Category: Cell Phone Talk
Ok! So my Nokia e66 has just given out after 4.5 years of excellent service. I've replaced it with a Motorola Defy Pro running Gingerbread, as this was one of only two options that I could get with a physical keyboard through my carrier and I didn't have the money to go by a phone directly off contract.
My questions:
I've got talkback and the Mobile Accessibility demo installed right now, but I can't seem to access some reasonably basic parts of the phone like wi-fi connectivity. Is there a way to do that?
Secondly, is there a better voice for talkback, because I can barely understand the one that it's using as it's default.
Really, I'm just very confused by this entire thing-- sometimes mobile accessibility and talkback are speaking at the same time, like if I recieve a text message while I'm doing something else, and I don't know if there's a way to fix that?
Can anyone explain to me the basics for getting started with my phone outside of the mobile accessibility suite? Because right now I'm comparing my experience to S60 running Talks and having the strong desire to throw my phone into the river.
thanks in advance!
I'll do my best to answer your questions from memory, because I haven't used a phone running Gingerbread in almost a year.
If I remember right, using Mobile Accessibility, if you go into Apps and then Settings, you should have access to your Wifi settings. I'm not familiar with how to do this using only Talkback, because I primarily used Mobile Accessibility when I was running Gingerbread.
With Gingerbread, there are lots of voices you can pick from other than the default voice. The ones I know of that are free are the Ivona voices; Ivona Kendra is the US one, but I can't remember the exact names of the others (you should be able to find them in the Play store).
Other options that aren't free are the SVox voices, Loquendo Susan, and, most recently, the Acapela TTS voices. With Acapela, there are tons of voices you can pick from, and each only costs a few dollars.
If Talkback and Mobile Accessibility are speaking at the same time, I'm guessing you have them both checked as screen readers in the Accessibility settings? When I did that, they tended to clash with one another.
There's a huge learning curve going from a Nokia phone to an Android; I've been there. The main thing is to be as patient as you can, and remember that you'll have to be willing to adapt, to do things in a different way than you may be used to.
Awesome, thanks, I found the settings as well as disabling Talkback, I think having them both running stopped speech entirely outside of MA. It's definitely a learning curve, but I'm enjoying it. I'm a little concerned about the way that android insists on constantly maintaining a data connection on the network and I'm just hoping it's not using much data while it's just hanging about in stand-by. I'm used to being able to control exactly when and which network my phone connects to on a case-by-case basis.
Again, thanks for your help!
also for web views that are accessible the eyes free keyboard will help you navagate with its vertual d-pad. I to have not used gingerbred for about 2 years left it for a galaxy S3 and now an Iphone5 like I said on another board here is not that time or place to talkabout it. Any way, I can help you with some apps that are accessible to you like darwin walit for money reading and a few others. Generally though you might be running into alot of brick walls because gingerbred accessibility sucks!. With out explore by touch from 4.0 and the ability to swipe 4.1 "jelly bean" your not able to focus on text elemints that are not reached by the system cursur. Any way congrades on your phone and good luck.