Develop Reference

Group Views for TalkBack

I have two TextViews. Currently, When Talkback is enabled, the user has to swipe twice to read both TextViews. But I want the screen reader to read the TextViews one after another without any user input (Like WhatsApp reading LastSeen and Chat name in one go). How can I achieve this? Any help would be appreciated

You can set the content description to the layout containing these two views and set individual views as not important for accessibility to combine them.
For example:
<LinearLayout …
android:id="#+id/combinedLayout"
android:contentDescription="Last seen / chat name"
<TextView …
android:text="Last seen"
android:importantForAccessibility="no" />
<TextView …
android:text="Chat name"
android:importantForAccessibility="no"/>
</LinearLayout>
Or in code it would be something like:
combinedLayout.contentDescription = "add content description here"
If any elements are clickable, be careful with setting as not important to accessibility, always test to make sure it behaves as you would expect.
Check out my post about common accessibility issues :) https://medium.com/microsoft-mobile-engineering/android-accessibility-resolving-common-talkback-issues-3c45076bcdf6

TextView does not get focus on talkback mode

I have an fragment in android TV application which has a lot of TextViews, some of them are focusable and the others are not.
When I turn on the talkback on the device, the views which are not focusable does not get accessibility focus, so their texts are not read to the user.
For example, here is a sample TextView I've inserted to the layout and it is not get focused while on talkback mode:
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginStart="40dp"
android:layout_marginBottom="40dp"
android:contentDescription="This is the content description"
android:importantForAccessibility="yes"
android:text="This is the text" />
Of caurse that I don't want to add android:focusable="true" since it will make it focusable also when not on talkback mode.
Is there any thing I am missing that cause this view not to get focus when on talkback mode?
Thanks

You can request focus in talkback mode by following java method.
Trying adding this:
view.setImportantForAccessibility(View.IMPORTANT_FOR_ACCESSIBILITY_YES);
from Android P onwards, You can also try this
android:screenReaderFocusable
OR
view.setScreenReaderFocusable(boolean)

Two fragments stacked ontop of each other using transactional ADD - how to prevent edit text gaining focus on bottom fragment?

Try stacking two fragments with editTexts on top of each other using an Add Transaction. after that when you press the keyboard imeOption key next button the bottom fragment's edit text can gain focus. this is a security concern. user can type things into the bottom fragments edit text (blindly). I tried the following code:
android:filterTouchesWhenObscured="true"
but it has not helped at least on api 27.
my edit text itself looks like this, nothing special:
<EditText
android:id="#+id/et"
android:layout_width="195dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:imeOptions="actionNone"
android:layout_marginBottom="10dp"
android:hint="#string/enter_name"
android:filterTouchesWhenObscured="true"
android:inputType="textNoSuggestions"
android:textColorHint="#959595"
android:textSize="11sp" />
the issue is very similar to android tap jacking
i tried even doing this:
android:nextFocusDown="#+id/et_two" thinking it would bypass and go directly to the edittext i want. but instead the bottom edit text still gains focus.

the issue solution was surprising. recyclerview was stealing focus. see this SO incident:
adding android:descendantFocusability="blocksDescendants" to the recyclerview stopped the issue.

Android Accessibility: sending several accessibility events on a single touch

Inside one of my recycle view adapters, I have a layout which displays an image and a checkbox.
I am adding accessibility to the app, and I want it so that when a user touches a picture, it will get a reading of the image and the current state of the checkbox (as in, "checked" or "unchecked", which is what the accessibility assistant reads, not true or false)
The two separate lines of code which I have used fit my purpose are as follows:
myImageView.sendAccessibilityEvent(AccessibilityEvent.TYPE_VIEW_SELECTED);
myCheckbox.sendAccessibilityEvent(AccessibilityEvent.TYPE_VIEW_SELECTED);
But if I run that call on the click event, the first instruction is cut short and only the second one is heard. So I believe this might not be the way to go. I probably have to use all of the Accessibility classes provided by Android, but I have no clue where to start.
What should I do for the voice feedback to read "Image one, checked... Image two, unchecked".
Additional info:
I cannot use strings to get the wanted value from the checkbox boolean because the app is multilingual and instead of having to get all the string resources I would rather take advantage of the system.
Thank you,
everyone, for your time.

You can combine both items in a linearlayout and/or you can market the "Image one" part as a label for the checkbox. Both examples are shown below and taken from the link below them.
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/consumedContainer"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:focusable="true"
android:focusableInTouchMode="false"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/coffeeLimitLabel"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="start|center_vertical"
android:layout_weight="1"
android:labelFor="#id/coffeeLimitValue"
android:text="#string/coffee_limit_label"
android:textAppearance="#style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Title"/>
https://www.raywenderlich.com/182100/android-accessibility-tutorial-getting-started

Why doesn't nextFocusDown work with TalkBack navigation?

I have four TextViews, and I'm trying to control the order that they get focus when a user navigates using TalkBack and touch gestures.
TextView android:text="foo" android:clickable="false" android:focusable="true" android:focusableInTouchMode="true" android:id="#+id/id_foo" android:nextFocusDown="#+id/id_baz"/>
TextView android:text="bar" android:clickable="false" android:focusable="true" android:focusableInTouchMode="true" android:id="#+id/id_bar" android:nextFocusDown="#+id/id_qux"/>
TextView android:text="baz" android:clickable="false" android:focusable="true" android:focusableInTouchMode="true" android:id="#id/id_baz" android:nextFocusDown="#id/id_bar"/>
TextView android:text="qux" android:clickable="false" android:focusable="true" android:focusableInTouchMode="true" android:id="#id/id_qux" android:nextFocusDown="#id/id_foo"/>
When a user turns on TalkBack, touches "foo", and then swipes down to navigate between the TextViews, I want the order to go foo->baz->bar->qux. But, the order I try to set up using nextFocusDown seems to have no effect, and instead focus order always just follows the positions of the TextViews on the screen. I've tried every possible combination of clickable, focusable, and focusableInTouchMode. I've tried calling setNextFocusDownId on the views in code. I've tried setting android:imeOptions="actionNext" on the TextViews. Nothing seems to work. What am I missing?

Try to use View.setAccessibilityTraversalAfter(int) and View.setAccessibilityTraversalBefore(int) to configure TalkBack navigation. Please note that TalkBack has only two directions:
forward (swipe to the right or down)
back (swipe to the left or up).
Example:
findView(R.id.bar).setAccessibilityTraversalBefore(R.id.quix);

NextFocusDown doesn't refer to TalkBack gestures. It refers to track-ball and keyboard arrow key navigation. TalkBack exploration gestures are limited to swiping down/right for next focus, and swiping up/left for previous focus. And of course, drag to explore.