I have been chatting with Jeffrey Stark on Twitter. He runs a blog and it contains lots of interesting Android information as well. I would highly suggest giving it a good look! This article entitled The must have accessible apps for blind android users looks especially interesting on his blog. I for one will be reviewing them this weekend.

Jerry Jicha has a website of currently 51 Android podcasts from an Accessibility perspective. If you haven’t visited this site before I encourage you to do so. The podcasts are done in a very relaxed manner but provide a lot of useful information if you are new to Android.

After spending over 4 hours at the dentist for our family I stopped by the office to pick up my Nexus 7. I had purchased a case off of Amazon for it and ran upstairs to retrieve it. While driving home I unboxed the Nexus 7 and at least started the process of getting accessibility enabled on the tablet. I then put it away once I got to the setup screen. I completed the accessibility tutorial at this point. This is where the first challenge came to plague my Nexus 7 startup experience.

After getting home and checking work email and responding to some questions I began the setup wizard. I provided my wireless information and assumed that connectivity was working. The Nexus 7 said it was, why would I doubt it? I then attempted to enter my Google account information. I have two-step authentication enabled on my Gmail account and from listening to Robert Carter’s podcast I know that I had to use an application password to get the Nexus 7 to recognize my Google account login details. For the life of me it wouldn’t work. For those that don’t know, I have an Apple router. Could it be Steve Jobs cursing me for bringing a Nexus into the house :)? One of the big holes in Google security was that you could use the same application level password on multiple devices. I dug out my iPhone password and tried this. This failed. I then considered the possibility that these rules have changed at Google so I went through the process of generating a new Google Account Application Password. This also failed. The error message I received was very vague so I wasn’t sure if it was a password issue or a network connectivity problem. The Nexus 7 still showed that I was connected to the network, go figure. After a reboot of both the cable modem and router the tablet seemed to connect to the network correctly this time. It is always the simple things that fix a problem and are the ones we always try last :).

After getting the setup experience completed I started to play around with the Nexus 7. Here are my findings thus far from my first 24 hours with the tablet:

• Gestures are very picky on Android. For the life of me I can’t get the simple right and then down gesture to bring up the Notifications panel. I had gotten it to do it twice but other then that, no way! More on this later.
• Widgets will be the death of me at times it seems. Somehow I got the Google Play Books widget on home screen 3. It seemed to take up the entire screen. Everywhere I touched I heard “Play Library”. I finally had to have my son David grab the widget and drag it up and then remove it from the home screen. I am still unsure how it even got there but boy was that a frustrating experience.
• Finding the Settings icon was difficult at times. The only reliable method I have found thus far is to open the Apps icon and then find it from here. Speaking of the Apps icon …
• One very interesting thing I have found is that sometimes I could scroll the list of Apps once I opened the Apps icon using a two-finger gesture. Now however, I have to do a two-finger swipe gesture to switch pages to get to the other Apps. Again, this is yet another mystery for me of which I will have to try and find out why.
• I spent some time talking with Rick Harmon and he suggested a few apps. One of the first things I did was to install TalkBack from the Google Play Store. What to my shocking ears did appear but all new Talkback sounds. I am really not finding them to my liking so I am hoping a future Talkback update will make these configurable.
• I took the Nexus 7 to the office and the first thing I tried to do was to connect the tablet to the wireless network. Why is it that I always have these problems with connectivity? After trying three or four times to get the tablet connected I resorted to looking up documentation on our internal network on Android device connectivity. Again, the Nexus 7 sort of gave me the impression that it was connected. In fact, I even just had it connect to the public wireless network on our campus and it started to pull down updates and purchased apps I had done on the PC. However, whenever I tried to do a Google search either by typing or with my Voice it said it couldn’t talk to Google servers. This was where I started to truly see that this platform is definitely for the geek-minded and not for someone that isn’t very computer literate. After reviewing documentation on our site I was finally able to get the tablet connected.

Here is a listing of apps that I have downloaded onto my Nexus 7 at this point:

• Acapela TTS Voices

  No actual voices are installed yet.

• Audible for Android

  I have heard good things about this app and am looking forward to its use.

• Dragon Mobile Assistant

  I have started to play with this app but haven’t gotten very far yet. I have heard this is a battery killer if left in always listening mode.

• Folder Downloader for Dropbox

  Huh? Really? I meant to get Dropbox and not this app. I have since corrected this. This is one I got directly from the Nexus. Obviously I didn’t get the right one :).

• Dropbox

  This one will be hugely useful for me at work.

• EqualEyes Beta for Talkback

  I played with this for a bit and quickly removed it. It is mostly useful on a phone Android device I think. I will revisit it at some point.

• Firefox Browser for Android

  I have made this the default on the Nexus 7 at this point rather than Chrome.

• Foursquare

  I haven’t played with this as of yet.

• Google Goggles

  I have yet to try this.

• Google Play services

  The Nexus must have automagically retrieved this app as I didn’t manually request it.

• GreenPower Free Battery Saver

  This is the lite version. I have yet to play with it yet.

• HeyTell

  I use this quite a bit on the iPhone so it will be interesting to see how it works on Android.

• iBlink Radio

  This app works very well on Android.

• Netflix

  I have yet to try this app but I have heard very good things about it. Supposedly it is better than the iPhone version.

• Pandora® internet radio

  I have yet to try this app.

• Plume for Twitter

  Robert Carter discussed this app and said it works quite well. It is near the top of my list to test.

• Screen Filter

  I have yet to try this one.

• Screen Standby

  Someone told me I may have to root my device for this one so I will tread slowly on this one.

• Shades

  This is similar to Screen Filter above but I have yet to try it.

• Skype

  This will be interesting to see how this app compares to the Windows, Mac and iPhone versions I have tried.

• TalkBack

  This is a must have app. It insures TalkBack will keep updated on your Android device.

• Zello Walkie Talkie

  Here is hoping this is as accessible as other platforms. Jerry tells me he has used it so I picked it up.

All of the apps mentioned above were free from the Google Play Store.

What do I want to do next? I am looking closely at two apps at the moment. These are Nova and Apex. Both of these are Android Launcher applications. They basically replace the native experience you would see on your home screens. I am finding that this experience is a bit challenging with the native interface. For one thing, both apps allow you to use the Home icon to get to the notifications area of the tablet. I consider this a crucial thing on the daily use of such a device. I am getting lots of advice on both sides of the camp for each of these apps so I think the best thing for me to do is to buy both and give them a shot.

Here are my initial impressions thus far. Keep in mind that I am not making any long-lasting opinions here. These findings could change 5 minutes from the time I have written this. It is all based on what I know at the moment about Android, so please don’t consider this as me being either negative or positive on my final experience with Android. Here we go:

• I just love the Google Play Store implementation. The ability to buy apps from the web and have them push to a device is wonderful.
• I am struggling with the what is seemingly the very picky nature of gestures on the Nexus 7. I don’t think it is all me but what do I know at this point. Gesturing on the iPhone seems so much smoother. Oh wait, is that what I really thought when I first got my iPod Touch? I doubt it. Let’s see where this ends up in the coming days but so far it is truly what a friend likes to say, “a screaming bag of cats” at the moment.
• The out-of-box experience of the Nexus 7 experience is quite good and I would put it right up there with other ecosystems.
• Google, really, can you make wireless setup a bit easier? This isn’t so much an accessibility issue but rather an Android one. You need a better auto-discovery process in your implementation and need to work on wording of your dialogs. That was quite an odd experience I must say.
• I haven’t purchase any apps yet (all of them I have gotten for free thus far) but what I have noticed is the Google Play Store Apps seem to be less expensive than the Apple App Store. I am sure this may be very subjective as it depends on what apps are being purchased.
• TalkBack developers, you really had to mess with the sounds huh? I feel like I am in an orchestra pit with all of these MIDI instruments going off as I move around. Here’s hoping they make this configurable.
• Removing apps from running in memory is really nice on Android. You can really kill off a number of them rather quickly.
• I miss hearing the phonetic name of a character when typing on a touch screen. People have told me this is not available in Android so I am hoping TalkBack implements it.
• This may be just my limited impressions thus far but I think the web and responsiveness of apps is faster on Android. For example, I brought up a podcast inside of iBlink Radio and it was playing extremely fast! Again, I am not sure I am even right on this but it sure feels like it.

I will limit my list to these impressions thus far. Again, these could change at any point and I will blog about them if they do. Remember, these are impressions as I feel about them at the time of the post. I will eventually give you an overall impression but I am wisely reserving judgment on all of this until I am much further down the road. It may even be months before I determine a conclusion. Time will tell.

I am hoping that if any of you have any comments on what has been written here that you might be willing to comment on the posts as they appear. I would love to get a discussion going on all of these topics for the benefit of everyone.

Stay tuned for more findings as I continue on with my Android experience.

So, what did I purchase? I have obtained the current generation of the Nexus 7 (32 GB version). I got it from a wonderful friend who will soon be upgrading to the new generation of Nexus 7 from Google so it worked out well for the both of us. I have to get up to speed rather quickly as I will be testing in-house Android applications here at the University for Accessibility.

So, as the first part of this journey I went hunting for resources and documentation on Android Accessibility. If you are new to Android then you may find as I did that locating resources on manuals and documentation wasn’t an easy experience. For those that are visiting to learn more about Android Accessibility I will include links to posts of the most current documentation I have found. As a close friend explained, “Documentation, or lack thereof, is certainly not Google’s strength when it comes to Android”.

The first thing I did was to sign up to the Eyes-Free Email List. This by far will probably be the best resource there is for Android Accessibility currently. There are lots of people on this list and so far I have found them very friendly and willing to help out. It is a high volume list so be prepared for this if you are interested in reading more from actual users of Android.

I then went hunting for the Nexus 7 manual. This was not an easy task. Google has a Nexus 7 Guide Book which is not what I wanted. I must say that I found it in PDF as well as a Google Play Store EBook version of the guide. I do not have the Nexus 7 in my hands yet so I attempted to read the guide book on my iPhone 5. I will have more to say about the purchasing process of the Guide Book in a minute. I found that reading this book on the iPhone was a challenging prospect with the Google Play Books application. It seems that it is a hit or miss on accessibility of the reading experience on the iPhone. For example, I could read the book Treasure Island just fine using the Google Play books app but not this Guide Book.

Purchasing the Guide Book was a bit frustrating. It seems that you can buy apps on the Google Play Store without putting in your credit card but you can’t do this with free books. I personally found it easier to go to the Google Wallet site and put in my details there rather than using the interface inside of the Google Play Store. Once I supplied it with a credit card it let me purchase the free book.

I finally did find the actual Android Accessibility portions of the Nexus 7 manual. Google needs to make this a far easier process for locating this manual. The geekiness of Google is showing here in its approach to documentation.

I then took a look at the Android Access web site. I think it will be a useful resource for me as a newbie to Android but I noticed that content hasn’t been updated since November 10, 2011 (this is looking at the latest app submission). I certainly hope that this site comes back to life. This is similar to the wonderful Applevis web site that iOS users have access to. I am starting to see a trend that resources may be much fewer for the Android platform as far as application directories, documentation and podcasts are concerned.

The next site I looked at was Ana’s Accessible Android Blog. This site appears to not have been updated in quite a while as well but I will keep it handy as a valuable resource for me. At this point, everything is new.

I then started looking at podcasts. The first one I turned to by reputation alone is the That Android Show. This is done by a number of Serotek members and is a part of the Serotalk Podcast Network (SPN). They did close to a two and a half hour presentation all about the Nexus 7. I am personally starting here as my jumping off point. I did try to use links on this episode of the podcast and found that the accessibility resources they pointed to are no longer valid. My guess is that Google tends to move these things around so it is a hit or miss on what links will or won’t work. This goes back to my statement earlier on Google’s lack of focus on documentation (at least as it relates to locating it anyway).

I then knew that Robert Carter has done some podcasts about Android so I turned to his web site The Tech Doctor Blog and Podcast. The first and most recent podcast is entitled Personality, Android and iOS. I listened to this a few weeks ago and I must say I found it fascinating. The wide varying opinions on this one alone were truly eye-opening and gave me the first real non-biased viewpoint into Android Accessibility I have heard. Kudos to the group for putting this one together. Robert Carter then did a three part series on Android Accessibility. The links to these podcasts are: Android Accessibility Part One, Android Accessibility Part Two and Android Accessibility Part Three. Robert and team put together terrific podcasts so these I feel are a strong winner when it comes to Android Accessibility resources.

Mike Arrigo has submitted a podcast to the Blind Geek Zone web site entitled android jellybean demonstration. This is another extensive look at Android Accessibility.

This is what I have gathered thus far and I am eagerly waiting for the Nexus 7 to arrive.

I will be blogging my experience with Android as I get the device. If you want to follow my posts only about Android then use http://www.jeffbishop.com/android. These posts will also appear directly on the main blog of my site.

I am looking for lots of tips on Android Nexus 7 setup, accessible applications and much more. Please feel free to comment here with any suggestions you might have. I would sincerely appreciate it as well as I am sure others would as well.

Let the Android journey begin!