Wednesday, 30 November 2011

How to Enable Accessibility in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Ice Cream Sandwich brings a lot of eye-candy to the Android platform. It's smooth thanks to GPU acceleration, and it's sleek thanks to Matias Duarte (formerly of Danger).

What about those who can't see well, or can't see at all? Are all of ICS's improvements just "skin deep"? Thanks to some improved usability and accessibility features, ICS is even more attractive to our friends with visual impairments!


As soon as you boot up your smartphone powered by Ice Cream Sandwich you'll get the new "welcome" screen. If you trace a rectangle with your finger, starting in the upper left, you'll immediately be taken to the Accessibility Tutorial, complete with spoken instructions. In the tutorial you'll learn how to browse screens with your finger, launch apps, and scroll lists. After you've finished the tutorial, you'll be returned to complete the setup with accessibility turned on. Something the video doesn't detail is how to increase your system font by navigating to the Display settings, and setting the font from "normal" to "large" or "extra large". If you've got extra-good eye-sight you can even reduce the font to "small" to fit even more information on your screen.

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