Using Voice Access on Android with Firefox

November 12, 2019 10:02 AM

I use Voice Access on Android to control my phone, but it doesn't play well with Firefox for Android.

I'm using Voice Access on Android 9 on a Moto G7 Power. I can use it to control most apps on the phone by voice, with one big exception: I cannot scroll by voice in Firefox for Android 68.2.0. Commands like "scroll down" or "scroll to bottom" are processed by Voice Access, but don't lead to any scrolling on the webpage.

I desperately want to use my voice to read pages on my phone, like metafilter threads.

I'd like to get this to work on Firefox if at all possible rather than going to a different browser.

Any advice on this?

posted by medusa to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

I don't have direct experience with Voice Access myself, but I have done accessibility testing for apps in other contexts, so take that as you will. Hopefully someone will chime in that has had experience using Firefox with Voice Access.

My experience is that, in general, it is up to the developer of the app (i.e. Mozilla, in the case of Firefox) to implement accessibility hooks for anything that isn't "built-in" on the system. Since Firefox uses its own rendering engine and implements its own UI instead of wrapping around an Android WebView, it doesn't necessarily surprise me that it's not accessible via Voice Access.

Unfortunately, the current version of Firefox for Android is receiving maintenance updates only, with all of the work going into their new Firefox Preview for Android app (formerly Fenix), so I suspect that fixing accessibility bugs on Android isn't a high priority for them at the moment.

You might try your luck with the Mozilla Support site as well.
posted by Aleyn at 6:14 PM on November 12, 2019

Are you able to insert an intermediary app like Tasker to help?
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:15 PM on November 12, 2019