Hey there, I'm looking into making my UI accessibl...

# compose-android

[s3rius]

Hey there,
I'm looking into making my UI accessible for TalkBack. So I checked out the docs and articles about it. But they mostly focus on what's technically possible (semantics modifier, etc) and not what's sensible. I found very little information on what I actually need to achieve: what does a TalkBack user expect to hear? How much "explanation" should a contentDescription do? Are there commonly used methods to make it easier to understand the UI? Where would you use accessibility actions? Stuff like that.

You guys know of any resources that provide this kind of info?

[Csaba Szugyiczki]

It is a very hard topic, since every app and the way they put different elements together are different.
I would suggest to start getting familiar with general Accessibility features: https://appt.org/en/
This guide is really good with summarizing a lot of what also the WCAG also mentions.

[Csaba Szugyiczki]

contenctDescriptions generally should be short, accessibility actions should be used where you rely on percise movement. Eg. a list item that reveals “archive” and/or “delete” item features by swiping to left or right, directly on the list item might be impossible to do for some users. That is a good candidate for an accessibility action

[Csaba Szugyiczki]

Built in Material Composables should be okay by default. Custom Composables or anything that is drawn to the canves by you can be problematic

[s3rius]

Thanks for the appt link. There seem to be a few good pointers indeed. I'm superficially familiar with WCAG, but it's pretty heavy stuff.

My issue is mainly with the big picture. As an extreme example: if I close my eyes and try to navigate my app with TB, I'd have no clue what the heck is going on if I didn't already know every little detail by heart. An individual button, switch or image might be working fine but that doesn't say much about the overall experience.

[Csaba Szugyiczki]

Ah I understand.
Your way of using this will be very different from how eg a blind person uses your app via talkback.
Usually they use it with a talkback speed that is unimaginably fast for you. somewhere in the 3x-5x faster range.
Usally with touch screens they tend to swipe through the whole screen while touching the screen. This way they can make a quick mental map about okay, at the top there are a few action buttons, then a bunch of items with xy content, and on the bottom I can navigate to other screens.

So if you use it with the default settings, jumping throug items one by one, that is already very different experience from how a real TB user would use your app.

But if you can do everything using TB, your TB users at least won’t be stuck, and won’t be clueless about what happens. The rest they will usually figure out way better then you would do