Rating the Accessibility Features on Android Phones

*The following is a guest post by Mark Flores of Handi Enterprises. Mark has 17 years of experience in providing adaptive technology and communication devices and is confident that Handi Enterprise can provide solutions to meet your adaptive technology and communication needs. He recently reviewed the accessibility features on the iPhone in this article. 

Android phones are gaining in popularity. In part because of the popularity of the Samsung S series of smart phones. This is the 1st series of phones to use an Android platform that is similar to the iPhone operating system. Also, if you know what you are doing the open source format of Android operating systems allow you to customize the phone to meet your needs.

The Samsung S3 has a lot of almost gimmicky features such as hand wave call answer and the say cheese function to take a picture that are generating a lot of interest and as such we are seeing a lot of people with physical disabilities wanting to make the switch. In this blog post I will talk about my experience with using some of its accessibility features, and hopefully help you to answer the question of is it worth it to make the switch.

Ease-Of-Use

I found that the accessibility features on the Samsung Galaxy S3 were not that easy to find and even harder to turn on. Granted, this could be because of the operating system I was using. I was on the latest version of Jellybean. On the Jellybean OS, to find the accessibility features that I needed to use, I had to navigate a labyrinth of menus that felt like I was using a version of DOS. In my opinion, this would be very difficult for someone who does not have high finger dexterity. Also, some of the features that I used were not marked as accessibility features and were found in different menu trees. This was very confusing to me. Finally I had to do a lot of research on my own just to ascertain what some of these accessibility features did and how to use them - things like answering calls by voice were not clearly spelled out, it almost felt like they were hidden. When I had to find out what a particular function did, the Samsung YouTube became my closest friend. Again someone with a physical disability may not be up to doing a large amount of research; they may just want the features to be simple to understand and easy to use.

For these reasons I am giving the Samsung Galaxy S3 accessibility features a rating of 2 out of 5 for ease-of-use.

Responsiveness

To me this is the category where the Android accessibility features on the Samsung Galaxy S3 really fall down. As a person with a physical disability the more I can control my cell phone by voice the better. This is why I was really excited to spend 30 days with the Android operating system. The voice control features like using my voice to answer a call, to take a picture or to unlock my phone are a set of accessibility features that the iOS system does not currently have and at least in my mind, could have meant a migration for me from iOS to Android. It could have if those features were able to work more consistently.

During my 30 days embedded with the Samsung Galaxy S3 I found the voice control features to be amazing… when they decided to work. As a matter of fact, I could not get them to work with any sort of consistency. I found myself screaming at the phone to try and answer it by voice 75% of the time. Unfortunately, this was my experience across all of the voice control accessibility features of the Android OS. I just could not get any of them to consistently respond to me. This tells me that the voice control engine that they are using which is Google Voice/S Voice is nowhere near that of Siri, which was created by Nuance. If you are a person with a physical disability looking to use the voice control accessibility options of the Samsung Galaxy series of phones it was my experience that you have to dictate the commands you would like it to execute with a super consistent voice and volume. As well I could not get any of its features to work at all in any sort of noisy environment. So be prepared for that.

Even though the voice control features would have helped me out a lot I just could not get them to respond to me consistently. Therefore the responsiveness of the phones accessibility features receive a rating of 1 out of 5.

Does the product perform as advertised?

I would say that the voice control accessibility features of the Samsung Galaxy S3 aside, the other features that I use, such as read text or text zoom performed quite similarly to what you would expect to see from the iPhone. Although these features did require me to jump through a few extra hoops to get them to work. Many of the voice control features that I used to make the Samsung more accessible to me felt as though they were flashy casino slot machines meant to attract early adopters and were not stable enough to really be referred to as assistive technology for people with disabilities. I am only awarding the Samsung Galaxy S3 a score of 3 out of 5 for its accessibility features performing as advertised.

How much physical dexterity is required to use the product i.e. can anyone with any disability utilize it?

I was disappointed at how much physical dexterity I needed to have in order to use the Samsung Galaxy S3, even with its accessibility features. I am a person with a physical disability with limited dexterity and as such I find it difficult to use technology that requires a lot of setup before I can use it correctly, this was the exact mountain that I had to climb with the Samsung Galaxy S3, which is something that the average user with a physical disability may not be able to do.

Because some of the accessibility features like answering a phone call by my voice, among others, barely worked I found myself having to subsidize my use of the phone with the use of my fingers, which I should have not had to do if the accessibility features of the Samsung advertised with this phone worked correctly. The fact that the Samsung Galaxy S3 required a high level of dexterity to use it even with its accessibility features activated, I am only giving it a rating of 1 out of 5.

Overall Rating

Overall I have to say that I was underwhelmed with the accessibility features of the Samsung Galaxy S3. These features did not at all make it easier for me to use such a robust phone. They just were not stable enough and therefore were unable to perform as advertised the majority of the time. I cannot in good conscience recommend that someone with a physical disability look at purchasing it. The only way that I could recommend that someone with similar accessibility needs to my own look at using the Samsung Galaxy S3 is with the assistance of an alternative access device. Our next blog series will give an in-depth review of 2 of these types of devices. So stay tuned. I realize that Samsung has recently released the 4th generation in this phone series and with all new releases you would expect the features that I have detailed above to be better, and who knows maybe they are but I would not hold my breath. The Samsung Galaxy S3 and its accessibility features receive a disappointing overall rating of 7 out of 20.

Remember assistive technology is amazing when it works. We can help you get there.

Mark Flores

Rating the Accessibility Features on the iPhone

*The following is a guest post by Mark Flores of Handi Enterprises. Mark has 17 years of experience in providing adaptive technology and communication devices and is confident that Handi Enterprise can provide solutions to meet your adaptive technology and communication needs.

When evaluating a product I find it useful to compare it against what the manufacture says about it.  The 1^st thing that jumps out at me about Apple’s literature on the iPhone’s accessibility features as relates to motor impairment, is the fact that they are touting features used by everyone, including those without physical disabilities, as accessibility features.  Reading this I have to ask myself the question are features such as Siri or volume buttons really accessibility features when they are used by everyone?  Or is the iPhone just thin on motor impairment accessibility features?  Which leads me to my 2^nd question based on the iPhone accessibility features that I use every day: is iPhone motor impairment accessibility at the forefront for people that need it or is it just an afterthought?

I will rate the accessibility features that I used in my 30 day experiment, of the iPhone 5, with these questions in mind.

Ease-Of-Use

For the most part, the accessibility features of the iPhone 5 that I used were relatively easy to test.  This is because most of them were located in the assistive touch feature of the iPhone; which places a number of those features right on the home screen in a small translucent ball that you can move around with your fingers as necessary.  With the assistive touch feature enabled I was able to easily do things like: turn on Siri, lock my screen rotation into place; (which turned out to be very important for my level of CP,) use the multitasking feature without having to double tap the home button, control the volume of the phone without having to struggle with the buttons on the side just to name a few.

2 more accessibility features on the iPhone 5 that I found quite helpful and easy to use were the voice texting and the select text to read features.  A recent addition to the iPhone operating system (IOS) is the ability for you now to send text messages inside iPhone’s text messaging app.  You can imagine that for someone like me who has limited use of my hands, the ability to transcribe your voice into text right in the texting app is huge; as opposed to having to use a third-party app to dictate, select, copy and paste my text like I had to previously.  The fact that he uses series voice recognition technology to do the transcription also means that it is very accurate. 

As somebody with a learning disability that requires audio feedback for whatever I read the select text to read feature was great.  I did not have to change the text in any way or copy and paste it to a third-party app to get it to work.  The voice feedback was very smooth and I was the default read speed setting and it was fine.  When pressed me the most about it was that it could read virtually any text in any application including the Internet.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Responsiveness

Although I did find that the iPhone 5 was quite responsive there is one accessibility feature that I did not feel was responsive at all.  This was the gestures feature.  The way that this feature is supposed to work is that you can create 1 or 2 finger movements to more easily execute iPhone movements that could be tricky for someone with dexterity issues.  These movements could include things like pinching and stretching or swiping.  I just could not get this to work even and when I was able to create gestures they only worked the way they were supposed to 50% of the time.  Which for someone that needs it to work is not acceptable.  Because I found that gestures were not responsive to me but everything else was, I am giving the iPhone 5 a 3 out of 5 rating when it comes to the responsiveness of their accessibility features.

Does the product perform as advertised?

When I looked at whether or not the iPhone 5’s accessibility features performed as advertised  in helping me use the phone it depended on what I was doing with it.  If I was doing things like dictating text or reading emails they performed fantastically.  The assistive touch features that were already built into the accessibility also performed as advertised but as mentioned before I could not use gestures to help me navigate through the phone.  Because of these reasons I mentioned I will rate the iPhone 5 accessibility features a 4 out of 5 for performing as advertised.

How much physical dexterity is required to use the product i.e. can anyone with any disability utilize it?

The accessibility features of the iPhone 5 are surprisingly stable.  As such once I turned them on they did not all of a sudden stop working as can happen with some different models of phones.  This meant that my need to exercise my dexterity was minimal in most instances.  However, I did have to use my dexterity in navigating through the iOS or selecting text for the phone to read.  This can be difficult for many individuals with physical disabilities to do.  There are some external pieces of adaptive technology you can buy that will minimize the need to use your hands with the iPhone.  We will talk about some of these in a future post. The iPhone does have many different assistive technology features that I do not use to help people with many other types of disabilities in using the phone such as a larger text and voice over.  We will also be talking about some of the accessibility features for people living with visual impairments in a future post. As a result of the phones need to still be used by hand even if some accessibility features are turned on I am giving the iPhone 5 a rating of 3 out of 5 under physical dexterity required.

Overall Rating

Overall the iPhone 5 and its accessibility features receive a rating of 14 out of 20.  I have come to believe that the iPhone 5 is an easy-to-use phone.  This is because there is not much to it.  If you are looking for a phone whose accessibility features function as advertised for the most part and whose operating system is quite easy to learn from a physical accessibility standpoint the iPhone 5 may be for you.  I do believe that the iPhone would become the smart phone of choice for people with physical disabilities if they had stronger voice control functionality, like the ability to answer the phone or turn off the alarm by voice.

Stay tuned for next week’s post and I will begin by talking about my experience with the Samsung Galaxy S3.

What kind of smartphone should I use?

*The following is a guest post by Mark Flores of Handi Enterprises. Mark has 17 years of experience in providing adaptive technology and communication devices and is confident that Handi Enterprise can provide solutions to meet your adaptive technology and communication needs.

Many people, including me, say that smart phones are the personal computer of the 21st century.  They are about as common as the Walkman was in the 80s or the pager of the 90s.  Because of these amazing inventions people can now work and play anywhere they choose.  Yes this does include people with disabilities.  As a company we receive several questions a month from our consumers asking, what kind of smart phone they should use.  I am writing this blog post to answer this very question.

One of the 1st things we tell our customers is that their choice of smart phone should depend less on its style or its status symbol and more on their ability to use it.  You can have the slickest looking smart phone on the market but if you cannot physically use it, is just as good as a pet rock.  We like to say that you should look at smart phones just as you would any other type of assistive technology.  This means that doing your research is most important.  Research not all of the plans available although that is important as well; but research about the physical aspects of using the smartphone of your choice.  Ask yourself “how easily can I make a phone call, send an email, this into music, surf the Internet or review media on this phone?”  You should also reconcile your smart phone choice with your physical ability.  Are you going to be able to push the buttons on the phone?  Can you hold the phone?  How difficult is it going to be for you to use the phones operating system?

As a person with a disability wanting to join the smart phone age you should look at your daily life and activities which will help you start to think about what exactly it is you need the smart phone to do.  Are you like me sending hundreds of emails a day?  Or do you just wanted to be able to access your Facebook page?  Is listening to music your main concern?  Answering questions like these and the ones posed above can help you through your journey in selecting one of these amazing phones by helping you narrow your focus, allowing you to be honest about your own ability.  Once you can be that honest you can start to choose a phone that will work and not just one that looks great.

It is important for you as a consumer to know that there have been many advances in the field of assistive technology specifically related to the use of smart phones by people with disabilities.  So even if you do not think that you could ever use a phone there are probably many ways in which you could.  In future blog posts myself and my team here at Handi Enterprises Inc. will discuss some external forms of assistive technology that can help you control smart phones and tablets.  But for the purposes of this blog series I will be discussing some of the amazing advances in adaptive technology specifically through accessibility settings on the phones themselves that could make all the difference in the world for you.  I will be discussing these from my perspective as a user with Cerebral Palsy and as such I will not be able to comment on every accessibility feature on both the Android and Apple systems.  Rather I hope that my experience of 30 days with both of these forms will give you some insight so that you will be able to make your own choice.  I will be rating the features that I do discuss using the following criteria:

1.) Ease-of-use
2.) Responsiveness
3.) Does the product perform as advertised?
4.) How much physical dexterity is required to use the product i.e. can anyone with any disability utilize it?

Stay tuned for next week’s post and I will begin by talking about my experience with the iPhone.