Apps and The web
To begin, I want to give you an idea of my general usage of my phone. I am that odd individual, who has different devices for different tasks.
Web browsers
I predominantly use safari on my iOS and Mac devices. However, I have used Chrome in a variety of situations on my Mac but I have never ventured with other browsers on iOS. The great thing about Android, is you can specifically assisgn any browser as your default whereas I have not found a way to do that on iOS as yet. I hope this will come in as it is possible on apple macs.
I do have iCloud Keychain switched on across my apple devices so I don’t have to remember all of my passwords. This was something I hoped would work well on android to. With the ability to sync passwords with Google chrome and syncing that across platforms has made it much easier to log into a variety of apps and websites on android.
Being security conscious, I often allow the system to create a strong password for me as we all know how easy it is to be hacked nowadays.
I talk through how I transferred my iCloud passwords across to my Samsung device in my first blog.
Chrome was my first choice for a web browser and I quickly installed it to the Samsung S22. It made signing into a variety of websites much easier. Even signing into mail apps, my amazon apps, the entire process was super easy. The only one I had an issue with, and again, this was actually human error, was signing into my Apple Music app. Apparently, I didn’t know my password and had to reset.
Typing passwords
If you wanted to use a saved password, generally there was a fill password button but I did find this very hit and miss where it was located on the screen. On iOS, the fill password is where the suggestions usually pop up above the keyboard and sometimes that seemed to happen, but it was certainly not consistent.
The typing process, once I had enabled passwords to be spoken was much better, although some keyboards, I had issues inputting the wrong letter. I’m not even sure why but often I would get an O instead of an I, etc.
Biggest piece of advice, practice relentlessly with the keyboard. I tried to use the braille input but this wasn’t always successful either. This is not perfect on iOS either so both platforms could do with improving.
Filling forms and Navigating websites
Besides the typing aspect, the ability to fill forms is as simple as it is on iOS. One of the things I really liked were the way you could select a date. The scrolling ability on android feels much more intuitive. Instead of using a finger to constantly swipe up incrementally on a date picker wheel, you can scroll to a much more generalised area until you get close to your desired selection and then flick left or right to find the exact date.
The Check boxes and radio buttons give you a detailed whether they are clicked or selected and the way this is done feels much more efficient than iOS.
Navigating websites is rudimentary. The controls selector, [rotor on iOS], is basic. You have headings, links, text boxes, words, characters, but I do feel more could be added or at least have the ability to customise what you have within the controls selections in each app.
Apps and accessibility
In my experience, the apps I downloaded were surprisingly accessible with talkBack. On some occasions, images would be read and did not always flow as nicely as iOS apps but there was not an app I couldn’t use. I will list the ones I did use below just to give you an idea of what I trialled.
- Amazon Alexa
- Amazon Kindle
- Audible
- Apple Music
- Spotify
- Netflix
- Messenger
- Lazarillo
- NVision
- Google Play Store
- Samsung Galaxy store
- Chrome
- Ring
- Youtube
Some apps were slightly more clunky on the Samsung, Facebook gave me a headache. If you have ever used Facebook on the web, you will know the pain I am talking about. What I did like, a long press, so a double tap and hold, would often bring up a menu as did the three finger single tap where actions were coded.
Conclusion
I was much more impressed than I had expected to be regarding the levels of accessibility. However, some things still felt like a chore and I was not convinced I could completely step away from an iPhone without giving myself a huge headache. But, Talkback and the apparent awareness from developers has certainly come a long way. I did find it very interesting that although whatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are all by the same company, Facebook was the app I hated the most. The other two were fine and Facebook Messenger had its positives. But I will go into that more in another post.
I do hope you are finding this series helpful and feel free to share or comment.