Improve the accessibility of your Android apps
Improve the accessibility of your Android apps
Publish Date: 2026-06-04 03:30:00
Source Domain: www.telefonica.com
At Telefónica, we believe that accessibility is a shared responsibility. Our Accessibility Catalog is an open-source initiative designed to help developers create more accessible Android applications. Through collaborations and community contributions, the catalog continues to grow, offering practical examples and best practices for implementing accessibility features.
In a previous post, “Improve your Android accessibility with toggleables we explored how to make custom toggleable components (like Switches and Checkboxes) more accessible. Since then, the catalog has seen exciting new additions, especially around content descriptions and state descriptions—two pillars of accessible UI.
How to use content descriptions effectively
Custom UI and rich visuals are everywhere in modern Android apps: illustrations, icons, charts, status indicators, decorative assets…
However, when accessibility is overlooked, many of these visual elements become invisible or confusing to users who rely on screen readers like TalkBack.
In this article we’ll discuss how to correctly use content descriptions in Android, explaining when to provide them, when not to, and how to adapt them to context. We’ll use real examples implemented in the Accessibility Catalog so you can directly apply these ideas to your own apps.
Before starting
All accessibility tests shown here were performed using TalkBack, Android’s most common screen reader.
The concepts and APIs described are framework‑level, so they apply to any Android accessibility service.
What is a content description?
A content description is alternative textual information that describes a UI element for assistive technologies.
It allows:
- Users of screen readers to understand what an element represents
- Screen readers to convey purpose, context, or action, not just visuals
In Android:
- Views use android:contentDescription
- Compose uses contentDescription or Modifier.semantics {}
But simply adding descriptions everywhere is not…
