Audio Books On Android --- Thanks Librivox!

In my previous article , I alluded to an Audio Books application forAndroid. I did not go into much detail on the application itselfbecause I felt it deserved an article of its own.So heregoes!

In Praise Of Librivox

If you aren't familiar with the Librivox project, please visit Librivox.org to see the wonderful work that that project is doing. Androidapplication AudioBooks brings the wonders of Librivoxto Android --- now, you can carry all 30,000 audio books andcounting in your pocket and access them anywhere .Here are some highlights:

• Browse, and quickly play available audio books. You canbrowse by several criteria.
• Books you listen to get downloaded to your device and areavailable for offline listening.
• All books provide a table of contents, allowing you to jumpto a specific portion of a book.
• 90% of the application user interface is completelyaccessible with TalkBack --- see below for missing accessfeatures.

The only glitche with using application AudioBooks with the Android Access API is that the player controls withinthe audio-book player are presently missing contentdescriptions --- this is Android-API speak to say that thecontrols are images with missing labels. So the first time youuse this app, you'll need someone to tell you the buttons ---alternatively just experiment to discover theirfunctions. There are pause, play, rewind and forward buttons ---if the friendly folk who developed this application stumble uponthis post, please get in touch, and I can show you what you needto add to your code to make the eyes-free experience evensmoother.

Happy Listening --- And Share And Enjoy!

Using Android Market Eyes-Free

The Android Market is a treasure-trove of applications --- many of which work out of the box with Android's Access API, and as a result, the freely available screenreaders on the platform. Working with Market can be initially daunting, given the large collection applications; additionally, there are a couple of spots in the workflow that need access improvements. While we get those fixes pushed, here is a step-by-step overview of using Android Market with TalkBack, including the work-arounds for moving over some of the afore-mentioned hurdles.

Android Market: A Brief Overview

Rather than giving a detailed explanation of all of Android Market's user interface, I'll sketch my day-to-day mode of using Market --- personally, I find task-oriented help guides far more usable.

Task: Find Application

• I typically launch Android Market from within the Applications list in the Eyes-Free shell. On my Droid, I typically do this with the keyboard already opened since I know I'll be typing very soon.
• I press the Search capacitive button on the bottomright of the display to bring up the search tool. Note that Market can sometime take a few seconds to launch depending on your network --- TalkBack should announce Market when it's ready.
• Type a search query --- as an example, try audio books
• Use the D-Pad arrow keys (up/down) to navigate the list of results. TalkBack speaks each entry as you move through the list.
• Find one you like; for this example, we'll use one of my favorite Market applications --- AudioBooks from project Librivox.
• Press the Enter key on the keyboard to open this application
• This takes you to a screen that lists a short description, and comments from various users on the application. The install button is on the bottom of this screen.
• And here comes the sticking point in the Market UI that we're working on fixing; when you cursor through this list, you dont always get to the install button.But no fear, you can still install the application!
• While we work on creating and pushing the fix for the above, I typically install applications by tapping the screen where the install button appears. The bad news is that Ipresently do this by dead reckoning; the good news is that the install button always appears at a consistent spot. The easiest way to learn to do this is to have someone put your finger on the button the first time, and then learn its position relative to the pull-out keyboard. While we know that this is not an ideal eyes-free experience, this little trick opens up a treasure-trove of applications.
• Tap the install button, and you come to the permissions screen. Cursor to the OK button, and press Enter Depending on the layout of that screen, you may once again need to use dead-reckoning. At this point, I routinely click those on-screen buttons, rather than wasting time attempting to cursor to the button.
• And voila, the AudioBooks application should download and install!

Task: Browse Market

In addition to searching, you can also browse the Market for available applications, use the cursor keys on the D-Pad for browsing. Once selected, installing an application follows the same workflow as above.

And The Best Is Yet To Come

Once installed, you can try out the application by pulling down the status bar. Look for the next posting in this series for details on using application AudioBooks --- it is one of my all time Market favorites.

Eyes-Free: TalkBack And Shell Improvements

Here is a brief summary of updates to Android's eyes-free tools--- including TalkBack, and the Eyes-Free Shell from the last two weeks.

TalkBack

• Speech during a phone call is now re-enabled.
• Turning the screen on/off is spoken. This announcement includes the ringer mode/volume.
• Changes in the the ringer mode - silent, vibrate, and normal are now announced.
• Unlocking the phone is announced.
• Other Android applications can programmatically discover if TalkBack is enabled.

Eyes-Free Shell

Now that applications can programmatically discover whetherTalkBack has been enabled, configuring Eyes-Free shell to become your default home screen has become a lot easier. In a nutshell,if you are a TalkBack user and install Eyes-Free shell, hitting the Home button will bring up the eyes-free shell, ---no configuration needed. Note that you can always get to the default Android home screen by long-pressing the Back button.

Share And Enjoy

Eyes-Free Updates: Marvin And TalkBack Simplified

We routinely push updates to our access tools on Android; users get these updates automatically via Android Market updates. We just pushed out updated versions of TalkBack, our Open Source screenreader for Android, and Marvin, the Eyes-Free shell. Here is a brief summary of these updates:

• Android applications can now programmatically discover if TalkBack is running, thanks to the latest changes in TalkBack. From an end-user perspective, this means that you no longer need to configure Eyes-Free shell via EyesFreeConfig to be the default home. If you run TalkBack, and have EyesFree Shell installed, then pressing Home automatically gives you the EyesFree Shell. Remember, you can always get to the default Android Home by long-pressing Back.
• EyesFree Shell now includes a touch-based shortcuts manager. Until now, shortcuts needed to be explicitly configured by editting an XML file on the SDCard. With the recent EyesFree update, you can interactively define short-cuts via a touch-based ShortCuts manager. By default, we have assigned shortcut 1 to the ShortCuts manager; so to invoke this new feature, do:
  1. Stroke left (4 using stroke dialer notation) to enter the shortcuts screen.
  2. Stroke up and to the left (1 using stroke-dialer notation) to invoke application ShortCuts Manager.
  3. Use the trackball/D-Pad to configure each of the 8 available shortcuts.

Marvin: We hope this gives some minimal relief to the pain in all the diodes on your left side.

Silencing Speech With A Wave Of Your Hand On Android 2.0

Update To Android Access: TalkBack

Smart phones tend to be short on physical buttons --- even devices like the G1 or MotoRola Droid have very few buttons when the physical keyboard is not open. This provides interesting challenges when designing an efficient eyes-free interface --- especially given the old maxim Speech is silvern, but silence is golden!.Said differently, once you have built a system that talks back, the first thing you want to build is an efficient means of silencing spoken feedback.

Early versions of TalkBack on Android skimmed by without a stop speech button --- you basically moved from one activity to another,and the speech produced by the new activity effectively stopped ongoing spoken output. However, as we make more and more applications work seamlessly with our Access APIs, it's always been clear to us that we need a global stop speech gesture! Notice that I said gesture --- not key --- stopping speech is a critical function that we'd like to enable without having to pull out the physical keyboard, and something we'd like to have devices without a physical keyboard.

In the spirit of the dual to every access challenge is an opportunity to innovate, we recently launched a new experimental TalkBack feature on devices running Android 2.0. Devices on the Android 2.0 platform have a proximity sensor on the top front left corner of the phone --- this is typically used to lock the screen when you're holding the phone up to your ear when on a phone call. As the name implies, the proximity sensorfires when you get close to it --- you can activate it by waving your hand close to the top left corner of the phone. As an experimental feature, we have configured the latest version of TalkBack to silence ongoing speech if you wave your hand in front of the proximity sensor.

Note that this is a new, experimental feature --- it's something that we welcome feedback on our public Eyes-Free Google Group. We'd like to know if you accidentally activate stop speechbecause of this new feature. In having used it for a few weeks, I find that I am not triggering it accidentally --- but that might well be a function of how I hold the phone.

What Devices Does This Available On?

Note that at the time of writing, the devices that have a proximity sensor that I have used this on include:

• MotoRola Droid from Verizon
• Google NexusOne

Note that the G1 and other older Android devices did not have a proximity sensor.

1Vox --- Your Query Is Our Command

Video: 1Vox --- Your Query Is Our Command

1 Video: 1Vox --- Your Query Is Our Command!

Device Used: Motorola Droid on Verizon

Speech interface designers often express surprize at the the fact that the average blind user rarely if ever uses spoken input. But when you come down to it, this is not too surprizing --- given that the eyes-free user has speech output active, the overall system ends up talking to itself!

To show that these conflicts can be avoided by careful user-interface design, we demonstrate 1Vox --- our voice-search wizard for the Marvin Shell.

1. You activate 1Vox by stroke 9 on the Marvin screen.
2. You hear a spoekn prompt Search
3. You hear a little auditory icon when the system is ready for you.
4. You speak oft-used queries e.g., Weather Mountain View.
5. You hear a short spoken snippet in response.

We called this widget 1Vox --- in honor of the Google onebox found on the Google Results page.

Author: T.V Raman <raman@google.com>

YouTube And TalkBack --- Entertainment On The Go

Video: TalkBack And YouTube

1 Video: TalkBack And YouTube

Device: Motorola Droid on Verizon

This video demonstrates searching for and playing YouTube videos with TalkBack providing spoken feedback at each step in the interaction.

1. Launch YouTube from the Marvin Application launcher.
2. The trackball can be used here to move through the list of videos.
3. Pressing down on the trackball launches the selected video.
4. Press menu key to enter the YouTube application menu.
5. Click on Search with the trackball.
6. Type a query into the edit field. TalkBack speaks as you type.
7. Press Enter to perform the search.
8. Scroll the results list with the track-ball.
9. Click a desired result to start playing the video.

Author: T.V Raman <raman@google.com>