In order to provide better support for blind users, we maintain a fork of the open source TalkBack app fixing serious issues with it, modernizing it and making the builds reproducible. One of the goals of making our own Setup Wizard has also been integrating TalkBack support.

Google unfortunately doesn't publish the source code for each stable release of TalkBack as they do for Android itself. The open source release of the app lags significantly behind. It also has a bunch of missing and broken features. We plan to gradually improve this situation.

In order to use GrapheneOS, blind users need to successfully install the OS and set up the device to be usable with a screen reader. This is an area we've been thinking about and working on improving for a while. Our new Setup Wizard provides a better base for integrating this.

The first barrier to someone using GrapheneOS without sight is installing the OS. We've done what we can to make our web installer as accessible as possible (https://grapheneos.org/install/web). However, users need to interact with the device's firmware interface which the user can see.

Due to the inaccessible firmware user interface, it's difficult to perform the installation correctly and safety, particularly confirming unlocking and then confirming locking. Confirming the verified boot key matches after installing/locking would require OCR on another device.

The next issue is the Android Open Source Project no longer includes a text-to-speech app. Pico TTS used to be included in AOSP but was not what Google Mobile Services devices use. It was quite primitive, awful to use and AOSP removed it after security issues were found.

We've wanted to include a text-to-speech app and bundle a language pack to have it working out-of-the-box for a long time. We could then add a shortcut for enabling TalkBack in our new Setup Wizard to make things accessible from the start of the post-install setup process.

To provide what we need, the TTS app needs to be built into the OS, enabled and set up to work by default without configuration. It doesn't do any good if you need to connect to a network and download a language pack. It also needs to work Before First Unlock via Direct Boot.

Since it will be enabled by default, security is quite relevant. It shouldn't be a bunch of C++ code without a modern coding style, use of sanitizers, decent tests, etc. It needs to be actively developed and properly maintained. This is why Pico TTS had to be removed from AOSP.

GrapheneOS is intended to be a drop-in replacement for the Android Open Source Project usable by companies to make all kinds of products. Due to this, we avoid non-commercial usage licenses. Lots of the language packs for TTS implementations have non-commercial usage licenses.

We also avoid including GPLv3 code in the base OS since it would add restrictions on how it can be used. We do add new GPLv2 licensed code. This doesn't mean we have issues with using GPLv3 code or making forks of GPLv3 projects, we just don't bundle it within GrapheneOS itself.

Neither eSpeak NG or RHVoice meets our security expectations (piles of problematic C and C++ code) and both have licensing issues. Both were previously also missing Direct Boot support to function Before First Unlock, but we requested it from both and eSpeak NG implemented it.

There were previously no good options available. Things have changed and there are multiple open source text-to-speech implementations which could be turned into a suitable Android app and integrated into the OS. This involves significant work and we haven't gotten to this yet.

We have hundreds of planned features. We've been working on some features for months or even years. We try to focus on features which would provide the most overall benefit to our users with a focus on improving privacy, security, compatibility and usability. It's subjective.

For example, built-in support for network location was a feature we wanted to integrate for years. Last year, we made it a top priority, and assigned a developer to solely work on it, so it got done. This is still being worked on to add cellular fallback and full offline support.