Accessibility

Last updated: July 22, 2026

Who DictoKey is for

A touchscreen keyboard assumes steady hands, precise aim, and good eyesight. When any of those is missing, writing on a phone becomes exhausting — or simply out of reach. DictoKey replaces the keyboard with your voice.

DictoKey is built for people living with:

• Motor impairments and limited hand mobility — when reaching small keys accurately is difficult
• Tremors, Parkinson's disease — when the finger does not land where it was aimed
• Arthritis, RSI, chronic pain — when repeated tapping hurts
• Blindness and low vision — used alongside a screen reader such as TalkBack
• Dyslexia, ADHD, stuttering — when spoken words come more easily than written ones
• Situational limitations — one hand on a steering wheel, an arm holding a child, a hand in a cast

What DictoKey actually does for accessibility

These are implemented features, not intentions:

• Two independent ways to write by voice. A standard Android keyboard (IME) and a floating bubble. If one is unavailable on your device, the other still works.
• Coexistence with TalkBack. The bubble filters accessibility events so that it does not fight the screen reader for control of the screen. A timing bug that specifically degraded the experience under TalkBack was identified and fixed.
• No typing required to correct text. Clean mode restores punctuation and capitalisation automatically, so a dictated message does not need manual editing on a keyboard.
• Adjustable bubble. Size, opacity, and anchored position (left or right) can be set to match your reach and your grip.
• 52 languages, including real-time translation, so you can write in a language you speak better than you type.
• Works without an account. No sign-up form to fill in before you can use the app.

Why DictoKey needs the Accessibility Service permission

Android does not provide a standard API that lets a third-party app know when and where you are typing. The AccessibilityService API is the only supported way for DictoKey to place the dictation bubble over the field you are writing in, and to insert your dictated text into it.

DictoKey uses that permission for one purpose only: to show the floating bubble on top of other applications, and to insert dictated text into the active field — only after you explicitly ask for it.

Banking apps, password managers, and crypto wallets are detected and blocked automatically: the bubble will not insert text there, even if you ask it to.

The permission can be revoked at any time in Android Settings › Accessibility › DictoKey. The app keeps working as a voice keyboard without the bubble. Full details in our Privacy Policy.

Getting started with a screen reader

1. Install DictoKey from Google Play.
2. Open the app. A disclosure screen explains exactly what the Accessibility permission allows before anything is enabled.
3. Enable DictoKey Voice in Android Settings › Languages & input › On-screen keyboard. This alone is enough to dictate everywhere — the bubble is optional.
4. If you want the floating bubble as well, enable it in DictoKey's settings and follow the on-screen steps.

Known limits, stated honestly

• Dictation requires an internet connection: speech is transcribed on a server, then immediately discarded.
• On devices where Advanced Protection Mode is enabled, Android blocks the floating bubble system-wide. DictoKey detects this and tells you so directly, instead of failing silently — the voice keyboard remains fully available.
• This page is available in English only for now, although the app itself is translated into more than 50 languages.

Tell us what is missing

If something in DictoKey does not work with your assistive setup, we want to hear about it. Please include your device, your Android version, and the assistive technology you use — it makes the problem reproducible, and reproducible problems get fixed.