Below we'll talk about what's new and who can take advantage of these features. Version 9.1, released in late February, is a major step toward closing this inequity, with the highlight being support for multi-finger gestures, those commands that can be activated using two, three or four fingers. And while Android has a devoted fan base of screen-reader users, including the writer of this post, some major features have been missing from TalkBack, especially when compared to VoiceOver on the iPhone.

Photo credit: openexhibitsįor more information about TalkBack and a detailed description of its features, please read the Google’s official documentation on TalkBack.TalkBack has been Google's built-in screen reader since nearly the beginning of Android, and is available on any Android phone purchased today. These images are licensed under the Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 license. Equivalent to a horizontal swipe.Ĭycle through navigation mode: “pages”, “by default (elements)”, “characters”, “words”, “lines” et “paragraphs”. Equivalent to a vertical swipe.Ĭhange pages and screens when possible. Scroll within lists or pages if selected. Opens or activates the item that you last touched (vocalized). Note: TalkBack is considered as accessible since the JellyBean release (4.1) because you can navigate sequentially.įirst of all, update TalkBack here: PlayStore Link Common gestures #Įxplore your screen and hear audible feedback for what is being touched. We describe here the basic gestures commonly used. TalkBack has gestures with one, two and three fingers to select and to go through elements. Furthermore, additional gestures let you move the focus on the screen and control the selected items.

When TalkBack is on, the standard gestures behave differently. A tool like TalkBack is called either screen reader or speech synthesizer, even if a screen reader is actually a software associated with voice synthesis. It is free and it vocalizes all visible elements in the page specially for blind or partially sighted, dyslexic or illiterate users. TalkBack is a built-in screen reader for Android that reads aloud the items that appear on the device screen.

Android accessibility screen reader