Turning on the Accessibility Menu gives you a sizeable on-screen menu that you use to control your phone, including gestures, navigation, and hardware buttons. You can use one or more switches or a keyboard to control your phone rather than using the touch screen with Switch Access. If there’s text on the screen, Talkback will read it to you; for messages, it will also tell you the day and time they were sent. It will even tell you when your phone’s screen turns off. When you reactivate the screen, it will read out the time. The first time you turn on Talkback, a tutorial appears that walks you through the features. Talkback also has several gestures you can use to navigate your smartphone and adjust volume and other settings. For example, Tap on the Wi-Fi icon to verify that you’re connected and the battery icon to find out how much juice you have left. If you don’t need everything to be read out to you all the time, you can enable Select to Speak, which reads to you on request. Select to Speak has an icon; tap it first, and then tap or drag your finger to another item to get spoken feedback. Newer versions of Android include a built-in braille keyboard as part of TalkBack. The on-screen keyboard has a 6-key layout that is intuitive for users familiar with braille. To enable the braille keyboard, open TalkBack and go to TalkBack settings > Braille keyboard > Set up braille keyboard. In addition to size, you can also increase the contrast between the font and the background. This setting can’t be adjusted; it’s either on or off. You can also zoom temporarily by tapping the screen three times and holding your finger down on the third tap. Once you lift your finger, your screen will zoom back out. Note that you can’t zoom in on the stock keyboard or navigation bar.
