How can visually impaired people control mobile programs with screen readers when they run them with XAMARIN?

Question

Hello masters I am visually impaired and I am very interested in software development. I have previously worked and learned on desktop applications with .net C# architecture. Now I want to learn the mobile side with Visual Studio using XAMARIN. My problem is, when I ran my work in desktop programming, I could directly check the output and test it without any problems. It is necessary to test using an emulator on mobile. At this point, I cannot directly review and read it with the screen reader I use. I think I need to run the tests with the TalkBack application used on mobile. It wastes a lot of time to check my work over the device every time. In this regard, how should I configure the emulator? How can I overcome this problem? I request your support in this matter. Thank you everyone in advance.

Answer 1

Hello,

If you want to enable the Accessibility in the android emulator.

The emulators don't contain Talkback by default. You need to install an Emulator with Google Play then Download and Install the Android Accessibility Suite app.

Firstly, before you create an emulator, you need to open the Android SDKs and Tools(Click the Tools tab>then choose Android selection-> then click the Android SDK Manager..), If you create an android emulator with API 34, you can expand the Android SDK Platform 34 selection and make sure Google APIs Intel x86_64 Atom system Image and Google play Intel X86_64 Atom system Image selected.

After that, you can create an emulator in the Android device manager(Click the Tools tab>then choose Android selection-> then click the Android Device Manager..). Click the New tag, Make sure Google APIs and Google Play Store selected.

In the end, run your emulator, open Google play store and install Android Accessibility Suite app. It will update your Settings->Accessibility menu to include TalkBack as an option.

Here is a Android emulator document about testing accessibility

Best Regards, Leon Lu

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