TalkBack 14.2 has been Released: Here’s What you should Know

Last updated on 29 March 2024

Google has made version 14.2 of Android Accessibility Suite AKA TalkBack, available. However, before going any further, several points are worth mentioning:

1. At the time of this writing – March 28, 2024, most users can’t update to it. In fact, if you visit its Play Store page, it still shows version 14.1. In line with Google’s actions, the roll-out seems to be region by region.
2. Even if you install Android Accessibility Suite 14.2 from websites like APK Mirror, you won’t be able to download its required data for image descriptions and unlabeled buttons.
3. If you are using Android 14, installing Android Accessibility Suite 14.2 from a source outside of the Play Store will most likely silence your phone as it requires granting the allow restricted setting permission first. So you’ll need either sighted assistance or another screen reader to help you with that.
4. Some of the new features mentioned aren’t actually new, and we at Accessible Android haven’t been able to get to the bottom of why Google insists on including them as part of the 14.2 features list.

The upshot of all of this is that it would be better to wait for Android Accessibility Suite 14.2 update to appear on the Play Store if you want to avoid installation and image description issues.

What’s new in Android Accessibility Suite 14.2?

So after this not-so-short list of caveats and warnings, let’s explore what’s inside the latest Google offering.

More control over image and icon descriptions

In TalkBack 14.1, users had the ability to turn on or off descriptions for images, icons, and text. In TalkBack 14.2, they still retain that same ability, but there is a third option, which is to set it to only describe the item if it is unlabeled. Previously, the On setting would only describe items that were unlabeled. But now, Google has changed the behavior of the on setting to always read the description even if the item has a label. So the new option to only describe unlabeled items is actually the same behavior as when users had descriptions turned on in the previous version.

And, in passing, the quality of image description hasn’t changed, so in case you would find them inaccurate, incomplete or short in TalkBack 14.1, you’ll have the same behavior with TalkBack 14.2.

Proofreading instead of spell-checking

What TalkBack 14.2 calls Proofreading is, in fact, another take at the existing spell-checker. It’s, however, more of a misnomer as TalkBack 14.1 is already capable of doing all of that. So the new feature dispute aside, it catches grammar mistakes as well as spelling issues. It, however, sticks to the basics. It doesn’t, for instance, consider missing the space after a punctuation a mistake. Moreover, the bug that makes suggestions not spelled unless you use Google TTS is still there.

New place for speech and volume rate

With TalkBack 14.2, Google added speech rate and volume adjustment controls to the Sound and Vibration settings panel. So users can now adjust those from within the TalkBack window. Note that you can still change volume, by putting your finger on the screen and pressing a volume key, and you can change speech rate from the reading controls.

The oldest new feature: answering calls by two fingers

Google mentions answering calls via a two-finger gesture as a new feature for TalkBack 14.2. But including this as a new feature is, well, quite odd. This has been there for a long while and was apparently introduced in Android 12. It’s worth mentioning that people could use that action in Android 11. But since multi-finger gestures were not available at the time for Google’s version of TalkBack except for few Pixel phones, users needed to assign it to a 1-finger gesture.

Braille additions

New commands have been added to TalkBack 14.2 when interacting with Braille displays. The new features section of TalkBack 14.2 mentions new commands for moving between headings, controls, and links, as well as a command to play or pause media. However, we couldn’t find any commands related to play or pause media, and the headings, controls, and links commands were already there in TalkBack 14.1. We were unable to test if there is any change while using those commands. Furthermore, Google mentioned adding new languages, but as of now, we are unsure which languages have been added.

Wrapping up…

This very much concludes the new features and enhancements list for Google TalkBack 14.2. In case we happen to discover other new additions, we’ll update this post.