TalkBack: An Open Source Android Screenreader

Video: Introducing TalkBack, An Open Source Screenreader

1 Video: Introducing TalkBack, An Open Source Screenreader

Device Used: Motorola Droid On Verizon

We briefly introduced TalkBack in the previous video while enabling Accessibility from the settings menu.Here, we show off some of this screenreader's features.

TalkBack is designed to be a simple, non-obtrusivescreenreader. What this means in practice is that you interactdirectly with your applications, and not withTalkBack. TalkBack's job is to remain in the background andprovide the spoken feedback that you need.

TalkBack works with all of Android's native user interfacecontrols. This means you can configure all aspects of the Androiduser interface with TalkBack providing appropriate spokenfeedback. What is more, you can use most native Androidapplications --- including those downloaded from the AndroidMarket with TalkBack providing spoken feedback.

Here are some examples of Android applications (both from Google as well as third-party applications available onmarket) that work with TalkBack:

• Google Maps: Perform searches, and listen to directions.
• YouTube: Search, browse categories and play.
• Simple Weather: Listen to local weather forecasts.
• Facebook: Moving around on the social Web.

But in this video, we'll demonstrate the use of a very simple butuseful Android application --- the Android Alarm clock.

• Launch: I launch the alarm clock from Marvin's eyes-free application launcher.
• TalkBack: TalkBack takes over and starts speaking.
• Navigate: Navigating with the trackball speaks the alarmunder focus.
• Activate: Activating with the trackball produces appropriate feedback.
• Navigate: Selected alarm displays its settings in a list-view which speaks as we navigate.

Author: T.V Raman<raman@google.com>