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Making Android devices work for you
Transcript
13 October 2013
Roberta: Today we have Dr Scott Hollier, Accessibility Expert and Project Manager at Media Access Australia. Now, he’s here to talk to us about the accessibility of Google Android devices for blind and vision impaired users. Welcome, Scott.
Scott: Thanks, Roberta, great to be back again.
Roberta: Now, what is Android?
Scott: Android is the operating system produced by Google and it runs on most phones and tablets that aren’t Apple. So when you look at Samsung or LG, Sony, all those phones and tablets run Android. So it’s an operating system and it works similar to the Apple devices but, yeah, it’s made by Google but still has an app store, still has all the features on smart phones and that we like and, yeah, works pretty well.
Roberta: Is it accessible, the big question?
Scott: I’m happy to say it is these days. The journey of Android has been an interesting one. They first introduced some accessibility features two years ago but they weren’t really that polished until they got to Version 4.0 which is called Ice Cream Sandwich. They like to name their operating system versions after desserts and things. So as of 4.0 things improved a lot and then through 4.1 to 4.3, they called that Jelly Bean, and the version of Android about to come out is call Kit Kat. So it’s certainly something we can all relate to a bit and the accessibility built into recent versions of Android include the talkback screen readers, so that if you’re blind you can navigate around the device using talkback. As of 4.2 they included a full-screen magnifier, so you can triple tap on the screen and it can zoom in and zoom out. Yeah, a lot of the apps have some great features. One of the things I like best about the Android phone I use, and this is a talkback feature, is that when you go into the web browser you can shake your phone a little bit and then it just reads out the whole web page. That’s very convenient, just to be able to quickly find out what’s on the screen and do that. So, yes, accessibility has improved a lot over the years and most recent Android-running devices work pretty well.
Roberta: Now, apart from you using and choosing to use Android device, why would a person who is blind or vision impaired choose one over, say, an iPhone or an iPad?
Scott: Really, it comes down to cost. I mean, like when we want to go clothes shopping, we can choose between, say, David Jones or Target. Some people would say, “Well, look, I prefer David Jones even though the clothes cost a bit more.” Some people would say, “Well, I prefer Target because it meets my needs and it’s a lot cheaper.” Really, the space here, when it comes to phones and tablets, is the same. For a lot of people who are blind and vision impaired, they look at an Android phone and say, “Well, I can get an Android phone as low as $99 or a couple of hundred dollars for one that’s quite good,” and say, “Well, look, even though Android is probably not as accessible as the Apple products, it’s accessible enough to do all the things I want to do and it’s a third to a quarter of the price.” So for a lot of people, they say, “Android, it meets my needs and it’s a lot cheaper.” For others, they would still look and say, “Well, I’m willing to pay the $700 to $800 for an iPhone.” I do think the Apple products are better products but you can pay a quarter of the price and it still meets your needs, then I think that’s a good way to go. So the best thing of all is that people have choice, which is a wonderful thing.
Roberta: Now, which Android devices are the most popular?
Scott: Well, I think by far the Samsung Galaxy S4 range of phones are very popular but the nice thing about the S4 is not only does it have all the Android accessibility built in, like the talkback screen reader, like the magnifier, but Samsung have put a few of its own little nice tweaks under the bonnet. They’ve got their own text-to-speech engine, so they’ve got a very nice sounding voice when you do use talkback. They’ve got a few other features there as well. So they are popular phones. The Google Nexus 4, which was developed by LG, and also the tablets, so things like the Nexus 7, built but Asus, and there’s a whole range of other things out there. Also some of the cheaper Android devices you can get off eBay can be quite popular too but you just have to be careful with the cheaper ones because they don’t always have the accessibility built in. Sometimes you have to play with it a bit and get it off the Play Store but some of those well-established brands that you find in the shops work really well.
Roberta: So, Scott, what innovative apps are available to Android users if they’re blind or vision impaired?
Scott: Well, one advantage of Android over things like iOS devices, which are the Apple ones, is that they’re extremely customisable. For example, one app that a lot of people who are blind and vision impaired like to use is called Big Launcher. What Big Launcher does is it’s an app that costs about $2. It replaces your standard environment with one that’s high-contrast. It just has six really big buttons to get to all the things you need. It’s fully compatible with talkback and it’s big and easy to use. So that’s an app that I have got on my phone, and I love it, and it’s just nice that you’ve got that flexibility that you can put on apps that change the environment. Another one recently that we did a news item on, a few weeks ago, was a Perth developer created an app called Point Finder. Point Finder is an app that you load up on Android. You can mark you spot where you’re standing and that’s a spot that you might want to come back to. When you do want to come back to it you can choose to either have an audio compass, so you can hear which direction that spot is and walk to it, or you can push the location into Google Maps and it will give you turn-by-turn directions to get back to that spot. That’s’ a fantastic thing, just to have those navigation options that you can pick your favourite library, for example, or bus stop and then you fire up this app and it will tell you how to get back there.
Roberta: That sounds wonderful. Listeners, you can find out more about accessible technologies on the Media Access Australia website, www.mediaaccess.org.au. Thank you, Scott, for all of that today.
Scott: Thank you.
Roberta: We’ve been speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, Accessibility Expert and Project Manager at Media Access Australia. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.