Problems with accessibility featurese on Samsung Galaxy s9

[Android Central Question]

My girlfriend has a Samsung S9 with all the latest updates available, lately the phone has become unreliable. She is blind and depends heavily on the accessibility features especially the voice to text for emails and text messages.

Over the last couple of months the microphone has become so sensitive that it even picks the voice from the phone and inserts random letter numbers and or phrases.

It has also begun to play YouTube music at random all by itself, took it to her provider who said to call Samsung. Well they were useless, agent on the phone told me there was no way possible the issues were occuring on the phone and he said he had never heard of that happening, he said to do a factory reset and that would solve the issue but it didn't, I was wondering if it is a known issue? Or could it be a problem with the kernel itself?

 

[VidJunky]

The way I read your post is, there haven't been any recent updates to the phone's firmware or OS but just recently this started happening... I imagine being sight impaired she has other apps that help her or have special features designed aid the user. Have you started the phone in safe mode and tried using voice to text in one of the problem apps? Starting the phone in safe mode prevents apps that are not requested from opening, so you may be able to at least tell if it is an app that is causing this issue. Then it will come down to finding that app and making a decision to keep it or not. If the problem persists even in safe mode... I guess it could be the accessibility features themselves. Voice to text is something you don't need to turn the accessibility features on to use, so they may be amping something up and causing this over sensitivity. I'm going to assume that you are sighted, perhaps you could run some tests using the voice to text without the accessibility features and then with them and see if there is a difference. Sorry I can't really think of anything else at the moment but if you become a member you can reply to this thread and keep the conversation going and hopefully we can help. Becoming a member is free and only takes a few minutes. After becoming a member you will be able to reply to threads, post links and screenshots making getting help much easier.

 

[Jdog2301]

Ok, she needs to have accessibility features turned on because she uses the voice assistant to help her navigate through the phone and to get her text messages read to her, she also needs the inverse colors turned on so she can see the screen

I have reset all settings, emptied the cache, and tried leaving the voice assistant off, it works for about 5 -10 mins than the texts go all jumbled, turn accessibility back on, and the same thing, is there a decent 3rd part app that would do the same thing that I could try on her phone for comparison?

 

[Jdog2301]

As for other apps for accessibility, she is only using the stock software that Samsung provided

 

[VidJunky]

It's sounding like an app is causing this more than a phone problem. Everything works for a little while, my guess would be that if it were a true phone issue this wouldn't be the case, then things start going haywire, same with the accessibility features. So it sounds like an app is being cued for some reason and once open that's when the problems start. Safe mode would kinda process prove this by not allowing anything else to open unless opened by the user. If it lasts about 10 minutes getting it to 30 or an hour in safe mode would be a strong argument for an app problem. No reason she would but is she using a headset during this? I'm guessing not which would lead me to wonder if the use of a headset would help. That brings to mind an issue with noise cancellation... Which could be a bug but they're usually fixed with factory resets, which you've done but if it's an app you likely reinstalled it when the phone was restored after the reset. I really think safe mode is the key. Prevent other apps from opening get to half an hour or more and then comb thru the installed apps for anything that might have an effect on this feature.

 

[Jdog2301]

Ok, got phone off for service and got it back said they had to rebuild the kernel, before I added any updates or any other software, I booted the phone into safe mode and ran a test, it initially worked fine than it started acting up again, picking up the phone voice and now it keeps resetting the voice speed, called Samsung and would have had better luck banging my head against the wall.