To start, this is regarding some things I recently discovered with Android you may or may not know. In summary, not all Android devices are created equal. Unlike Apple's offerings, some Android devices do not have a screen reader built-in. The other day a friend of mine purchased an Android-based MP3 player from Amazon and thought I would be able to check out the apps that were preloaded on it. The device cost him $40 or so and was one of those no name brand devices. Although it had a typical Settings menu found on stock Android, once we arrived to the Accessibility screen Talkback was not present, only the Text to Speech settings. I was definitely not prepared for this and didn't have APKs of any of the Android screen readers, so was out of luck and didn't get to check anything out that day. This disappointed me because by this point I thought all Android devices had some kind of vision accessibility features preinstalled.
So, from a blindness perspective, unless you know of a way to get Talkback / Prudence / Jieshuo working on a device that has no preinstalled screen reader, it's most likely not a good idea to buy a cheap no name branded device. This is disappointing because we're left with no choice but to purchase astronomically-priced Android devices that have accessibility services already installed, that is, if we want to use the thing independently. If you have encountered a similar issue like what I mentioned here, let me know!
By Marina Patten, 28 March, 2026
Forum
Android
Comments
Never seen this, but stranger things have happened
Hello,
That is very disappointing. You would think this would be included. I've even bought tablets from lesser known brands, and they still had Talkback. I think your experience is a rare one these days, but certainly not impossible. Another thing to be aware of, for some of the remaining custom roms, especially the more privacy focussed ones, there won't be any Talkback there either, as a lot of these, while Android, have been degooglefied. So no Google apps at all. But for your more major brands, even in the budget space, Talkback should normally still be included.
I have been through this
I owned a car in the past that I replace the head unit with an Android one. Unfortunately Accessibility section was fully not there in the settings.
Android
My understanding is if you get an android device, be it phone, tablet or whatever you need to download the software to make it talk such as talkback or whatever they are using because android is a open sorse software. Mostly those companies decide if they take the time to install it or not. Apple has it already in it. It bugs but you can just turn it on without no issues. There are so many devices as people in the world. Long live cats.
Full Android Watches
A few years ago, I bought the Lemfo LEM16, a smartwatch running full Android (Android 11). It was not WearOS but ran regular phone Android although there was a heavily modified skin on top. When I got it, TalkBack was not installed, so I had to have a sighted person press allow on the USB debugging screen that came up when I connected to ADB. Then I sideloaded TalkBack and enabled it with ADB, but then there was an optimizer that killed background tasks that kept stopping TalkBack, but I could disable that from the watch UI. Even after that the default launcher, the watch face system, and most of the built-in apps were mostly inaccessible. However, I was able to install the Lawnchair launcher and switch to it, and I installed a lot of the Google stock apps. Then I figured out how to root the watch with Magisk so that I could replace the inaccessible app switcher with Lawnchair. After I did all that, I could use it and everything worked, although it often got very hot and it was pretty slow and the battery life was very poor, like often around 4 hours. So I do not use it anymore and if I was going to get a second watch besides my Apple Watch, I would probably get a WearOS watch instead because you can still sideload phone apps and the battery life and performance should be much better and TalkBack is included at least on the Samsung and Pixel ones.
budget android devices
I have a blu g53 android phone. it came up out of the box with talkback. however, when I factory reset, it acted as if talkback didn't exist. It was obnoxious and annoying! I've seen it on standard andorid, that's my conclusion. Just... please be careful.
Good advice.
Personally I don't recommend blind folks buying any super cheap android devices. Even if talk back is installed, it's going to be painfully slow and unresponsive on a sub 50 dollar device.
Agreed
Yes, even if Talkback is installed, performance on a cheapo is not gunna be good, then we get a whole bunch of people expecting flagship performance from a device that is pretty much E waste, and saying that talkback is no good, when in all reality on a good device, it is perfectly fine. Different than voiceover, yes. Can it be a bit more laggy, yeah, though this has gotten a lot better, and after using it long enough, I don't even notice, and don't miss voiceover at all.