The latest enhancements to TalkBack now brings Android Accessibility to devices without a physical keyboard. Many of these enhancements also improve the overall TalkBack experience on all devices.
The TalkBack Keyboard is an Accessible Input Method (Accessible IME) that when activated enables you to enter and review text via the touch screen. To use this feature, you need to first activate the TalkBack keyboard via the Language and Keyboard option in the Settings menu. Next, customize the TalkBack Keyboard to taste via the TalkBack Keyboard Settings option --- here, you can customize additional features including auditory feedback as you type. Finally, open your favorite editing application, long-press on an edit field, and select TalkBack keyboard as your default IME. Note that you need do this only once; once the TalkBack keyboard has been made the default, it persists across reboots.
TalkBack keyboard is an on-screen keyboard that supports touch exploration along with synchronized spoken and auditory feedback. This means you can now enter text when using devices that dont sport a physical keyboard.
But wait, theres more here than meets the finger at first touch. Once you have activated the TalkBack Keyboard, you can switch the keyboard among three states by long-pressing the volume up/down buttons:
My preferred means of using the keyboard is to turn on auditory feedback from within TalkBack Keyboard Settings, as well as having SoundBack active. In this mode, you hear keys as you explore the keyboard along with an auditory icon; picking up your finger types the last key you explored. Typing produces a distinctive key-click.
The on-screen keyboard occupies the bottom 1/3 of your screen. While entering text, explore and find the top row, then move above it to hear what you have typed so far.
You can now navigate and review text by character, word, sentence or paragraph. Use a two-finger tap to move forward through these navigation levels; a two-finger double tap moves in the reverse direction. Once you have selected your preferred mode of navigation, you can use Up/Down on the physical track-ball/D-Pad, or alternatively, flick up or down on the virtual D-Pad to move forward or backward through the text being reviewed.
Note that text review works when the TalkBack keyboard is in either/navigating/ or typing mode; personally, I find it less error-prone on keyboard-less devices to first switch to navigating mode when reviewing text, since it is easy to inadvertently enter spurious text otherwise.
Placing the TalkBack keyboard in navigating mode provides an on-screen virtual D-Pad --- this is especially useful on devices that do not have a physical D-Pad or track-ball on the front of the device. When active, the virtual D-Pad occupies the bottom one-third of the screen, and fast-flicks in that area has the same effect as moving with a D-Pad or track-ball. Tapping anywhere within the virtual D-Pad is the same as clicking with the track-ball.
The corners of the virtual D-Pad also provides Back, Home, Search and Menu buttons --- these are especially useful on devices that lack explicit physical or capacitive buttons for these common Android actions. You can explore the virtual D-pad by moving your finger around the D-Pad area; crossing the top-edge of this area provides haptic and auditory feedback that can be used as an orientation aid in finding the virtual buttons on the corners.
In addition, selecting the TalkBack Keyboard as your default input method enables a set of global commands that can be accessed from your physical keyboard --- eventually, we will make these available via the soft keyboard as well. Here are a list of the current commands:
| Command | Description | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Battery | Speaks the current battery level | menu + B |
| Time | Speaks the current date and time | menu + T |
| Connectivity | Speaks the connectivity state of each connection: WiFi, 3G, etc | menu + O |
| Repeat | Repeats the last TalkBack utterance | menu + R |
| Spell | Spells the last TalkBack utterance | menu + S |
These shortcuts are listed in the Accessibility Preferences application where they can be edited. You can choose between menu and search for the modifier, and any letter on the keyboard for the letter.
All of these features work on Android 2.2 and above. In addition, TalkBack makes WebView accessible in Honeycomb --- look for a separate announcement about accessibility enhancements that are exclusive to the Honeycomb release in the coming weeks.
Date: 2011-03-16 Wed
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