Using Android Market Eyes-Free

The Android Market is a treasure-trove of applications ---many of which work out of the box with Android's Access API, andas a result, the freely available screenreaders on theplatform. Working with Market can be initially daunting, giventhe large collection applications; additionally, there are acouple of spots in the workflow that need accessimprovements. While we get those fixes pushed, here is astep-by-step overview of using Android Market with TalkBack,including the work-arounds for moving over some of theafore-mentioned hurdles.

Android Market: A Brief Overview

Rather than giving a detailed explanation of all of AndroidMarket's user interface, I'll sketch my day-to-day mode of usingMarket --- personally, I find task-oriented help guides far moreusable.

Task: Find Application

• I typically launch Android Market from within theApplications list in the Eyes-Free shell.On my Droid, I typically do this with the keyboardalready opened since I know I'll be typing very soon.
• I press the Search capacitive button on thebottomright of the display to bring up the search tool. Note thatMarket can sometime take a few seconds to launch depending onyour network --- TalkBack should announce Market whenit's ready.
• Type a search query --- as an example, try audiobooks
• Use the D-Pad arrow keys (up/down) to navigate the list ofresults. TalkBack speaks each entry as you move through thelist.
• Find one you like; for this example, we'll use one of myfavorite Market applications --- AudioBooks from projectLibrivox.
• Press the Enter key on the keyboard to open thisapplication
• This takes you to a screen that lists a short description,and comments from various users on the application. Theinstall button is on the bottom of this screen.
• And here comes the sticking point in the Market UI thatwe're working on fixing; when you cursor through this list, youdont always get to the install button.But no fear, youcan still install the application!
• While we work on creating and pushing the fix for the above,I typically install applications by tapping the screen where theinstall button appears. The bad news is that Ipresentlydo this by dead reckoning; the good news is that theinstall button always appears at a consistent spot. Theeasiest way to learn to do this is to have someone put yourfinger on the button the first time, and then learn its positionrelative to the pull-out keyboard. While we know that this is notan ideal eyes-free experience, this little trick opens up atreasure-trove of applications.
• Tap the install button, and you come to thepermissions screen. Cursor to the OK button,and press Enter Depending on the layout of that screen,you may once again need to use dead-reckoning. At this point, Iroutinely click those on-screen buttons, rather than wasting time attempting to cursor to the button.
• And voila, the AudioBooks application shoulddownload and install!

Task: Browse Market

In addition to searching, you can also browse the Market foravailable applications, use the cursor keys on the D-Pad forbrowsing. Once selected, installing an application follows thesame workflow as above.

And The Best Is Yet To Come

Once installed, you can try out the application by pulling down the status bar.Look for the next posting in this series for details on using application AudioBooks --- it is one of my all time Market favorites.