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Rajat Talesra
Rajat Talesra

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Accessibility Scanner in Android

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This post is for android developers and anyone who is interested in mobile app development.

What is Accessibility Scanner?

Accessibility Scanner is an app/service in android which scans through screens and provide accessibility based suggestions like:

  • increasing the size of all clickable items - so that people with confined motor skills can click on items easily,
  • increasing foreground:background color contrast or text size so that people with color-blindness or low vision can read content easily, etc.

This service is useful for developers and testers and not for users.

Using Accessibility Scanner

  1. Open Google Play Store
  2. Download/Install Accessibility Scanner app
  3. Open Settings and search Accessibility Scanner
  4. Click on Use Accessibility Scanner -> Allow
  5. You will notice a blue colored floating button with tick/check icon.
  6. Now on any screen inside the app click on the floating button to take snapshot.
  7. You will notice that the scanner scans the screen and gives suggestion/errors if any.

Developer Tips

Color Contrast

  • for large text(14sp bold or 18sp regular) foreground:background ratio should be >= 3 : 1
  • for small text foreground:background ratio should be >= 4.5 : 1

Touch Targets

  • Minimum size for any clickable item — 48dp x 48dp (including padding)

  • Minimum gap between two clickable items - 8dp

Content Labels

  • for clickable images, floating action buttons, etc. there should be meaningful content description.

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The main goal of this post was to understand how to use Accessibility Scanner in android. Feel free to suggest changes or ask questions in comments.

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