Android Smells

Not descriptive UI

Context

UI

Affects

Accessibility,User Conformity,User Experience

Problem

For visually or otherwise physically impaired people it is hard to navigate the app and keep track what is shown. To help these people Android porived TalkBack, an app that reads the contents out.

So every UI element should have content description what it is for. Several elements as labels, and text fields do have this intentionally, but others have not:

If these elements have not set android:contentDescription in the XML (or via setContentDescription()), then it is considered a smell.

Refactorings

Set content description

Resolves

Accessibility,User Conformity,User Experience

Affects

Solution

Use the XML attribute android:contentDescription or set it by element.setContentDescription().

Links

Related