* I prefer Talkback.

* Because I have problem using Voice Assistant's three finger gestures and Talkback has some useful gestures like opening Notification panel, going to home screen, backing from a screen, etc.

* Talkback has been translated to many languages.

* I prefer ETI Eloquence for English and Vocalizer Expressive for my native language, Persian. An app called AutoTTS switches between these two engines automatically.

* There is another screen reader called Commentary. It's a Chinese screen reader with a lot of features. It can be used freely with some restrictions. If you buy subscription, those restrictions will be removed. The problem with this screen reader is that it's not available on Google Play thus, you can't be sure if it's safe or not. In addition, it has many bugs and translation problems.

Hope it helps.

I prefer Talkback over Voice assistant as Talkback is much more concise and doesn't have nearly as many irritating noises. I don't know if it works well with other languages, but it seems to be able to read Japanese fine. I love love love Google TTS, especially the English UK female voice. Only problem is that the voices tend to be extremely harsh which requires a warmer sound signature to not be grating. All that said, I'm planning to switch to iOS when the iPhone 12 comes out. Talkback has been looking quite stale in comparison to the year-over-year improvements that Apple makes to its accessibility. I also have a Braille display and want a smartwatch, both of which have awful support on the Android side.

For me, it’s Commentary Commentary Commentary!

Sorry for how stupid long this is, guess I’m just excited about Commentary. I only recently switched over to Android as my primary mobile platform, after being a dedicated iOS user for 10 years. Without Commentary there is no way I would have made the switch. My reasons for preferring Commentary, based in personal experiences, include:

Reason 1, Commentary’s ability to jump past secondary content.

Navigating many Android apps requires, either a lot of swiping, or a lot of exploring by touch and scrolling. For example, the Android versions of Google News, and the official Youtube apps, require multiple swipes to browse content; in news, it takes three swipes to move to each story headline, moving past view coverage and more options buttons. IN my Android Reddit ap of choice, it takes four swipes, to move to each post, past the up vote, down vote, and a menu button. These extra swipes might not seem like a big deal, but I find them very inefficient, to the point where they would probably keep me from Android; in my experience, iOS apps often require less swipes, thanks to rotor actions.

However, Commentary has the amazing ability to swipe up and down, to primary content, skipping past secondary items. In News, each swipe down brings me strait to the next headline, and I can still swipe left/right if I want to use the more options button etc.

Reason 2, responsiveness.

This one is a bit subjective, and can only be assessed through experience, but TalkBack does not provide a responsive experience, for me, on either of my Android phones, the Essential PH one, and the Samsung Galaxy s 7. Swipe gestures and double taps often register as touches, or not at all, angle gestures are a nightmare, and there is always a slight lag. I know of lots of people who do not experience these issues with TalkBack, Pixel users seem to find TalkBack especially responsive. I can only speak from my own experience, but I have tried everything to make TalkBack behave better, with no luck. For me, Commentary does not suffer from these responsiveness issues. Not only is it speedy and reliable, it actually changed my mind about angle gestures. Like many new TalkBack users, I found angle gestures impossible to consistently perform; I thought my issues were inherent to angle gestures, but they work great for me, in Commentary, an are one of my reasons for moving away from iOS. VoiceAssistant is better on the responsiveness front, in my experience, but it has other dealbreakers, such as lack of customization, volume that is tied to system/media volume, and a dependence on multi finger gestures, which I would rather avoid.

Reason 3, customization.

I’m a big believer in customization; on the desktop I use dozens of context sensitive, custom macros and key remappings. Both iOS VoiceOver, and TalkBack, do support basic gesture remapping now, which is great and more than Samsung’s VoiceAssistant offers. However, these remapping’s are global; you can change what a left swipe does, but that left swipe is still, largely, going to do the same thing, weather your in a web browser or your Reddit client. With Commentary, I have set up unique gesture mappings for web browsing, the launcher, news app, Reddit client etc. swiping down does something different, if your in a web view, or a text document, or a system dialog, or if a phone call is coming in, etc. and almost all of this can be customized by the user.

Reason 4, features, community driven, etc.

What I’m about to say is largely an emotional point, not a purely objective one. TalkBack feels like a half forgotten, neglected proof of concept to me. Some things about it are well done, for example, I find it a pretty good option when using it along side a physical keyboard; this avoids much of the responsiveness issues, and Commentary does not support any meaningful physical keyboard navigation yet.

Perhaps I am wrong, and Google is constantly working on new TalkBack features, fixing long standing bugs, and performance issues, but that is not what I have seen, and I think the same can be said for the Samsung Voiceassistant. On the other hand, Commentary gets updates almost every day. In it’s short existence it has been given a staggering number of features, some of which are really innovative. For example, unless I am wrong, TalkBack is pretty lacking when it comes to copying text in web browsers etc. Commentary has multiple useful methods of selecting text, offering benefits like noncontinuous selecting and clipboard history, features that you often do not even have on the desktop. Commentary offers full customization of volume keys and fingerprint gestures, it has a handy mode for navigating text through special gestures, it simply works with third party, on screen keyboards, that require TalkBack to be suspended, such as soft braille keyboard and advanced braille keyboard.

I could go on, even though this is already way too long, because I am purposely avoiding getting back to work,, but I’ll just end my Commentary praises by mentioning it’s wonderful, growing community. When I was first giving TalkBack a try, I found it very frustrating trying to learn from TalkBack veterans. I know there must be a lot of helpful TalkBack pros out there, but almost all of my questions and interactions, with TalkBack communities, seemed to bring out the dogmatic fanboys. This has not been the case with Commentary. It is true that the Commentary community felt a little cloak and dagger to me, at first. Why do I need to join a tellagram group for basic info, why isn’t the app on the Playstore, who is the mysterious developer. However, once I got past all of that, I find the, over five hundred, Commentary users to be friendly, eager to help, and resourceful. My questions are usually answered, and never result in me being told that the issue is with me, not the software. There are an ever growing list of user created sound schemes, and plugins, not to mention a great user guide now. I’m very very thankful to have access to three different screen readers on my phone. At the end of the day, I think it’s essential for us blind people to have as many tools as possible. Commentary is far from perfect, but, right now, it’s the best option for me.

To answer your other questions, yes Commentary is available in multiple languages. The developer is not a native English speaker, so there are translation issues, however, these are being improved every day, by users who speak dozens of languages.

I use ETI Eloquence, for the same reasons that countless blind people use it.

FYI, here is the Commentary Tellagram link, for anyone interested.

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