Native Android & TalkBack Accessibiltiy Design Recommendations | Project Details
Guidance around Designing your App Content for Android and Talk Back Accessibility
More contents by End of Week 6/15. This page is a collection of assorted Android Operating Systems Accessibility Design Considerations and Recommendations, Use these as a reference while considering to build an Accessible Android Application.
1 - Native Design (not Hybrid Design)
Don't mix the app with both Native Pages and WebView or HTML Pages. Hybrid Page Applications mixing both native and html views or iframes. Mislead users about expectations in your experience and make them question componentry and trusting if they know what to do and if the experience is broken.
The confusion can be quite costly and break established trust in brand and loyalty
Once you decide on Native or HTML way on course with consistent direction to keep your users expectation are for in the app.
2 - Use Native Android Componentry
Its very important to use Componentry you get as part of the enviroment, not only is it easier that customizing your components and building new ones, its letting you inherit all the updates from Android versions more easily.
Your Assistive Technology will work more seemlessly and with less errors. This is not a promise that everything will work magically and magnificantly but put you in favor of more in the favor of the user and how they might expect components to behave.
3 - Generic Action Descriptions
While actions have some default descriptions announced by the screen reader on componentry they can be more specific.
Accessibility leans toward being having a balance have your instructions to users be both descript and concise. Users might be looing for something more than the defaulted "doulbe tap and hold to activate" feel free to adjust to inform the user what the interaction will do and reinforce the meanings and action being performed.
Example double tap and hold to "edit [specific] item"
4 - Combining Views into Groupings/Groups
The content of each page has assorted informational value to users some elements are information some are not and some things are hierarchically grouped with others. Ensure the information content-wise that is linked together has appropriate groupings. content in groups allows users to streamline and more efficiently navigate pages. This will save the users extra swipes and also frustration.
5 - Orientation
Do not fix your applications device Orientation in one direction.
Users require, prefer or have situations where differen Screen Orienation apply or are best for them.
6 - Tap/Touch Targets
Allow for enough space between Interactive items in the design to allow for easily allow users to tap or interact with confidence and not having too many interactive elements in too close proximity.
Android Guidance on tap targets is supporting 48 Density-independent pixels (DP).
Density-independent pixels are flexible units that scale to have uniform dimensions on any screen.
7 - Dialogs and Notifications
Provide Design and experiences where the device focus moves to Dialog Menus and Notification when opened and stays in the dialog until dismissed by the user. After the Dialog is Dismissed the focus should be returned to the trigged element or component.
Strive for Dialog windows with minimal content, text, and possibly nontext informative content for user, avoid robust componentry in overly complicated dialogs and settings inside these windows.
9 - Updating After State & State Changes Information
Screen Information and Component State changes that happen or update visually should always be announced to the screen reader and the AT. Allowing all users to be aware of the changes.
10 - Other Mobile Accessibility ( Enough Space, Keyboard, Color Contrast)
While Web Accessibility and Mobile Accessibility are different and have some caviots, Surely some of the items of Web accessibility should be considered as part of your app design:
- Text Size and Screen Realestate for longer labels.
Text Readable is very different across all users and users not to mention varying sight ability.
Users may change text size on the device or even change the desired language setting which could increase character length.
Text containers and layouts need flexibility to grow in height or space to account longer text strings. - Color Contrast - Large Text, Text, Interactive Components and Nontext all have color contrast raio A11y Guidelines.
Check Color contrast with the WebAim Color Contrast Checker (opens new tab) - Color Alone Design Elements - Do not design experiences with content that relies on color alone,
Not all users perceive color, and providing additional affordances and cues of the information keeps them embraced and informed.) - Wireless Keyboard support (Similar to web experiences support keyboard interaction use as some users will connect them to mobile devices )