Has anyone experienced #TalkBack failing to register a single-finger double tap, particularly when using the phone in one hand or tapping with the same finger used to swipe?

According to a post on AppleVis, a possible fix might be to turn off TalkBack's own gesture handling. But that also apparently disables multi-finger gestures, and over my dead body am I going back to drawing awkward shapes on the screen to carry out the simplest of tasks.

I live in America and am on Mint Mobile. I am totally blind and use an external keyboard. I own a Galaxy A15, and while it works well, it's simply too large and wide for my needs, especially when I need to hold it to use Seeing AI (for scanning printed materials). My specifications shouldn't be too difficult to find, and yet, they are.

Android 14 or 15. Technically, I can go as low as 12, but I would really rather not.
Upgradable if possible.
Comes with Talkback pre-installed (or able to have someone install it). I have also heard of MicroG, an alternative to Google services that allows such apps to be installed, so that could work as well.
No larger than the iPhone SE 2022, unless by a tiny amount. Smaller is fine.
Headphone jack.

I am considering the Jelly Max, the Fonepia Q10, and the Minimal Phone. Has anyone here tried any of these in the United States? I don't think the Max has a headphone jack, but as much as I want one, I would be willing to sacrifice it if necessary. I know almost nothing about the Q10. The Minimal contains a real qwerty keyboard, so I wouldn't need to carry one. I don't care what they do with the screen, since I can't see it.

Am I missing any other good phones? I would like to keep this undder $350 at the most, preferably under $300 (Minimal might cost more, but could be worth it).

#accessibility #blind #Android #JellyMax #keyboard #MinimalPhone #phones #Q10 #qwerty #SmallPhone #SmallPhones #Talkback #technology

***Attention! If you miss MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM, and/or ICQ, this is for you! If you use a screen reader and want a 100% accessible messenger client, this is also for you.*
This works with Windows XPthrough 11, and I'm logged into it as I write! It's called Escargot, and it revives Windows Live/MSN Messenger. This is the original software, but it has been patched so that it connects to the escargot.chat server and not the Microsoft one. It is 100% free and accessible with NVDA and I'm sure JAWS as well. They also have projects for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and ICQ, including for Android and IOS, and are working on a web client for MSN. (I don't know if AIM or ICQ are accessible with screen readers, as I have never tried them). Anyway, if you're over twenty-one (my personal request), have read my profile here, and wish to add me, I am dandylover1@escargot.chat. You can find everything here.

escargot.chat

Note: If you already have Windows Live/MSN Messenger on your system, you will still need to download their version and create an account. Your Microsoft, MSN, or Hotmail one won't work for signing in. Also, remember to click on RUN_AFTER_INSTALL.exe, in order to patch the program to the Escargot server.

#accessibility #AIM #Android #AOL #blind #chat #Escargot #EscargotChat #ICQ #IOS #Messenger #MSN #MsnMessenger #Microsoft #NVDA #Talkback #technology #Voiceover #Windows #WindowsLiveMessenger

First, they shut down the Basic HTML site, forcing many of us to switch to clients such as Thunderbird. Now, they're using qr codes which are not only inaccessible to the blind but also to those who don't use smartphones! This is ridiculous! Yes, they do still have the option to click whether it's you trying to sign in or not (which still requires a smartphone and a carrier, which they claim to be concerned about), but how long before they remove that, too?

pcmag.com/news/google-is-repla…

#accessibility #Android #authentication #blind #Google #GMail #IOS #Narrator #NVDA #sms #Talkback #technology #Voiceover #Windows

If anyone uses Android with TalkBack and the onscreen Braille keyboard, please try to reproduce and report this issue:

In Talkback, if onscreen keyboard echo is set to words, and a word with punctuation after it is typed, TalkBack does not read the word when Space is typed. Similarly, if an emoticon is typed, like ":)" nothing is spoken when Space is typed.

Steps to reproduce:

• Turn on TalkBack, and open TalkBack settings by tapping once with three fingers. Set up the TalkBack Braille keyboard under the Braille section.
• Go to Verbosity settings, then the keyboard echo option for onscreen keyboards, and set it to "words."
Now, open a text box, turn on the TalkBack Braille Keyboard, and type something like "this is a test." Note the period after test. Then, swipe right with one finger to enter a space.

Expected results:

TalkBack should read "this" "is" "a" "test period."

Actual results:

TalkBack reads "this" "is" "a" and is silent after test is written.

I also put it up on Google's issue tracker if anyone wants to start it.

issuetracker.google.com/issues…

#accessibility #android #blind #TalkBack #Braille

Google publishes the source code for their TalkBack screen reader. GrapheneOS maintains a fork of it and includes it in GrapheneOS with the help of a blind GrapheneOS user who works on their own more elaborate fork. Eventually, we'd like to include more or all of their changes.

TalkBack depends on a text-to-speech (TTS) implementation installed/configured/activated. It needs to have Direct Boot support to function before the first unlock of a profile. Google's TTS implementation supports this and can be used on GrapheneOS, but it's not open source.

We requested Direct Boot support from both prominent open source implementations:

RHVoice: github.com/RHVoice/RHVoice/iss…
eSpeak NG: github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng…

eSpeak NG recently added it but it's not yet included in a stable release and their licensing (GPLv3) is too restrictive for us.

RHVoice itself has acceptable licensing for inclusion in GrapheneOS (LGPL v2.1), but has dependencies with restrictive licensing. Both these software projects also have non-free licensing issues for the voices. Neither provides close to a working out-of-the-box experience either.

Google's Speech Services app providing text-to-speech and speech-to-text works perfectly. Their proprietary accessibility services app with extended TalkBack and other services also works fine. However, many of our users don't want to use them and we need something we can bundle.

There aren't currently any usable open source speech-to-text apps. There are experimental open source speech-to-text implementations but they lack Android integration.

We also really need to make a brand new setup wizard with both accessibility and enterprise deployment support.

GrapheneOS still has too little funding and too few developers to take on these projects. These would be standalone projects able to be developed largely independently. There are similar standalone projects which we need to have developed in order to replace some existing apps.

AOSP provides a set of barebones sample apps with outdated user interfaces / features. These are intended to be replaced by OEMs, but we lack the resources of a typical OEM. We replaced AOSP Camera with our own app, but we still need to do the same with Gallery and other apps.

Google has started the process of updating the open source TalkBack, which only happens rarely. We've identified a major issue: a major component has no source code published.

github.com/google/talkback/pul…

Google has been very hostile towards feedback / contributions for TalkBack...

This is one example of something seemingly on the right track significantly regressing. Another example is the takeover of the Seedvault project initially developed for GrapheneOS. It has deviated substantially from the original plans and lacks usability, robustness and security.

In the case of Seedvault, GrapheneOS designed the concept for it and one of our community members created it. It was taken over by a group highly hostile towards us and run into the ground. It doesn't have the intended design/features and lacks usability, security and robustness.

All of these are important standalone app projects for making GrapheneOS highly usable and accessible. What we need is not being developed by others and therefore we need to the resources including funding and developers to make our own implementations meeting our requirements.

#grapheneos #privacy #security #android #mobile #accessibility #texttospeech #speechtotext #talkback #blind #backup

add Direct Boot support for Android so RHVoice can be used with TalkBack before the initial unlock · Issue #271 · RHVoice/RHVoice

More information: https://developer.android.com/training/articles/direct-boot https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_Updater is a trivial example of using this. You need to mark a sub...

^GitHub