Now I have an Android. Ho ho ho.
Dec. 5th, 2014 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiAs some of you know, part of my day job involves accessibility*. And as became clear at a recent conference, Android devices are finally approaching a level of accessibility (especially for blind/visually impaired users and users with physical disabilities) that makes it viable (noting that iOS remains ahead of the curve here; Windows is still painfully barely in the game).
As a result, I now possess a 7" Galaxy Tab 4. As with my iPad, I'm planning on using it for enough day-to-day stuff to get comfortable enough with the OS to be able to take a deep dive into how it works for accessibility, so will also be using it as a general tablet. But other than my "smart" phone (a Kyocera Rise which is literally the worst thing I've ever owned, and is bad enough to have nearly soured me on Android usage in general), I don't have a huge amount of experience with the Android ecosystem. So for those of you who use Android, what works well for you? What are the essential apps? What apps don't exist on iOS that I need to know about? What do you wish you knew when you got your device? I'm still very much getting my sea legs here. The interface is just enough like what I'm familiar with to make the differences more jarring and confusing, but that's a day-one (or two, technically) learning curve.
The goal here is to be able to live in both ecosystems, both for day-to-day, and for understanding how they handle accessibility. I'm more looking for advice on the former front (since I have plenty of resources for the latter).
*as a former co-worker once pointed out, accessibility is often the thing that gets done by the person who cares about it, since too few organizations have the resources in willingness to treat it seriously. That's another rant, and I'm happy to be working in one that actually is making moves
As a result, I now possess a 7" Galaxy Tab 4. As with my iPad, I'm planning on using it for enough day-to-day stuff to get comfortable enough with the OS to be able to take a deep dive into how it works for accessibility, so will also be using it as a general tablet. But other than my "smart" phone (a Kyocera Rise which is literally the worst thing I've ever owned, and is bad enough to have nearly soured me on Android usage in general), I don't have a huge amount of experience with the Android ecosystem. So for those of you who use Android, what works well for you? What are the essential apps? What apps don't exist on iOS that I need to know about? What do you wish you knew when you got your device? I'm still very much getting my sea legs here. The interface is just enough like what I'm familiar with to make the differences more jarring and confusing, but that's a day-one (or two, technically) learning curve.
The goal here is to be able to live in both ecosystems, both for day-to-day, and for understanding how they handle accessibility. I'm more looking for advice on the former front (since I have plenty of resources for the latter).
*as a former co-worker once pointed out, accessibility is often the thing that gets done by the person who cares about it, since too few organizations have the resources in willingness to treat it seriously. That's another rant, and I'm happy to be working in one that actually is making moves