Question

I’ve used the Google UserRowView class as a template of how to override dispatchAccessibilityEvent() in order to have TalkBack speak a custom message:

public class UserRowView extends LinearLayout {
                .
                .
  public void setText(String text) 
      _message = text;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean dispatchPopulateAccessibilityEvent(AccessibilityEvent accessEvent) {
      Context ctx = this.getContext();
      accessEvent.setClassName(getClass().getName());
      accessEvent.setPackageName(ctx.getPackageName());
      accessEvent.getText().clear();
      accessEvent.getText().add(_message);
      return true;
  }

The list item layout is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:minHeight="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
android:background="@color/all_white">
<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/catalog_entry_image"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:src="@drawable/member_active" />
<com.topiatechnology.skoot.android.util.UserRowView
    android:id="@+id/catalog_entry_user_row_view"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="0dip"
    android:layout_weight="1"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"
    >
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/catalog_entry_name_text"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/catalog_entry_size_text"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    />
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/catalog_entry_date_text"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
    <ProgressBar
        style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleHorizontal" 
        android:layout_width="200dip" 
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/catalog_entry_progress_bar"
        android:visibility="gone"
    />
</com.topiatechnology.skoot.android.util.UserRowView>
</LinearLayout>

I set the text in my getView() method in the ListView’s adapter.

The problem is that TalkBack does not change the text it speaks when a list item is focused on.

For the layout above, the text of the three TextViews is spoken while I want the text I set to be spoken. How can I make this happen?

Answer 1

Use View.setContentDescription() to set a content description on the layout containing the views that you don’t want read aloud. TalkBack will read the content description and ignore the text of the child views.

. . .

public void setText(String text) 
    _message = text;
    setContentDescription(_message);
}

In general, setting the AccessibilityEvent text to control feedback from focus and selection is no longer recommended.