Android 12 TalkBack problem

[longshanks73]

I have a Fusion F202 Android 12 tablet, the TalkBack facility started for whatever reason and it locked up my tablet completely and it took me over an hour of fiddling to get it back. My question is why did this happen and how on earth do you get out of it? I had previously turned the TalkBack facility off in settings.
I am new to Android and have not become educated with all it's little foibals
Regards

 

[ocnbrze]

talk back is part of accessibilty features on your phone.

you can easily turn it on or off by using the volume buttons:

Turn TalkBack on or off - Android Accessibility Help

The TalkBack screen reader gives you spoken feedback and notifications. Contents Option 1: With the volume key shortcut Option 2: With Google Assistant

support.google.com

 

[longshanks73]

Thanks for your reply.
Turned off using the volume buttons! How? Mine is a tablet not a phone .

 

[Hadron]

Tablets have volume buttons. Though it's hard to see how anyone could accidentally press and hold both buttons for 3 seconds, so I'm not sure whether this is how it got turned on.

I have Assistant disabled so don't know how easily that can turn it on.

Surely you get out of it by going into the accessibility settings and turning it off again, as you did previously. What exactly did it lock up? I've never used Talkback but am sure it's not supposed to do that.

 

[longshanks73]

Thanks again, I'm new to Android so It's discovery for me as I use my new tablet, I didn't have TalkBack turned on, and as I said in my post it started up whilst I was using the tablet and completely locked me out, the screen froze and it took me over an hour or tinkering before I got it back to normal working which was quite annoying.
What I was hoping for from the forum is an explanation why this function did what it did and lock up the device.
Regards
Brian

 

[Hadron]

Hmm, are we sure that something wasn't pressing multiple buttons at once? There's nothing that would be expected to cause a screen freeze, but as well as a way of turning Talkback on (which I wasn't previously aware of) there are some functions that can be activated by pressing and holding multiple buttons, generally concerned with booting into special modes which most people never need to access. So it's possible that if buttons were being inadvertently pressed at the same time something odd might happen (including triggering a software bug in a particular model of device). Maybe how it was held or stood, or a case that wasn't fitting quite right, could contribute?

I'm just speculating here - there's no intentional feature that locks the screen up, so something happened that shouldn't. So I'm actually hoping that it was something like different buttons got pressed together and the mix of signals crashed something, rather than that there's actually something wrong with the tablet.

 

[longshanks73]

I have since contacted the tablet manufacturer and was told that by tapping the screen multiple times this will turn on TalkBack which when on will disable other touch functions. That's where this problem occured, does this function occurs on all Android devices?

 

[ocnbrze]

I have since contacted the tablet manufacturer and was told that by tapping the screen multiple times this will turn on TalkBack which when on will disable other touch functions. That's where this problem occured, does this function occurs on all Android devices?

none of my samsung tablets do that as far as i know. my z fold 4 sure doesn't. might be a special feature of your tablet.

 

[longshanks73]

Yes you're probably right, my tablet is from the cheaper end of the market but it does run Android 12.

 

[Hadron]

Manufacturers can customise Android their own way, so they can add their own features. I've never heard of this particular one before myself, and certainly wouldn't have guessed it.