Category: Geeks r Us
Thanks to the Blind Bargains website, I'm seeing listings for Android tablets that sell for around 59 dollars brand new, usually on sale but sometimes that's the retail price. Now although I understand Android's accessibility is not quite as consistent as he Apple devices, I wonder if these tablets would be accessible at all? When I hear about blind folks who want to just even try Android, they go for a Google or maybe a Samsung tablet and not these off-brands, even though the major brand tablets might cost 200 to 300 bucks. So, any idea if these off-brand tablets I'm seeing would be just as accessible as a major brand one?
that depends on a lot of things. what launcher and default apps they use.
what version of android they ship with.
Do they even have talkback installed. Many off brand tablets don't.
Do the tablets have access to googles play store and other services, to make
updating some things easier/downloading TTS engines easier, etc.
this isn't cut and dry, at all.
I will answer this in one move. It depends whatthe manufacture has done to talkback. Some manufactures strip talkback out of the tablit because they saw where their sighted users griped about it. Some tablits are fine but there screen does not respond to touch very because its a crappy touch screen. I would look for a nexus7 midd 2012 or 2013 for under 200. I know you can get the 2012 under 150 it is still getting updated. That leads to my last point, the high the number version the more of android's accessibility features your going to be able to use. Jelly bean 4.3 introduced the ability to label buttons, better web views then 4.2 and KitCat brought Chrom web views, smaller foot print and faster response time through out the whole OS. So I would stick with a nexus7 running 4.3 or a major manufacture like Samsung. Just know that google non branded devices are not promised updates and cheep tablits are left on the android OS they come with currently.
I have a sighted friend who bought a cheaper tablet from a manufacturer I'd never heard of before. I've never tried to use it personally, but I know he tried to enable Talkback once, and there was no speech, so my guess is that it didn't ship with the voice data installed to run Talkback. I got the impression that if a blind person bought that particular tablet, they would have to have sighted help to install voice data and get Talkback going.
yes which is why I suggest just sticking with the nexus7 or major OEM tablet makers.