Android. A Positive Experience. Day Seven.

Introduction.

Thank you for reading my previous post on the use of my Pixel 4 phone on the Android platform. I am now just entering day seven of use.

Last time, I made the point that as soon as resources are written about this kind of technology, they are very soon out of date, and so it proved with the last blog post. Within a matter of hours after I published it, I began to receive suggestions as to how some of the difficulties I wrote about could be solved.

So what follows is a list of the problems I wrote about with their possible solutions. All of them are solved without exception which leads me to say this.

At least for me, if it was possible to do, I would use the Pixel 4 full-time. Because of contractual obligations I cannot do that, (I need to keep the iPhone around for quite some time), but it should indicate to you how successful the past few days have been.

Braille Screen Input.

As you may have read, not having this for many people is a significant disadvantage. But there is an excellent solution. An app is available called Advanced Braille Keyboard. It is an app which costs £10 UK (approximately $13 US), but it is well worth the charge. There is a little setting up to do as with many aspects of Android. But once done, it is a pleasure to use.

The procedure is this. You navigate to the Edit Field you wish to Braille into and double tap as you would expect.

The major disadvantage is that you then need to disable the TalkBack screen-reader since Braille screen input is not part of it. This is achieved by holding the volume up and down keys simultaneously for about two seconds. This might sound awkward but it becomes second nature after a while. The Advanced Braille Keyboard then speaks using the text to speech engine on the Pixel 4, so you are going to get audible feedback, and in my case, there is no change in the voice quality of output. TalkBack is then enabled again and the "Back" Button pressed at the bottom of the screen to return to your application. To say again, you are going to get speech feedback, so you can review text you have written and you will receive confirmation of characters entered if desired, capital letters, words, etc. I cannot see that you would be in any way disadvantaged by not having TalkBack running while the text is being entered.

Here's what I like about the Advanced Braille Keyboard. If you wish, you can calibrate the dots manually to your specific taste. Lay the phone down flat in landscape mode so it is similar to a Braille writer placed on a table. You do not have to do this but it is the way in which I've found to be the most accurate. Then, when instructed, tap each dot where you consider each position to be relative to the span of your hands. You will be prompted when to tap for each dot and when the calibration is complete. To repeat, using this mode you calibrate one dot at a time.

There are a number of other calibration modes, (for example there is one similar to that found within I O S), but this works the best for me. Usefully, if your fingers are outside the borders of the regular screen for data entry, the phone vibrates. Once calibrated, I can then go ahead and very fluently enter Braille characters. Because I have specified where each dot can be using the previously described method of calibration, this means that the Braille Screen Input is highly accurate for my way of working.

Yes, to anticipate a question, you can use contracted Braille. A variety of languages are supported, and you can also use it in conjunction with a bluetooth or USB QWERTY keyboard by using keys to denote specific Braille dots. There is support for Punctuation', Emoji, and Numerals(Nemeth code). There is even a mode for using Braille with one hand, and it is possible to create your own Braille abbreviations (or shorthand). A number of gestures exist, for example for entering capital letters or deletions which are configurable. If you don't like the gestures, just change them to something that suits you. So this app has clearly been very well thought out.
You can read the documentation here.

In summary, I am very happy with this method of Braille Screen Input. I am fluent writing Braille on the iPhone but even more so on Android due to the manual calibration method described above. Personally, I found that the narration on the YouTube videos for the app was not especially clear, but there is a podcast from the European Blind Union which demonstrates the app very well.

Other Issues.

Alternative Keyboard. For those who are not Braille users and who prefer a regular virtual keyboard, I highly recommend the Technical Keyboard from Nextapp, available in the App (or Play) Store. Not only are the keys well spaced in terms of their relationship to each other, but the key for initiating Voice Input is easily located at the bottom left near the Space Bar. It's a free app so definitely worth trying.

Deleting Text Messages. You'll recall that I wrote that it was slightly cumbersome to delete text messages. Steve Nutt of Computer Room Services brought to my attention that you can "double tap and hold" a message. This brings into view an Application Menu, (described by TalkBack as a Toolbar), containing actions you may like to carry out with the message. One of those options is to delete it. This is different to the Context Menu I described in the previous post and wasn't something I came across in my learning.

Headphones. My adaptor arrived which I have clipped to a pair of headphones with a standard 3.5 MM jack. These now work beautifully with the Pixel 4.

The Voice Access App. Sadly, this did not work well. It caused some very strange behaviour with the Pixel 4 and Google Assistant was not working as it should when this app was installed. But given that the Voice Input button can now be more easily located if using the Technical Keyboard, this is not a problem now so I've removed the Voice Access app.

So What's Left?

There is still a lot to achieve so more blog posts will follow. What I am disappointed about is the inaccessibility of the Facebook app. I use Facebook most days. I did try the app, and there were a large number of unlabelled controls. While I could read (and to some extent) interact with Facebook posts, I wasn't easily able to create a new post because I could not locate the Button to send it. I could create it using Braille Screen Input or by dictating, but I could not send my beautiful creation!

I only had a short time to work with the Facebook app, so again there may be a solution to this. One solution would be to label the individual controls which you can do on the Android phone so you can receive meaningful prompts thereafter. But that needs more investigation.

I am using Tweetings for Twitter on Android and all of that seems to be accessible. I did have problems locating the Button to compose a new tweet, but using the gesture to move to the final control on the screen easily and quickly remedies that.

Face ID is something I would like to try. I would like to see if it is more usable than the iPhone, and also because it is slightly irritating that I need to press the Enter key on the keyboard to unlock the phone having entered the PIN. In short, unloccking the phone at the moment takes a little longer than it should, but only slightly longer than I O S when you enter a PIN.

Then, it's onto creating videos and transferring files. Those are my next projects.

Conclusion.

There is still plenty to learn, but I can say that in most cases, any major difficulties that there were concerning using the Pixel 4 for everyday use have been very much overcome. I've certainly no complaints and I know my knowledge and confidence with the phone will increase over time.

Read the Previous Post for Day One.