An Eyes-Free View Of Android At The Google IO Sandbox

Google IO 2010 is playing home to over 5,000 attendees in SanFrancisco this week. A number of Google Access engineers are atthe conference consuming and producing information --- here is abrief view of some of the exciting bits seen on the Android showfloor from an eyes-free perspective.

Hardware And New Devices From An Eyes Free Perspective

Many of the phone manufacturers were showing off their latestdevices on the show floor --- visit the Android Sandboxat Google IO to see these first hand. Charles and I walkedthrough the various displays Wednesday (May 19) afternoon to testdrive these devices first-hand --- given the large number ofAndroid devices coming out every week, this was a uniqueopportunity to see many of these devices for the firsttime. Here are some highlights:

• All devices were running Android 1.6 or later, andconsequently, Settings/Accessibility was available onevery device. Having worked on this for the last2 years, it's extremely gratifying to see phone manufacturersincluding accessibility in their devices.
• We found one device from Motorola where we couldn't find theaccessibility setting --- the booth representative promised tocheck after we pointed this out --- waiting to hear back.
• My favorite device was the LG Ally --- check this device outif you get a chance.
  • Device to be sold by Verizon.
  • Device has an elegant tactual feel.
  • Front of the device sports hardware answer/hangupbuttons.
  • The pull-out qwerty keyboard is a pleasure to use --- I wouldrate this one of the best designed cell phone keyboards I'veseen.
• Android devices continue to show up in many shapes and sizes--- re-emphasizing that there is a device for everyone. Thismakes it even more important to choose a device that meets yourparticular needs.

Software --- Android Applications Galore

We also visited the various vendors showing off their latestAndroid applications. What was gratifying was that even thoughmost of these developers had paid little thought to eyes-freeuse --- and were blissfully unaware of the existence of anAndroid Accessibility API, their applications worked for the mostpart with Accessibility enabled. Where there were gaps, we wereable to show developers what they needed to do --- everyone wasextremely receptive. Below is a brief summary of what we saw ---and a shout-out to all the friendly developers wemet:

Where

This is a very accessible application I have been usingfor a while --- the developers were thrilled to hear that it wasaccessible since they had made no special effort.

Aloqua

A competing application to Where with a veryslick visual UI. This application doesn't raise the appropriateAccess Events at present because it's a custom UI. When we firsttalked to their lead developer he was extremely hesitant sayingI dont want to change my custom UI. However, I could hear his face light up when we said You dont need tochange your look and feel --- you just need to set a couple ofcustom Java properties (specifically, property ContentDescription

Pandora

Another favorite of mine that works well with access ---except --- the player controls are unlabeled. I showed them theapplication in action on my Droid --- looking forward to seeingthis application become even more usable.

NPR News

There are many NPR tools on the Android Market --- NPRNews is the official application.The application was originally written by a Googler and OpenSourced --- I have been using it for about 4 months and it'scompletely accessible. It could do with some power-user shortcutkeys to make it even more efficient.

MLB At Bat

I had originally played with this application during lastyear's World Series; at the time, the application was quiteusable with TalkBack. I'm happy to report that nothing hasregressed --- the application still continues to to work well,except for a couple of glitches with unlabled playercontrols.The booth representatives had actually heard of accessibility ---and were receptive to fixing the remaining issues.

Summary: The light-weight design of the Android Access layerhas proven valuable in making sure that it makes it on toevery device. The minimal set ofresponsibilities the API places on developers has meant that alarge number of Android applications are accessible out of the box.