Those who have looked at this plot will most likely agree with the statement that sensory devices, perhaps like no one else, are needed today by people with the above problems, since, indeed, they greatly facilitate their daily lives.

This video today is made without any problems associated with the installation and countless duplicates. Here everything is filmed exactly as it happens in the ordinary life of a person working on Android with the help of the TalkBack program, which provides voice access on all modern Android devices starting from version 4.1.
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Readers interested in the history of non-visual availability of Android can visit the site Tiflocomp . If we talk about the existing problems associated with the non-visual availability of Android devices and software products, here it’s rather a matter of low developer interest, while the arsenal of accessibility tools embedded in the Android operating system itself is quite significant.

It is possible that before they got acquainted with this material, many simply did not imagine the options for working with Android without visual control. But there is also a widespread opinion that if a person does not see, then he doesn’t need a video player either, etc. Let me disagree with that. I have a blind friend who uses, for example, the Law of Ohm and is very pleased that she was found to be comfortable for working without sight. Reading this article, you will see that the range of tasks that a blind user who works on touch devices solves is very diverse. Today, we can confidently say that the author-programmer who created the application without taking into account Accessibility for this target audience leaves a fairly large group of users behind. Developers who deal with non-visual accessibility of sensory devices must first take into account the fact that the voice interface is of fundamental importance for the category of blind users. That is, its inoperability means that a person practically can not independently use the device. In this regard, the decisions of developers offering input to the speech engine settings are not very clear only when it is turned on. Not always, after activation, the synthesizer begins to speak the right language, or even does not speak at all, and it is expected to download the necessary language modules without visual control from under it. By the way, if anyone really thinks about improving this very accessibility, it’s Samsung developers. In the latest versions of their firmware, they turned on the possibility of alternative input of characters from the keyboard using double-tapping, and turning off the display if it is unnecessary, and the ability to turn on TalkBack using the hardware key, and pronouncing the position of the shortcut on the desktop and many other pleasant things. But at the time when someone improves something, reverse processes also occur. Well, it would seem that we were all so eagerly awaiting the release of the fifth version of Android, and as a result we received a watch that cannot be established without sight, the impossibility of switching profiles quickly and a number of other troubles. Who will fix it all is not yet clear. It seems that it's rather difficult to get through to Google for this part. If I continue in the same vein, it will create the feeling that the situation we have shown in the video is much more optimistic than it actually is.

Fortunately, it is not

Let me go back to the beginning and tell you a little about the specifics of using an Android touch device without visual control. In their work on Android, people with vision problems use 2 ways to navigate: the study of touch and the gestures of " scrolling " or " swiping ". It is the combination of these two methods of navigation that allows you to work with a device without vision, sometimes even faster than on a computer. Those of you who are going to turn on TalkBack also need to know that the activation of the item after turning it on will be done with a double tap . I warn you about this because quite often you have to watch how people who do not know all these nuances, suddenly realize that after turning on speech, they cannot control the device.

TalkBack also has other control gestures that allow you to open the taskbar and alerts, provide access to context menus, etc. As a teacher of the courses “Non-visual Accessibility of Sensory Devices”, I can say that people with vision problems do not have serious problems with Talkback gestures. As for software products for Android, which are used by blind people, then we can say that there are both specially written and many available programs with Google Play.

The first, as you have seen, are text and image recognition applications: Goggles , Camfind , banknotes Blind-Droid Wallet . An application that converts camcorder images into The vOICe sound images for Android .
These specially written programs include an application that can vibrate a person about a light source using vibration.
Due to the fact that there are certain difficulties in non-visual work with text on android, a program by the Israeli developer Accessible Editor Talkback has appeared , which allows you to read text documents in several languages ​​and is equipped with buttons that facilitate navigation through the text. But, as regards text editing directly, these operations are generally accessible to blind people only in the most minimal amount.

In addition, there are many applications, for example, for scanning and recognition of text and music, which were not written specifically for the target audience, but by chance or through specific efforts from the developer, were available for non-visual use. This is, for example, an OCR Instantly Free text recognition application. The program for listening to audiobooks Smart AudioBook Player , etc.

You can find out about other available programs that are popular among blind users, but not created specifically for them on the website of our training center , as well as on androidvoice.ru , blinddroid.ru and tiflocomp.ru .

Of particular interest are applications that allow a blind person to find out about his location, the nearest points of interest or the arrival of a vehicle, as well as those capable of paving a route. The specificity of the navigation application for the blind is such that it was rather difficult to choose it among the many already created ones.

For this reason, special programs began to appear, each of which solves separate tasks related to navigation. One of them - NotNav Accessibility fun talks about the nearest POI.
Others, for example, DotWalker allow you to record a route, collect it from points and navigate in azimuth, but not can automatically create routes.

This situation was the cause of the creation of the navigation project “OsmAnd Access” , in which the leading role belongs to programmer Igor Poretsky (@poretsky). The project aims to adapt the OsmAnd application (developed by Viktor Shcherbakov) to the needs of blind users and is by far the most popular navigation application among blind people.

We can not say about the contribution of Igor in the field of accessibility android due to his active participation in the team of voice chat developers teamtalk , which is so popular today among people with vision limitations.

I would like to say that very often the developers respond promptly to the wishes of the blind to improve the accessibility of applications.
One of them is the author of the voice assistant Dusya morfeusys . His active interaction with the target audience made the application the most popular among the blind .



Another very positive example of working with the author of the Moscow Transport Schedule application. At the request of the department for the development and implementation of adaptive technologies for the RVA of VOS, the author found an opportunity to make advertising in the application conditional, and, as it turned out, this decision could be taken into account by developers who understand the problems of people working with the talkBack speech program, which Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, does not want to talk in the presence of advertising. I will literally quote his letter:

"All that is required from other developers is, firstly, the desire to remove advertising for the blind and, secondly, to add a couple of lines of code that is elementary in Google, for example, here
stackoverflow.com/questions/5116867/how-to-know-if-android-talkback-is-active
Accordingly, the condition is set - if TalkBack is active, then we do not show advertising. ”

This is not about combating advertising embedded in applications. We understand perfectly why what is being done and what is caused by. But, you see, it is at least somewhat strange to demonstrate it to those who still will not see, but will only receive an annoying and perplexing loss of control over the device. As an alternative, one could suggest, in the case of using special access tools, demonstrate some text equivalent, allowing at least familiarization with the content if desired and not leading to a loss of the interface.

Finally

In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the goals and objectives of the adaptive department at the cultural and sports rehabilitation complex of the All-Russian Society of the Blind in Moscow KSRK VOS. Recently, we are faced with the fact that developers for one reason or another want to do something useful for various categories of people with disabilities, in particular, for people with visual problems. But each of them, as a rule, for some reason, knows better than the final consumer what exactly is needed and how to do it correctly. As a result, we listen to the most diverse ideas, often incompatible with the lives of people with visual problems.

So, for example, in order for the blind to begin to orient themselves better in space, they suggest wearing a helmet with vibration sensors , hang a backpack with a computer on their backs, fasten a camera on their chest, and image of surrounding objects with needles on the surface of the abdominal skin.

And it still flowers.

We adhere to the theory that no one better than the blind themselves can know which problems require urgent solutions, and suggest ways to implement them. For example, there are quite a few good and seemingly accessible applications for scanning and text recognition, but there is still no solution to the problem of camera sounding to text.

Without vision, it is impossible to understand whether the text is placed in the viewfinder. This requires sound prompts. No, for example, an available application that in real time would report the arrival of public transport.
On the markete you can find a lot of applications that with a certain refinement could be used by people with visual problems.
So, for example, there are so many building levels, but there is not one with sound indication.

Increasingly, the idea of ​​the emergence of alternative speech access programs arises, since we estimate the prospects for the development of TalkBack rather low. The fact is that the developers themselves serve it to a minimum, and nevertheless they do not post new sources.

And this is just a little of what could be done. Among other things, we could gladly test interesting developments in terms of non-visual accessibility. Also, our goal is to study the market of typhlotechnics and search for devices and programs for our audience.

If you are interested and would like to cooperate, then contact us at gps11@list.ru