3

I am developing apps for Android and now have started to use Android 8 (Oreo) on my Pixel 2-phone.

While working on the accessibility of an app I've noticed that a certain entry in the "Global Context Menu" is missing when you use the gesture to open the menu (Swipe down -> then right while Talkback is enabled).

Namely the entry "pause feedback" is gone, which ... well ... paused the Talkback-reader, so you could click normally around in your app. The entry is still mentioned here by Google.

This makes it somewhat harder to work on accessibility for an app, since you need either to click around a lot more or constantly enable / disable the Talkback-reader.

Is there another way to pause the Talkback-reader temporarily or to get the "pause feedback" entry back?

Pause feedback missing

1 Answer 1

3

You can suspend TalkBack by pressing both volume buttons for a couple of seconds. You can un-suspend it by doing the same thing.

5
  • This definitively helps, but a "software-based" solution would be a bit nicer I feel. This way I have to lift the phone up and sometimes I turn up the volume by accident. Thanks for the hint!
    – hamena314
    Nov 22, 2017 at 9:28
  • I used to do that at first but with some practice you don't turn up the volume any more.
    – papakias
    Nov 22, 2017 at 10:52
  • I am working in a company so we have several (around 30?) different smartphones. Most of them are not Android 8, but soon we will get another batch of different Android 8 phones, so this will take a while until I hit every key on every phone correctly... a genereic gestures therefore would be preferable, but the volume key has to do for now.
    – hamena314
    Nov 22, 2017 at 12:47
  • I'm in a similar position (QA) with lots of smarphones to test on. I haven't found a better way to quickly turn on or off TalckBack.
    – papakias
    Nov 22, 2017 at 21:41
  • It's far less convenient. Can't understand why they changed this. Using this function all the time helping my blind relatives with their phones. I can only say that setting up a phone for a blind person is painful and things do not work as reliably as one would hope :/ Jan 24, 2020 at 13:57

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .