The whole "let's make an Android device for seniors/the blind/whoever and pin it on an ancient Android version/spec it really low but charge a premium" thing is unfortunately not new.
If you look at the Blindshell 2 and 3 you see plenty of this happening as well, not to mention way more expensive hardware like the BrailleSense Polaris which last time I checked ran on Android 5, scary "Mind updating right now please?" Google Play warnings and everything.
If it helps any, Talkback does have a set of keyboard commands it responds to, perhaps making your keypad buttons fire those means the implementation might be less brittle but given what you've already had to deal with maybe just not touching it ever again might be thebest thing at this point :)
Great story and good write-up. Might have enjoyed a little more detail in places - so it would be more easily repeatable for someone else - but perhaps that would belong in a readme.
I guess this proves that android is still usefully more open than iOS.
So nice to read a write up like this. Not afraid to use AI tools, but still writing up the project personally from the perspective of the human running the show.
I think the trouble with GSIs is that they often don't have everything working. For OP: did you actually test that stuff works? things like phone calls, camera, mobile internet?
I had an HTC Dream when Android was a brand-new thing and the screen slid sideways to reveal a keyboard. Coming from Blackberry the key feel was not was good but the software was much more impressive. It even had a little trackball!
because it's a 12 key pad, sorta like what you'd see on older phones with t9 layout. it would've been much easier if it was a blackberry-style qwerty keyboard. and the "d-pad" at the top has to move talkback's cursor
I've read that people are using that as a sign that they aren't writing with AI, however I imagine it's easy enough to ask the AI to not capitalize and to use typos.
fair point, i do that only because i'm very used to it. i may introduce an option to auto-capitalize, and maybe different fonts to improve readability (and accessibility), especially for people with dyslexia
The missing punctuation at random times was infuriating. Never fun when you have to re-read a sentence because the word without punctuation is itself also a word.
>holding both volume keys turns talkback on and off, and android plays a sound when you do it. a very loud sound. WHY IS IT SO LOUD
The fun part about it is that even if you lower TalkBack's sound, enable the debug tool that just writes the text in a toast because listening to accessibility announcements all day long is a recipe to go mad, turning it on/off always give you the horribly loud TALKBACK ENABLED, all my colleagues know when one of us is doing accessibility work.
This is lovely work. Building for older users taught me how much "obvious" UI isn't. Most of my users are 55+, and the bugs that mattered were never the clever ones: layouts breaking at large system font sizes, and people not finding an app because they typed the name the way it sounds. A physical keypad with a screen reader that actually works sounds like it solves a whole class of those problems at once. How does she handle text input, T9 or voice?
Whew, rough :)
The whole "let's make an Android device for seniors/the blind/whoever and pin it on an ancient Android version/spec it really low but charge a premium" thing is unfortunately not new.
If you look at the Blindshell 2 and 3 you see plenty of this happening as well, not to mention way more expensive hardware like the BrailleSense Polaris which last time I checked ran on Android 5, scary "Mind updating right now please?" Google Play warnings and everything.
If it helps any, Talkback does have a set of keyboard commands it responds to, perhaps making your keypad buttons fire those means the implementation might be less brittle but given what you've already had to deal with maybe just not touching it ever again might be thebest thing at this point :)
Disclaimer: Actually blind Android user/developer
It’s a market size to staffing to cost thing. It’s not an evil thing.
The reality is serving a niche market does not generate enough top line revenue to fund large teams to keep the product going at state of the art.
yeah, it feels like profiting off of people's accessibility needs, which is pretty sad, but unfortunately, that's the world we live in ;'(
really cool to hear from someone who's actually affected by all of this though! and thanks for the talkback tip, i should look more into that
It is really that, or maybe the market is so small that the margins must make up for it?
Great story and good write-up. Might have enjoyed a little more detail in places - so it would be more easily repeatable for someone else - but perhaps that would belong in a readme.
I guess this proves that android is still usefully more open than iOS.
thank you! i initially wanted to release it somewhere or make a thread on xda, but never got my hands on it unfortuantely
So nice to read a write up like this. Not afraid to use AI tools, but still writing up the project personally from the perspective of the human running the show.
I think the trouble with GSIs is that they often don't have everything working. For OP: did you actually test that stuff works? things like phone calls, camera, mobile internet?
miraculously it all worked from the first boot, apart from bluetooth, which she doesn't use. it's using the stock vendor parition, so kapsys' drivers
Interestingly back in 2007 Google demo'd Android on a Blackberry-like keypad phone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg
If I remember correctly the first android phones were supposed to be keypad phones, and only the launch of the iPhone made them change course.
I remember some phones came with a keypad, but they disappeared quite quickly.
I was lucky enough to need a HTC Touch Pro 2 for work back in the day.
I spent hours fixing scripts and restarting servers at 3 am or on off-days from it. Server intervention times of seconds. Best device ever!
The keyboard was comfy, screen was good enough, and you could use your entire screen for the console because the keyboard was separate.
It also looked wicked.
These days with these pathetic media consumption devices if I need to do something I pull my laptop out.
This is correct.
I had an HTC Dream when Android was a brand-new thing and the screen slid sideways to reveal a keyboard. Coming from Blackberry the key feel was not was good but the software was much more impressive. It even had a little trackball!
God it makes me feel old to hear youngins not even be able to quote recent history correctly.
Android launched with a keyboard.
I'm confused. Why is the keyboard tied to a special app, and not just... A keyboard? Android supports hardware keyboards.
because it's a 12 key pad, sorta like what you'd see on older phones with t9 layout. it would've been much easier if it was a blackberry-style qwerty keyboard. and the "d-pad" at the top has to move talkback's cursor
Love it! Makes me wanna get a landfill android with physical keys and some amount of ram and get it working again for my grandparents.
Great work! Congratulations!
Ugh. The lack of capitalization turns this into an unreadable wall of text. What a terrible trend to jump on.
I've read that people are using that as a sign that they aren't writing with AI, however I imagine it's easy enough to ask the AI to not capitalize and to use typos.
> I imagine it's easy enough to ask the AI to not capitalize
It is! Relevant example from this week: https://sshhole.com/
fair point, i do that only because i'm very used to it. i may introduce an option to auto-capitalize, and maybe different fonts to improve readability (and accessibility), especially for people with dyslexia
If there was a toggle at the top to do so, I would hit it and have a much easier time reading your post :)
The missing punctuation at random times was infuriating. Never fun when you have to re-read a sentence because the word without punctuation is itself also a word.
have you really not been online long enough to be able to parse communication without unnecessary markup
He does it for attention and your comment just gives it to him.
> so i wrote one small app that does the keypad, the home screen and the keyboard.
Maybe that is worth open-sourcing.
A new sentence starts with a capital letter.
>holding both volume keys turns talkback on and off, and android plays a sound when you do it. a very loud sound. WHY IS IT SO LOUD
The fun part about it is that even if you lower TalkBack's sound, enable the debug tool that just writes the text in a toast because listening to accessibility announcements all day long is a recipe to go mad, turning it on/off always give you the horribly loud TALKBACK ENABLED, all my colleagues know when one of us is doing accessibility work.
This is lovely work. Building for older users taught me how much "obvious" UI isn't. Most of my users are 55+, and the bugs that mattered were never the clever ones: layouts breaking at large system font sizes, and people not finding an app because they typed the name the way it sounds. A physical keypad with a screen reader that actually works sounds like it solves a whole class of those problems at once. How does she handle text input, T9 or voice?
How has the user feedback been? I ship a specific application for blind and low vision users.
How i thought ui should work and how blind users use ui was night and day had to do like 9 rounds of ui change with people over weeks.