We are continuing to improve COVIDSafe, and enhancing the user experience, accessibility, performance and security.

Today’s update translates the app and help topics into the 5 most-spoken languages in Australia other than English. This gives over 1.5 million Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Arabic and Korean speakers a better experience when using the app.

We continue to make accessibility enhancements as we work towards complying with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA within the next 2 releases.

The Australian community can continue to have confidence that the app is working securely and effectively. We strongly encourage everyone using COVIDSafe to update to the latest version to benefit from these improvements.

Update details

Multilingual access

This release provides better access to COVIDSafe for users whose first language is not English. The app now supports 5 of the most-spoken languages other than English within Australia. These are Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Arabic and Korean.

To complement this, the COVIDSafe website also includes help topics in each of these languages. Users can view these translated help topics from the app. We are exploring adding more languages to the app and help topics in future releases.

We have also translated the user guide into 63 languages. The user guide provides information on downloading, installing, and registering COVIDSafe and how to make sure it is working correctly.

Enhanced accessibility

We have also continued to improve the accessibility of COVIDSafe. Today’s release extends the phone orientation to landscape, allows for dynamic text and makes improvements for people using screen-reader technologies. 

We keep prioritising accessibility improvements as we work towards compliance with WCAG 2.0 Level AA within the next 2 releases.

Battery optimisation guidance

In response to user feedback, we have provided additional guidance for users whose device operating system automatically optimises the battery. This may result in the COVIDSafe app being disabled.

We have updated the help topics on the COVIDSafe website to address this issue.

Source code update and next release

We have updated the publicly available application source code in line with today’s release. To make sure we can continue to engage strongly with the technology community, the community can provide direct feedback within the source code repository.

We are currently working on the next update to the COVIDSafe app, which we plan to release in a couple of weeks.

Visit the COVIDSafe website for more information or to access the application source code.