Hello AppleVis members,
Has anyone tried entering Safe Mode on your Samsung Galaxy devices and trying to navigate with TalkBack?
That's exactly what I did today, and I was very surprised to find that TalkBack is not available in Safe Mode. I asked a sighted individual to help me turn on TalkBack by going to Settings, then Accessibility, and then TalkBack. However, they were unable to click on TalkBack at all.
Once Safe Mode is exited and I do the same thing, TalkBack can be enabled again. However, this time, the TalkBack shortcut is deactivated; the option that says "shortcut" (or something similar) has been toggled off when entering back into normal mode after trying out Safe Mode.
Has anyone else noticed this, or is this device-dependent or Android version-dependent? I am using One UI 8.5.
Comments
Yeah… 🙁
You’re right. TalkBack isn’t usable in Safe Mode. I also can’t turn TalkBack on once the phone is already in Safe Mode. The good news is I don’t think I’ll need to use Safe Mode very often, but it would be nice if Samsung fixed this because I don’t really see why TalkBack can’t work there. Especially since I’m using Samsung’s own version of TalkBack, so in theory it should.
Also, I don’t want to take this off topic, but I found another thing that doesn’t work properly with TalkBack: the Diagnostics app. Everything else works fine. I was able to test the camera, microphone, speakers, vibration, basically everything. The only thing I wanted to check was the volume buttons because sometimes they don’t seem to respond, although it could just be me. But when I tried that test, it said it couldn’t be done while TalkBack was on. That doesn’t really make much sense to me either.
One more thing, although this one is pretty minor and definitely not a deal breaker. Are you familiar with Now Brief? It has that option where it can read your daily briefing out loud. For some reason, the audio option isn’t available when TalkBack is enabled. Again, that seems a bit odd to me.
Just some feedback from my experience. The Now Brief thing isn’t a big issue for me, but I thought it was worth mentioning since it’s another accessibility limitation I came across.
Curious
Windows has a similar issue, where normally you cannot put your computer into safe mode, and then use a screen reader. However, there's a lovely little registry patch that fixes this issue, allowing you to use your screen reader while in safe mode.
I realize that Android is not based off of Windows, but rather off of Linux. Still, I wonder if there is some kind of patch that would allow for TalkBack to work while in safe mode?
Food for thought. 😇
@Brian
I don’t really know if something like that would be possible with TalkBack. Maybe it would be possible with other Android screen readers instead. I only use TalkBack myself, so I can’t really comment on the others.
It does make me wonder if any other screen readers work in safe mode, or if there’s some kind of similar patch that could make them work. As far as I know, TalkBack doesn’t really support patches like that… or at least I don’t think it does. 😅
Maybe someone with more experience can educate me. 😉