Device Used: Motorola Droid on Verizon

Speech interface designers often express surprize at the the factthat the average blind user rarely if ever uses spoken input. Butwhen you come down to it, this is not too surprizing --- giventhat 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 readyfor 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 foundon the Google Results page.

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.

Device Used: Motorola Droid On Verizon

TalkBack provides spoken feedback as you use Google Maps.In this video, we will demonstrate typical maps tasks such as:

1. Launch Google Maps using the Marvin application launcher.
2. From within the Maps application, press the menu key.
3. Select Search and type a query into the search field.
4. Notice that I can type a partial query and haveauto-completion based on previous searches.
5. Press Enter to perform the search.
6. Bring up the result list in ListView by touching thebottom left of the screen.
7. Scroll through this list using the D-Pad.
8. Click with the D-Pad (or enter) to select a business.
9. Scroll through available options, and click Get Directions.

10.Click the Go button to get directions.

1. Scroll with the trackball to hear the directions spoken.

In addition, you can also use Google Latitude to locate yourfriends.

Note that other Map tools such as Google Latitude are accessiblefrom within the set of options that appear when you press themenu key.

Device Used: Motorola Droid On Verizon

We briefly introduced TalkBack in the previous video while enabling Accessibility from the settings menu.Here, we show off some of this screenreader's features.

TalkBack is designed to be a simple, non-obtrusivescreenreader. What this means in practice is that you interactdirectly with your applications, and not withTalkBack. TalkBack's job is to remain in the background andprovide the spoken feedback that you need.

TalkBack works with all of Android's native user interfacecontrols. This means you can configure all aspects of the Androiduser interface with TalkBack providing appropriate spokenfeedback. What is more, you can use most native Androidapplications --- including those downloaded from the AndroidMarket with TalkBack providing spoken feedback.

Here are some examples of Android applications (both from Google as well as third-party applications available onmarket) that work with TalkBack:

• Google Maps: Perform searches, and listen to directions.
• YouTube: Search, browse categories and play.
• Simple Weather: Listen to local weather forecasts.
• Facebook: Moving around on the social Web.

But in this video, we'll demonstrate the use of a very simple butuseful Android application --- the Android Alarm clock.

• Launch: I launch the alarm clock from Marvin's eyes-free application launcher.
• TalkBack: TalkBack takes over and starts speaking.
• Navigate: Navigating with the trackball speaks the alarmunder focus.
• Activate: Activating with the trackball produces appropriate feedback.
• Navigate: Selected alarm displays its settings in a list-view which speaks as we navigate.

Device Used: MotoRola Droid on Verizon

Starting with Android 1.6 --- fondly known as Donut --- theplatform includes an Accessibility API that makes it easy toimplement adaptive technology such as screenreaders. Android 1.6comes with a built-in screenreader called TalkBack that providesspoken feedback when using Android applications written in Java.

The next few videos will progressively introduce TalkBack,SoundBack and KickBack, a suite of programs that augment theAndroid user interface with alternative output.

All of these special utilities are available through optionAccessibility in the Android Settings menu. Once activated, theaccessibility settings are persistent across reboots, i.e., youneed enable these tools only once.

Notice that because I have accessibility enabled on my phone,all user actions produce relevant auditory feedback. Thus, eachitem is spoken as Imove through the various options in the settings menu. The spokenfeedback also indicates the state of an item as appropriate.

Activating SoundBack produces non-spoken auditory feedback;KickBack produces haptic feedback.

When we first launched project eyes-free in early spring 2009, wepromised to post frequent video updates to the eyes-freechannel. Well, sadly, we have been remiss in keeping that promise --- but all in a good cause --- we were busy building out theneeded accessibility APIs in the core Android framework.

We're now returning with a fresh set of video updates thatdemonstrate the new accessibility framework in Android, and howthese access related tools mesh with the Eyes-Free shell shownearlier.

To summarize:

1. All of the eyes-free utilities from project Marvin continueto be developed in order to provide fluent eyes-free interaction.
2. The Marvin shell that we demonstrated last time continues tobe my default home screen.
3. We have added an application launcher on the Marvin screenthat can be launched by stroking 8.
4. This launcher uses stroke dialing to quickly navigate andlaunch applications.
5. With the launch of the Accessibility API in Android1.6, and the accompanying Open Source TalkBack screenreader,I can now launch any Android application, e.g., GoogleMaps or YouTube.
6. TalkBack provides spoken feedback for native Androidapplications, including the settings menu.
7. You can use Android Market to install third-partyapplications, many of these work outof the box with TalkBack.

We'll demonstrate these, and a variety of other new coolenhancements in these forthcoming videos, stay tuned!