2.7. Making Your App Accessible

Android contains accessibility features to help people with various disabilities use their devices. For people with visual disabilities, Android’s TalkBack can speak screen text or text that you provide (when designing your GUI or programmatically) to help the user understand the purpose of a GUI component. Android also provides Explore by Touch, which enables the user to hear TalkBack speak what’s on the screen where the user touches.

When TalkBack is enabled and the user touches an accessible GUI component, TalkBack speaks the component’s accessibility text and vibrates the device to provide feedback to users who have trouble hearing. All standard Android GUI components support accessibility. For those that display text, TalkBack speaks that text by default—e.g., when the user touches a TextView, TalkBack speaks the TextView’s text. You enable TalkBack in the Settings app under Accessibility. From that page, you can also enable other Android accessibility features such as a larger default text size and the ability to use gestures that magnify areas of the screen. Unfortunately, TalkBack is not currently supported in AVDs, so you must run this app on a device to hear TalkBack speak the text. When you enable Talk-Back, Android gives you the option to step through a tutorial of how to use TalkBack with Explore by Touch.