Enhanced Accessibility Gestures for Custom Components on Android
Article Summary
Nicolas Mayer Weiler from leboncoin shows why your 'accessible' Android component might still be failing users. Three stepper implementations, wildly different user experiences.
When building custom Android components, basic accessibility compliance isn't enough. This deep dive compares three approaches to making a stepper component work with TalkBack, each with different tradeoffs for navigation complexity and gesture requirements. The article evaluates solutions against Europe's RAAM accessibility standard with 107 criteria.
Key Takeaways
- Basic approach requires 3+ swipes per stepper interaction, problematic for multi-component screens
- Custom actions reduce navigation but require complex three-finger gestures (fails RAAM 11.10)
- Progress semantics enables simple up/down swipes, best UX but conflicts with heading navigation
- LiveRegionMode.Polite announces value changes without requiring user navigation back
Critical Insight
The Progress Stepper approach delivers the smoothest accessible experience by treating the component as a slider, enabling single-swipe value changes while maintaining easy navigation between components.
