1. Overview

Every Android phone comes with a set of accessibility features. You find most of them in Settings, under Accessibility. A blind person uses the screen reader, TalkBack. A person with limited hand movement may use Switch Access or Voice Access. A person with low vision may combine magnification, a larger font and outline text.

These features do the heavy lifting. Your app's job is to give them what they need. That means a name, a role and a state for every control. It means text that grows, colours that hold up and gestures with an alternative. It also means respecting the settings the person has chosen.

This lesson is the foundation for the rest of the module. Try each feature yourself as you read. Ten minutes with TalkBack teaches more than any checklist. The later lessons then show the code that makes each feature work.

Standards covered: EN 301 549 V4.1.1 clause 4 (functional performance) · Clauses 5.2, 11.5.2, 11.6.2 and 11.7 (accessibility features, accessibility services and user preferences) · WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA as applied to software through the W3C's WCAG2ICT guidance.

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Free with no account: the first lesson, Why accessibility, and who it is for, the European Accessibility Act flashcards and the overview of every lesson.

Sources