Edit: First time posting from a desktop. Hope I got the formatting right.

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Hey there, I'm the idiot who posted the Talkback vs Voiceover thread a while ago. I'm back with more Android silliness. Don't worry, I'm not here to thump my phone at you. iOS 13 nullified most of what I said anyway and has left Talkback looking rather stale. To be clear, I still think that it's decent and it works quite well. It's just that Voiceover is better. This time I'm curious about one of Android's more niche accessibility services: Brailleback.

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TL;DR hey this isn't so bad... oh... Ohhhh

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I've only had occasional tries at Braille on Android. Now that I have my own display, I can give it a proper go and see what Brailleback is really like.

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I have a Vispero Focus 40 Blu 5th generation. The original pairing process was okay. I set the display to its secondary Bluetooth connection and then connected it up to my phone. I quite like my Samsung Galaxy s9+. It's powerful, looks good, has great battery life, and even squeezes in our old friend, Jack. It needed a pairing code, "0000". It's been a while since any Bluetooth devices I own have needed any sort of authentication. Brailleback isn't part of the Android Accessibility Suite so I downloaded it quickly from the Play Store. It doesn't appear in your app drawer and must be accessed through the Accessibility menu in the settings app.

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At first glance, the menu seemed incredibly Spartan. It also didn't support dark mode, so I was momentarily blinded when my dark display shifted into Google's MD2 "sun" UI. I was presented with a display status, list of keyboard commands, open-source licenses, and developer options.

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The display had apparently failed to activate. I remember reading in the display's manual that the screen must be locked for it to connect properly so I did that. Brailleback played a tone seconds after the screen went dark and then everything was good. I could immediately hear the pins on the display moving up and down as I moved around various elements on the lockscreen.

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Once I got back in, I noticed I could also change the Braille language. I switched the literary table over to UEB Grade 2 and the computer Braille table to US English.

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Braille translation is pretty good. It's fast and works on the fly, changing the text that appears as you Braille out the full word. G-chord will switch you between literary and computer Braille and that's that. Braille output is also quick and accurate. "It's" becomes "x's" when typing in UEB, just like NVDA. Maybe those single-letter indicators with extra punctuation are hard for screen readers? I might be remembering my short-form rules wrong.

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Unfortunately, that's where the problems start. Braille input is good only once you enable the Braille hardware keyboard input. It's not good enough to download an entire accessibility service. Fortunately, you can switch keyboards on the fly with a button in the navigation bar, at least on Samsung. Unfortunately, if you also have zooming enabled the input switching button will be covered up by the zoom button. So that kind of sucks. The Braille hardware keyboard can display a software keyboard to type if you can't switch to something useful like gboard but it's incredibly basic with no speech-to-text for quick input.

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Braille translation is decent. However, device control is very, very basic. Voiceover, NVDA, and JAWS all have a mountain of commands for the hardware keys on various Braille displays. Android does make use of the navigation and panning rockers on the Focus but it's for moving through elements procedurally and panning the Braille display, respectively. You get some basic document navigation and editing. You can't move all the way to the top or bottom with just a single command. Moving through elements also fails if the interface hasn't been built properly. It's very easy to open the multitasking menu. Navigating it is, unfortunately impossible. Maybe some other Android hardware vendor did a better job here. You can use the cursor router keys to activate buttons but Brailleback makes little attempt at telling you that they are buttons. It just puts the button label on the display with nothing to distinguish it from normal text. App names on the homescreen are separated by a single space on the Braille cells. so, using an Android phone with Braille and no speech output is out of the question if you have no sight. You also get some basic web navigation commands for such things as moving from one list or heading to another. Yay.

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Okay, so navigation kind of sucks but at least input and output are good. So you could use it to type documents and read text well enough.

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But then I left my Braille display alone for a few days. My battery was draining faster than usual. Then my phone alerted me about background power usage and app crashes.

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It was Brailleback. Today was the worst day. When I take my phone off the charger at around 7 or 8 AM I can usually go until early evening without charging. Even then I'll still have 15 or 20 percent left. Today I got down to 7 by late afternoon. Brailleback also kept making the disconnect sound at various times throughout the day. Upon checking battery usage I found out the Brailleback ate up almost a third of my battery. I didn't even touch my Braille display all day. This is completely unacceptable. I don't see a point to going on with battery drain this bad. My phone is no slouch when it comes to battery life. It's big and I don't use it for anything particularly intensive. It should not be this bad. Full stop. This is a deal breaker. I'm not buying a battery case.

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You may be wondering about other navigation commands. I glossed over them but that's about the only ones there are. It's pitiful. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of what you would find on just about every other screen reader. Voiceover in particular, at least on Mac OS, eats Brailleback for breakfast in terms of available commands. With redundant keystrokes for all sorts of navigation accessible through either the Perkins keyboard or the hardware navigation keys, Brailleback looks pathetic. It really should pack its bags and go home. Given Google's track record of "meh" accessibility I doubt this will change any time soon.

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How does it compare to Braille on iOS? I don't know. I'm currently saving up for an iPhone. If Braille support on Mac is anything to go by then the iPhone should also be lightyears ahead of Brailleback on Android.

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Oh right, you also can't Braille on the screen like you can with iOS. Get a physical Braille keyboard or get the hell out... or just get an iPhone if you want Braille.