The Five Hidden Options in Android Accessibility Settings That You Should Know

Whether you own Samsung Galaxy Android or Google Nexus or LG smartphone you will find that there is a number of accessibility options there for people who are hard at hearing things or have visual vision difficulty or any other such condition that makes the regular operation of Android a bit difficult. If you ever think of noticing the settings more attentively you will find five such hidden options or features that can be of some help to you.

As accessibility options come in all shapes and sizes and many are unique to the particular device or Android version that you have. Also, some have more options than others. There are some stock Android accessibility settings you’ll find everywhere, like TalkBack, font size, captions and ”touch and hold” delay time settings, but there are lots more, some that are really cool like using your LED flash as a notification LED. So it is always better to take through your particular device’s settings and see which one is useful to you.

1. Magnification Gestures

With Magnification gestures, you can triple-tap to zoom in and triple tap to zoom out again. If you triple tap and hold, you can temporarily magnify your screen and pan around, then just release it to go back to normal. It’s a super useful feature once you start using it.

2. Text-to-Speech

This is the most well known of all accessibility features, and all you need to do is have the Google Text-to-Speech engine enabled and then download the language pack you want. To use Text-to-Speech all you need is to hit the menu button to the saved text to your pocket and let Google read that to you.

3. Color Adjustment

If you have a Samsung and don’t really like the dark background vibe, you can simply go into the accessibility settings and check the box next to Negative Colors. You will now have a white themed TouchWiz interface.

The same thing works on the LG G3 too, where it is called Invert Colors, but as you can see in the topmost image, you might get some pretty color combinations. Likewise, both Samsung and LG’s accessibility options allow you to adjust screen and content colors for your particular visual needs.

4. TalkBack or Explore by Touch

TalkBack is awesome, especially if your eyesight is bad or you’ve forgotten your glasses. You can even use this if your screen has issues, as long as your touchscreen is still responsive. Once you’ve enabled the option, whatever you tap, press or activate will be spoken aloud to you. Explore by Touch is the same thing under a different name. The additional settings for TalkBack are enormous and definitely worth checking out further.

5. Interaction Control

Interaction control appears on Samsung devices either through the accessibility menu or by pressing the Home and the Volume Down buttons. It lets you turn your motion gestures and screen timeout settings on or off, but the coolest part of it is that you can block off specific areas of the screen from responding to touch input, like the status bar or notification shade, for example.

Check your particular device’s accessibility settings to see if you have these features listed under a different name. For example, the LG G3 calls Interaction Controls, ”Touch Control Areas,” so a little bit of exploration is definitely worthwhile. Accessibility options on any device are worth looking into so check them out for yourself because there’s some truly great stuff in there, whether you think you need it or not.