Samsung’s One UI software has come a long way, offering way more meaningful features than it used to. It has also improved a lot over the years alongside Android to become usable for more people, thanks to all its accessibility features. These are the features that often get overlooked by many, but they’re crucial to shaping the smartphone experience for those who may have hearing, seeing, or motor disabilikties. Many of these accessibility features are available out of the box, while others can be easily downloaded from the Play Store. Here’s a quick look at all the accessibility features you get on Samsung Galaxy phones right now.
Audible feedback with TalkBack
TalkBack is among the best accessibility features on Android. It offers spoken feedback and context for what’s on the screen. Here’s how to enable TalkBack:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility.
- Select Talkback.
- Enable the toggle and press Allow.
- You can access Talkback settings from the same page to customize the feature by changing your preferred language, the speech rate, and a lot more.
With this particular accessibility feature enabled, your device will automatically read everything on its screen. You can interact with the items on the screen by swiping left and right, double-tapping, or dragging the items with two fingers. The item on the screen you are interacting with is highlighted by a blue-colored box (or green on Pixel phones). Enabling Talkback will give you a full tour of the feature, explaining all the features and how to use them.
Spoken assistance for typing
Spoken assistance is also a great feature for those who have trouble typing on the keyboard. This will make your Samsung device read all the characters as you type on the keyboard. You can even customize it to read words and say “Capital” when you hit capital letters. It only works with Samsung’s default keyboard, but here’s how to use it:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility.
- Select Spoken assistance.
- Enable the Speak keyboard input aloud toggle.
You can also use this particular accessibility feature to enable audio descriptions for videos or to add voice recordings to NFC tags to provide information about nearby objects.
Visibility enhancements to help you see better
Visibility enhancements, as the name implies, let you alter the text to make it easier to read. From changing the size of the text and making it stand out with more colors and contrast levels to adding a magnifier and removing animations, you’ll find pretty much everything here. You can even use a high-contrast keyboard or make your display dimmer using the features here. To access these visibility enhancements:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility.
- Tap Visibility enhancements.
- Look for the option you want to enable and hit the corresponding toggle to apply.
Hearing enhancements for those who are hard of hearing
Samsung’s One UI doesn’t have real-time text (RTT) like you get on Pixel phones for regular phone calls (yet), but there are a bunch of other hearing enhancements available. Instead of using RTT for phone calls, you can simply put the call on speaker and use Google’s Live Transcribe feature to get real-time transcriptions. Just make sure you’re in a quiet environment for it to work properly.
Sound notification is also a great feature that notifies you about all the important sounds in your home, like when a smoke alarm beeps or a baby cries. Here are a few that you’ll find in the accessibility settings:
Other hearing enhancement features include support for Live Captions, adaptive sound preset to match your age, the ability to amplify ambient sound, and more.
Features to enhance interaction and dexterity
Samsung devices also ship with useful accessibility features for those who have difficulty touching the screen or interacting with the UI elements. All these features are grouped under the interaction and dexterity menu, where you’ll find the option to use an external or a camera switch or use your voice to control the device hands-free. I highly recommend checking out our Google Switch Access guide to learn more about this feature and see how you can use the camera switch to control your device. You’ll find these options on the same accessibility page in settings.
Some of these features will also come in handy if your phone’s touchscreen breaks.
Some other interaction and dexterity options include the ability to change the touch settings to make your device ignore repeated touches or change its touch and hold delay. Notably, you can also make your device read caller names aloud and answer the calls automatically, so you can avoid manual inputs.
Samsung continues to make its phones better to use for everybody
It’s nice to see all the progress made in the accessibility department, as all these new and improved features make it easier for more people to experience Android. It’s a step in the right direction, and we’ll continue to explore and highlight more of these features on Android and other operating systems. It’ll be interesting to see how Google and its OEM partners continue to improve the Android Accessibility Suite, so stay tuned.