Android 5.0, Lollipop
A sweet new take on Android
With Android 5.0 Lollipop comes a whole bunch of
accessibility features for those who need to use them. While many have been
carried across from previous versions of Android, there are some new things
inside that will open things up to a new audience who perhaps struggled to use
the platform before.
This is just the base of what's going to be on Android
devices from Lollipop and up. Device makers can build upon this as they desire.
But, read on to see an overview of what's what in Android 5.0.
The features
In one handy list, here's an overview of everything you'll
find in the Lollipop accessibility menu. The old and the not so old.
Services
Talkback: Google
Talkback will give you verbal, audio, and vibration cues by acting as a
built-in screen reader. It's perfect for the visually impaired and can be
activated with ease from inside the accessibility menu. For more on Google
Talkback check out our complete guide here
Switch Access: A
new addition for Lollipop, it allows you to configure hard buttons to perform
certain tasks to enable better navigation for the visually impaired and makes a
pretty powerful tool when paired up with Talkback.
System
Captions: Enables
the system wide closed caption system for videos. Having been introduced in
KitKat it's still possible some users haven't had chance to try it out yet. It
allows videos to display captions based on the parameters decided upon here,
and you can change the text size and color within set parameters.
Magnification
Gestures: Magnifies the entire system UI. Activate by triple-tapping on the
display inside any apps on the device, pan around using a two-finger drag and
zoom in/out further using pinch-to-zoom.
Large Text: - If
you just want the text bigger, everywhere, activate it here. You don't get to
choose how much bigger it is, but it does exactly what it says it will. You can
fine tune the text size further in the display options.
High Contrast Text:
Instead of making text bigger, this will highlight items that are naturally
more difficult to read for visually impaired people. White text (regardless of
the background color it sits on top of) will be outlined in black and lighter
colors such as grays are made black so they're easier to see.
Auto Rotate Screen: Duplicated
from the Display menu. Sets the display to rotate to landscape mode whenever
you need it to. However not all apps will work in landscape mode, sadly.
Speak Passwords:
Exactly what it says it does. Use only if you really, really need to use it and
please use it with caution even then.
Accessibility
shortcut: This will allow you to quickly enable accessibility features,
even while the device is locked.
Text to Speech:
This allows you to choose the text-to-speech engine of your choice, where
Google's is the default. Even then you've got languages galore to choose from
and even the ability to pick male/female voices and the quality of sound you
want to hear. Downloading a UK English female voice in high quality was around
280MB by example.
Touch and Hold Delays:
For those with dexterity issues, how long you need to press and hold to
complete actions could be an issue. This allows you to alter the duration
required to three different settings.
Display
There are some new options for Lollipop designed to assist
those with visual impairments related to color.
Color Inversion:
Google currently labels this as experimental and says it may affect device
performance. In any case what it does is flip the entire device color scheme to
the inverse. It works across the whole system UI and inside all applications.
You can quickly turn this on in the quick settings by pulling down the
notification bar with two fingers, then tapping on the icon.
Color Correction:
We touched on this when the first L Preview dropped, though for whatever reason
Google has since reduced the number of options from 6 to 3. In any case, there
are options to change the display mode based on different types of color
blindness: Deuteranomaly (red-green), Protanaomaly (red-green) and Tritanomaly
(blue-yellow)