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I am revisiting an issue where the behaviour of our app on an Amazon Kindle does not work as expected. When using VoiceOver on an Android device it works correctly on version 5.1, 6.0, 7.0, 9.0 and 10. However, on a Kindle Fire 7 (7th generation) running Fire OS 5.6.7.0 the interaction with VoiceOver is a poor experience.

To rule out our app I have tested using the sample code from https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-forms-samples/tree/master/Navigation/MasterDetailPage. This displays the same issue which is that the MasterDetailPage hamburger menu is unusable when VoiceView is enabled. On any Android device I can tap on any of the menu options and the screen reader highlight will be displayed correctly.

On the Kindle if you are lucky you might get a random element focused, and then drag the highlight, but this is not consistent.

So does Xamarin Forms MasterDetailPage work with Kindle VoiceView? I have tested from 4.1.0sr5 to 4.8.0 with no obvious change. If the answer is that it doesn't work then at least I know to give up trying.

Ian Smith
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  • Search for "AUDIO" on following page : https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tablets/fire-os-7.html – jdweng Aug 25 '20 at 15:00
  • That link is for Fire OS 7. As stated I am using Fire OS 5.6.7.0 which is based on Lollipop. I'm not sure I understand the relevance for VoiceOver, - could you provide a bit more insight? – Ian Smith Aug 25 '20 at 15:08
  • The voice is AUDIO. So you are having an AUDIO issue where the audio is clear on one device and not clear on another. – jdweng Aug 25 '20 at 15:20
  • I think you might be misunderstanding the issue. This is not specifically an audio issue, but an issue with the onscreen accessibility reader where a highlight is placed on the element of interest in addition to the voice being read out. The highlight is never placed reliably even before audio. If I use the reference accessibility example , which also doesn't use the MediaSource that your link refers to either, then that works with the Kindle's VoiceView as expected. If that sample didn't work then I would agree with you. However, it does seem to be tied to MasterDetailPage. – Ian Smith Aug 25 '20 at 15:47
  • Seems to be compatibility issues with both Fire and Android with lots of different versions of hardware and software being compatible with all combinations. See : https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tablets/fire-os-7.html#targeting-your-app-for-fire-os-7-devices – jdweng Aug 25 '20 at 16:02
  • If the highlight is displayed correctly then audio is heard every time. So this is not an audio issue, but an issue with the Kindle VoiceView not seeing the accessibility tags of elements within a MasterDetailPage. Even when putting AutomationProperties.SetIsInAccessibleTree(masterPageItems, true); around the menu list construction and focus. – Ian Smith Aug 25 '20 at 16:03
  • Put isn't that a scaling issue with image position on screen? Different screens have different resolution and size. And the software has to work properly with all screen sizes and resolutions. – jdweng Aug 25 '20 at 16:30

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So the main issue is that VoiceView navigation is not intuitive. You cannot tap on elements but you need to swipe left and swipe right to select whole words. I'm guessing this was based on the ebook controls and was kept consistent with the Fire.

So to navigate the menu you have to tap and then swipe left to navigate up and swipe right to navigate down.

There is still a bug with the MasterDetailPage in that when the Master page is shown the hamburger has focus, but swiping left moves up to the toolbar and swiping right goes down to the back button. That might be possible to work around by unselecting the icon after it has been pressed - something to look at.

For a really good example of how painful VoiceView is do the following

  1. Start the Silk Browser
  2. Do a search so that the browser has a list of pages to click
  3. Enable VoiceView
  4. Attempt to select a link.

Once VoiceView is enabled the only way is to swipe left/right every linked element on the page which is not pleasant at all.

Ian Smith
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