More accessibility features in Android 1.6

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see — tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.

The most recent release of Android 1.6, a.k.a. Donut, introduces accessibility features designed to make Android apps more widely usable by blind and low-vision users. In brief, Android 1.6 includes a built-in screenreader and text-to-speech (TTS) engine which make it possible to use most Android applications, as well as all of Android's default UI, when not looking at the screen.

Android-powered devices with Android 1.6 and future software versions will include the following accessibility enhancements:

• Text-to-Speech (TTS) is now bundled with the Android platform. The platform comes with voices for English (U.S. and U.K.), French, Italian, Spanish and German.
• A standardized Text To Speech API is part of the Android SDK, and this enables developers to create high-quality talking applications.
• Starting with Android 1.6, the Android platform includes a set of easy to use accessibility APIs that make it possible to create accessibility aids such as screenreaders for the blind.
• Application authors can easily ensure that their applications remain usable by blind and visually impaired users by ensuring that all parts of the user interface are reachable via the trackball; and all image controls have associated textual metadata.
• Starting with Android 1.6, the Android platform comes with applications that provide spoken, auditory (non-speech sounds) and haptic (vibration) feedback. Named TalkBack, SoundBack and KickBack, these applications are available via the Settings > Accessibility menu.
• In addition, project Eyes-Free (which includes accessibility tools such as TalkBack) provides several UI enhancements for using touch-screen input. Many of these innovations are available via Android Market and are already being heavily used. We believe these eyes-free tools will serve our users with special needs as well.

You can turn on the accessibility features by going to Settings --> Accessibility and checking the box "Accessibility". While the web browser and browser-based applications do not yet "talk" using these enhancements, we're working on them for upcoming releases. Check out this Google Open Source Blog post for more details, and stay tuned to the eyes-free channel on YouTube for step-by-step demonstrations on configuring and using accessibility support on Android.

Manage your tasks with Google

People use all kinds of tools to help them get stuff done — paper to-do lists, messages with a certain label or stars in Gmail, notes in Google Calendar, a couple different iGoogle gadgets and so on. Late last year, we added a lightweight way to help you keep track of what you need to do in Gmail Labs — tasks.

Since then, it's graduated from Labs, and you can manage your tasks not only in Gmail, but also in Google Calendar, iGoogle and from your mobile phone (by going to gmail.com/tasks from your phone's browser). Your task list stays up to date no matter how you access it — so for example, if you create a task with a due date on your mobile device, the next time you consult your Google Calendar you'll see that task on your calendar for that day.



Starting today, there's a full-screen version of the Tasks gadget for iGoogle. Click on the icon in the top-right corner and you'll be able to see and organize all your tasks at once.

For those of you who are already familiar with tasks, here are some power tips to help make you more productive:

• When you have completed a task and no longer want it to appear on your list, click "Clear completed" in the actions menu. You can review your completed tasks later by clicking "View completed tasks." Clearing completed tasks is different from deleting them — if you delete a task, it's gone for good and you'll no longer see it anywhere in tasks.
• In the default "My order" view, press tab to indent a task you're editing, making it a sub-task of the one above. Press shift + tab to reverse this operation.
• Try ctrl + up/down (⌘ + up/down on a Mac) to move the task you're editing up and down the list. Move a task that has sub-tasks, and they'll come along with it.
• Ctrl + up/down also works in sort by date view, where it will alter the task's due date by one day. You can use this to quickly plan out your week's activities or postpone a task for another day.
• Press shift + enter to edit the details of a task, including its notes and due date. You can also use this view to move your task to another list.

We have more features in the pipeline, so if you're interested in hearing the latest on tasks, follow us on Twitter.

Posted by David Barrett-Kahn, Software Engineer, Tasks team

Self-improving results now in the Google Search Appliance

The Google Search Appliance (GSA) is getting an update today, with a bunch of new features aimed at making enterprise search easier for everyone inside a company. One of our favorites, the Self-learning Scorer, learns from employees' searches to tune itself and improve over time. If employees repeatedly choose, say, the fourth result for a given query the GSA will learn that's probably the most relevant one and bring it up to the top the next time the query is searched for. Over time, the GSA auto-tunes, serving up better and better internal search results without any extra administrative work. You can read more about the Self-learning Scorer and check out the GSA's other new features in our post on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Posted by Sibabrata Ray and Liviu Panait, Engineers, Google Enterprise Search team