2y ago

Is Voice Access really this bad, or is my phone haunted?

if youre unfamiliar, its an accessibility app made by google, for controlling your phone with your voice. this is different to the “OK google” thing.

I’m disabled, and I avoided owning a phone for many years because they’re so painful to use. but this year I finally had to get one, so I got a samsung s10e. but this voice access app is just... terrible? its really buggy, struggles to understand me way worse than Talon (a PC voice control program), and loves to do things I don’t tell it to.

it also doesn’t even make my phone fully accessible, theres tons of gestures it just can’t do, and I can’t add custom ones.

basically... am I doing something wrong? is there some trick I don’t know about? or is android accessibility really this bad? is there anything I can do?

30 comments

I've found on budget/older phones voice recognition is useless, I recommend something more modern of you can afford it, maybe a flagship from a year or two ago
- is that the case even with a mic plugged in? I get similarly bad results with an external mic (though I haven’t tested a high end one, still saving for an upgrade)
  unfortunately this phone is about as good as I could afford, I’m living well under the poverty line and $200 AUD (what I paid for the s10e, got it used with some scratches) is a big deal lol
  
  Oh, you're also Australian. Yeah that explains part of a potential accent understanding problem then. I never tried with an external mic, but even in a very quiet room it wasn't always 100%. I found that the "Use verbs" setting was helpful to address some of that, because it limits the potential dictionary matching results. If you know you have shonky WiFi too, that can play a part.
  Also, make sure in your phone settings under "General Management" then "Keyboard list and default" that you have set your Google Voice Typing language to Australian. I still have to be real slow and deliberate, but it's a bit better.
  No worries on the expensive part, I hear you. It's shameful that the support for assistive tech on Android cuts off at about the point that the people who need it can afford it.
- I've actually found voice recognition to be worse than it was prior to Android 12. As soon as I got that update, it started having more errors.
  
  It could be coincidentally in line with you getting gunk in your mic or something. Or it could be that your particular phone doesn't handle android 12 very well. I've had less issue with voice recognition on android 12 and 13. Maybe try re-training the voice model.
- maybe a flagship from a year or two ago
  Is that not what an S10e is?
  
  Sadly no, s10e launched March 2019, 4 years ago and was specifically the non-flagship price compromise version of the s10 and s10+.
  I wish a couple of years didn't make a big a difference as it does.
  
  Not to mention that it isn’t dependent on the phone since it’s a standard android app
  
  2019 was 4 years ago, I just upgraded from a phone I bought in 2019
  S10e isn't a bad phone tho
I've had a lukewarm experience with Google's voice recognition. Between my phone and a few Nest Mini devices, it's not uncommon for the device I'm speaking into to misunderstand or outright not pick up on my Hey Google cue. And when I do so I have to speak very clearly almost to the point of it being unnatural.
I hate to say it but I've used others' Amazon/Apple devices and it's not nearly as difficult.
- I find that the cadence of your words matters very much with Google. Like the words matter, but your pitch and tone matter too. I had to retain my model because it wouldn't go off when I'd yell ok Google at it, but it would go off when I'd say "ok cool" in convo. Now I have to say it with a specific inflection for it to recognize what I said. When I say it with the right inflection I'd say it works 80+ percent of the time
I'm not a full time voice assistive tech user but I have a some experience in this area. Can you tell me which gestures you're missing / functions you're unable to activate and unexpected behaviour? Is it specific apps or websites, or all of them?
Voice Access does have a few settings which have helped me make it a little more reliable (it does not like my accent sometimes, especially if there's background noise) but without knowing more about the specifics it will be hard to tell whether there are some easy possible fixes or workarounds for the issues you're having.
- the big issue is only being able to swipe left/right in the middle of the screen, I can’t scroll through pages of quick settings, the share dialog, or really anything that doesn’t appear in the middle. same issue with scrolling up and down, too, I have my font size bumped up a bit, so the “start screen recording” button needs to be scrolled down to, but you only scroll the button itself which voice access won’t do. theres some other examples but you get the idea.
  occasionally if I say a command, it does it twice. I’ve had it happen on “tap X”, on saying numbers like in “show grid”, and sometimes (especially confusing) things like “send” sending a message and then typing the word send.
  i also get lots of strange site specific bugs, like on mastodon I have to say my post in a single take, because saying a second sentence will clear what it already wrote. theres been way too many site specific bugs to list, but I run into them often.
  also it understands me very poorly, I’m a native english speaker with an australian accent for context, and it really struggles with understanding me. short commands like “four” to tap label 4 are especially rough, but it takes me a few tries even with longer commands. theres not enough of a pattern to say its definitely an accent thing though. (talon does make some mistakes that are accent based, so its likely a factor. but it also makes way less mistakes than voice access with the same mic, so... shrug)
  
  Ok yeah, I'm beginning to understand your problem.
  Firstly, I haven't opened Voice Access in a while, but this is definitely worse than I remember. Some of it seems to be Android's fault, some of it seems to be Samsung's, but there is definitely some bad behaviour going on especially with magnification. It looks like Samsung's menu and overlay implementations are not working properly with Voice Access' magnifier, the show numbers and labels commands are all over the place. When using Voice Access' screen magnifier, they have also allowed for swiping to occur off-screen when zoomed in... so sometimes it swipes the wrong place because it's trying to do it from the centre of the edge, and sometimes you see nothing happen because that edge of the screen is out of view... Shonky work.
  The good news is there's probably some workarounds for this. I'm constantly using grid mode ("show grid" / "hide grid" / "tap squarenumber" / "more squares" / "fewer squares" / "swipe direction squarenumber", "scroll direction from squarenumber" etc.), which reliably accounts for only gestures on the parts of the screen you can see and overrides most other menu, website and other interface items.
  It looks also like the Phone Settings Accessibility Interaction and dexterity Voice Access Settings More Options Show Borders On might work a bit better for the "Show numbers" and "show labels" problems with screen magnification. It looks like I have to sometimes hide and then show them again after zooming in or out to get them to recalculate their positions, but it's better than trying to navigate with borders off.
  duplicate commands
  I did just have that happen. It looks like it might have to do with CPU or memory consumption, things seem to slow down while VA is going. You might have better luck if your apps that you're not actively using are fully closed, and you don't have 5000 chrome tabs like I do. This will definitely present issues for screen recording in addition to VA, along with other heavier tasks.
  i also get lots of strange site specific bugs, like on mastodon I have to say my post in a single take, because saying a second sentence will clear what it already wrote. theres been way too many site specific bugs to list, but I run into them often.
  Site specific bugs are usually because people are shit at accessibility. If you can send me an example link where I don't have to have an account or log in, i'll see if I can debug this one for you and get an issue opened if there's something they've done wrong. Site specific bugs can sometimes be worked around with a different browser though too, browsers are also shit.
  also it understands me very poorly, I’m a native english speaker with an australian accent for context, and it really struggles with understanding me.
  You're not fucking wrong, it keeps thinking i'm saying "Shore" instead of "show" and "top" instead of "tap". This was not this difficult previously, even in a noisier place. I am not sure what is going wrong here, but I can see that the settings for various language interace things are all over the place, it might be something buried deep in a menu somewhere. If you're able to speak really slowly and precisely, that will help, but I have no speech impediments and it's fucking driving me nuts. Make sure there's nothing rubbing against the mic or touching it too.
  This is truly a painful UX experience, I'm sorry. Let me know if there's anything else I can maybe find an alternate action for that's more reliable, this is ludicrous.

30 comments