Accessibility in Android With Material Design — Code-In Mobile

How can we implement Accessibility in Android?

As part of Material Design Guidelines, Android added help for developers and designers to improve accessibility in Android apps. The topic of accessibility has become very important in web apps, this because indexing in search engines is improved when apps follow accessibility best practices. As this has not been enforced in mobile applications so much, we often forget it is key for inclusion and user experience. Accessibility in Android is very important and we will learn about it in this post.

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Accessibility vs. Usability

Before diving into the details of accessibility in Android, I would like to clarify the distinction between accessibility and usability. Those two terms are usually used interchangeably, but they refer to different things.

• Accessibility: This is concerned with equivalent user experience for people with disabilities. If we implement this correctly, they can interact with tools without problems.
• Usability: Is related to User Experience (UX). This is for all our users, not specifically for users with disabilities. Sadly, not all usability practices are inclusive with users that need accessibility.