Accessibility support for our Android PDF viewer

Nutrient Android SDK has a number of accessibility features to aide ease of access in our SDK.

Keyboard navigation

Tab-based navigation is possible throughout the user interface. You can navigate the pages and buttons using the tab key, arrow keys, and enter key. Keyboard navigation works in tandem with TalkBack. You can read more about this feature in our How We Improved Keyboard Navigation in Our Android SDK blog post.

Screen reader

Text synthesis can be achieved using the Android Text-To-Speech engine, android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech, and integrated into a PDF activity by extending PdfActivity. For an in-depth guide on how to do this, check out our How to Build a Screen Reader blog post.

Information showing how to implement a screen reader can be found in the Screen Reader example from our Android Catalog app.

TalkBack

TalkBack can be enabled in the Android settings after installing the Android Accessibility Suite. Once installed and enabled, navigating the Nutrient UI via the keyboard or touch will be accompanied by a descriptive voice explaining each button in focus.

Dark mode

Aside from the high-contrast mode already available in Android, the Nutrient UI can also be themed to provide an easier viewing experience for the vision impaired. See the guide on customizing appearance for information on how to do this. We also have a Dark Theme example in our Catalog app.

Reader View

A simplified view designed to make reading PDFs easier can be enabled using the enableReaderView setting, which is part of the PdfActivityConfiguration.

For more information, see our dedicated guide on enabling reader view.