Disable Android Navigation Buttons for Disabled Children

Question

Ported to Android some interactive iOS applications designed to teach young children with learning disabilities. We are faced with a serious usability problem because we cannot understand how to disable the physical or on-screen navigation buttons (home and recent applications).

Before someone says, “You don’t want to do this,” we fully understand why you would always want these buttons to be turned on for an able-bodied adult, but these children represent a unique set of accessibility issues. In particular:

• Their precise motor control may be poor - they may inadvertently touch another area of ​​the screen in the area they intend to, or accidentally use more than one finger at a time.
• They may have weak muscle tone and poor physical strength - for example, the lower part of the palm of their hand may fall and touch the screen, just trying to use your finger.
• They fight for achievement and easily become frustrated or destructive if they fail.

For example, a typical 5-year-old child with Down syndrome accidentally drops out of the application that they use as a result of an inadvertent touch of the Home button: when this happens repeatedly, and the adult teacher or parent must return back to the application for them repeatedly, the child loses interest and focused. Another typical scenario is a small child with autism, who may be completely exhausted and physically restrained if this happens while using his favorite application. In addition, many children with disabilities will try to push any other button that they can find in search of an answer. In any of these situations, a potentially valuable educational session may have to be completely abandoned.

We know SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION and SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LOW_PROFILE, but this only reduces the visibility of the on-screen buttons until the child touches any other part of the screen and then they reappear in such a way that it will be more distracting than if they were visible all the time.

IOS has a “Managed Access” feature that solves this problem trivially. Can we imitate something like this on Android?

Answer 1

IOS has a “Managed Access” feature that solves this problem trivially.

Access to the manual, apparently, is the device’s setup, and not something that developers can turn on unilaterally, thank God.

Can we imitate something like this on Android?

There are no similar device settings in the Android stock.

You can download the Android source code, change it as you see fit, collect the results in a ROM modem and install this mod on devices as you wish.

Or, perhaps you can work with a device manufacturer to create tablets designed for children to see if they have added these features to their devices or will be willing to work with you to add that opportunity to a future iteration of their device.