EasyAccess

Easy Access is the new Android shell for making it easier for people with blindness to use their Android Smart phone. As a part of this project we focused on most important and basic six operations of the Android Smart Phone which are -

1. Phone Dialer
2. Contacts
3. Call Log
4. Text Messages
5. Settings
6. Status

For the above listed six application, we used all the native Android API calls available and provided as part of Android SDK to create an entirely brand new simplified and fully accessible interface for the smart phone for these six applications. EasyAccess can also be set as defaut Launcher application so that entry point or interface for all these applications is readily available to end user.

The application was made accesible not only with Talkback but also with the external or bluetooth keyboard. For making the entire application accessible with Talkback and Keyboard special attention was paid to make sure

• All the views have as accurate as possible text description
• All the swipe gestures and their sequences were tested for user ease and mapped to real use case scenarios
• All the actions were mapped to standard keyboard actions such as arrows for navigation, enter for selecting an option, TAB for forward navigation and shift tab for backward navigation, F1 key for the home screen.
• For each and every action appropriate feedback was added such was voice feedback, vibratory feedback and at times voice guide to work through the application.

For developing this application in addition to follow standard Android Accessibility Guidelines, we also did lot of field testing and get real users feedback and incorporate their feedback and changes into the application.

This application was presented at Google IO 2014 in one of the developer's sandbox session.

We authored and are releasing our user and implementation documentation under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ for more information. The documentation is available from the following webpage: http://ideal-group.org/ea-docs/

The main purpose for developing and releasing "EasyAccess for Android" is to encourage and support other developers:

1. To do as we are doing;
2. Take our source code and improve upon it;
3. Make some money; and,
4. Learn about the benefits of accessible design to everyone... not only individuals with disabilities.

Pleae feel free to contact us for any technical questions.