Unfortunately, this morning I woke up to an unhappy surprise when I picked up my phone: Android had disabled full access for Jieshuo. Again. Why does this keep happening? It's possible to get it back on without sighted help, but it's still massively annoying. If the Android customizability is going to count as an advantage for the OS, the customizations you make really do need to stick for more than about 48 hours at a time. If I had had a medical emergency in the middle of the night, and picked up my phone to call for help, I'd have been utterly out of luck. Fiddling to get the screen reader back takes about ten minutes. In an actual life and death emergency, that's way too long to be survivable.

While I did get the screen reader working again, there's just no way Android will ever be my primary device. I need far more reliability from my phone than that. Anyway, on with the blog. Much of today's learnings come from tips from the wonderful Fediverse community; if you're not already part of it, you should be!

First, thanks to @fireborn@dragonscave.space for tipping me off that if I want voice typing and Gemini to work, the solution is to turn off "use accessibility volume" in Jieshuo. By the way, if you're interested in the sad state of modern Linux accessibility, Fireborn runs an excellent blog with an in-progress series on the subject. Not only are the articles excellent and insightful, I'm glad not to be the only one bringing blindness blogging back.

Second, thanks to multiple folks for recommending accessible launchers to me. For those of us new to the Android ecosystem, a launcher is an app that replaces your home screen completely, allowing you to have more features and customization. I wound up going with @J3317@dragonscave.space's recommendation of Nova Launcher, largely because he was first in with it, and Nova Prime did everything I wanted it to. I now have a search similar to spotlight, my home screen is much faster, I have easier access to the alphabetical list of apps, and hold and drag for items on the homescreen works as well as I had hoped. @mcourcel@allovertheplace.ca recommended Ruthless, and it looks just as good, though I didn't try it. Also, @Aryan@dragonscave.space recommended Lawnchair. But as I didn't like the Pixel Launcher, I didn't try it as it seems to be just a fork of the Pixel Launcher with extra features.

I also paired some AirPods with my Pixel, and they work perfectly. No lag, the volume and presses all work, transparency is fine, etc. I'm actually finding the Bluetooth on the Pixel better than the Bluetooth on my iPhone. It copes better with interference, connects quicker, and never drops out.

Now, after four days, I have a snappy screen reader (that Google sometimes randomly disables), working assistant and voice typing, a home screen I like, and notifications and a keyboard that work every bit as well as the Apple defaults. The next step on the journey is to investigate apps. In every case I've tried, apps that are cross-platform are equally accessible on both platforms. The ones I've used extensively so far are Zoom, Reddit, Discord, Outlook, gmail, YouTube, Joplin, Kindle, Youtube Music, and One Drive. However, I use a lot of IOS specific apps that I need to find an alternative for. I'm looking for apps that are as accessible and efficient as the alternatives on apple that they replace. I'm especially searching for:

• an RSS reader that syncs with miniflux
• a navigation app like Voice Vista/the old Microsoft Soundscape
• a reading app like VoiceDream Reader: I want epubs and daisy audio in the same app
• a quick recording app like just press record
• a powerful and accessible podcast app like iCatcher or downcast

The task for the next few days will be foraging through Accessible Android and trying multiple apps in each category, until I find one that has all the functions I need.