Accessibility: Missing descriptions on astronomical icons and focus order fixes

[AnaFerreira015]

Hi! I’m Ana Ferreira, a Master's student in Computer Science.

As part of my research on mobile accessibility, I am analyzing open-source Android applications to help identify and correct accessibility barriers so users can utilize assistive technologies (like TalkBack) more effectively.

I’ve been exploring Suntimes Widget and identified several accessibility issues on the Widget Configuration and Main Detail screens, so I wanted to propose a fix.

1. The Issue

On the Main Display and Widget views, several informative icons (representing the sun, moon phases, and direction indicators) present the following behavior:

• Current behavior: These icons lack descriptive text labels (content descriptions). TalkBack either skips them or announces them as "Unlabelled", violating WCAG 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).
• Impact: Since these icons convey critical information (e.g., distinguishing between sunrise and sunset times), blind users cannot interpret the astronomical data provided by the widget.

2. Proposed Solution

To fix this, I suggest adding an android:contentDescription to all informative ImageView and ImageButton components in the layout XML.

Code snippet / XML suggestion:

<ImageView
    ...
    android:contentDescription="@string/desc_sunrise_icon" />

3. Additional fixes (Need your input)

I have identified 5 other accessibility improvements for Suntimes Widget.

To avoid spamming your notification feed, how would you prefer I submit these?

• Option A: List them all here in this issue (I can update the comment below).
• Option B: Open separate issues for each specific problem.

Please let me know your preference, and I will proceed accordingly.

Best regards,

[forrestguice]

Hi. I appreciate the review.
Suntimes supports TalkBack but its been several years since I've tested it.

how would you prefer I submit these?

I think either way is fine, but lets start by listing problems here, and then promoting them to issues if necessary.

I suggest adding an android:contentDescription to all informative ImageView and ImageButton components

I've reviewed this recently and fixed a handful of issues. I didn't find many problems in the xml though. Instead there are places where the icon is changed at runtime but the contentDescription is neglected. The moonrise/moonset icons were missing descriptions for this reason.