Ok. After 2 months I am throwing in the towel on getting Alexa voice commands to work with FireTV.
Today I am focused on using the FireTV Accessibility features to work with Plex App.
Go to Settings | Accessibilty | VoiceView
enable VoiceView and turn on all the levels of support
(press the back and menu button for 2 seconds to enable/disable BoiceView
once all the levels of support are enabled…))
Go Home
use the remote buttons to browse through content. Notice how the title of shows and movies are announced?
Open Amazon Prime
Browse its content. See how shows and movies are annouced?
Open Plex
left arrow to show all the libraries
up and down arrow. Notice how the library names are announced?
Select or right arrow to enter a library
browse the movies and show.
NOTICE HOW NONE OF THE TITLES ARE ANNOUNCED?
I am legally blind. If I can’t search by voice and I can’t browse with VoiceView I can’t use Plex app on FireTV.
FWIW: I have no problem with Plex on my Fire TV and the voice commands I use work perfectly, most of the time.
But I only use the most basic set of commands available. I only use commands like play, pause, stop or home. For finding content I do not use and would not want to use any form of voice commands.
I find the Amazon Plex app to work just fine so Plex appears to be conforming to the “law” as I understand it.
Just because something works or doesn’t work for any given person does not mean that it is the same for others.
If this is a problem then I suggest either trying to find what is “different” about your setup/devices than others or you move to another playback device. But I will say that no other client I have tried is much better, or worse, than the Fire TV.
I have been trying to figure out why the Amazon Plex App will not work with Alexa voice commands for 2 months. AFAIK this forum is the support channel for Plex.TV. If I can’t get help here, where can I?
I am looking at alternatives to Plex. That might be my only option.
But I paid $200 and over 300 man-hours based on BS claims.
Don’t expect me to be happy.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that reasonable accommodations must be made to provide access/support for those with disabilities. That’s why Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc. all have Accessibility options.
Clearly, Plex is not supporting the Accessibility options provided by Amazon. As far as I can tell, Plex has not made a single attempt to be Accessible to people with disabilities.
Plex is not in compliance with ADA. I say that because I can’t use it, even though I can use Windows, Office, Mac Ventura, iPad, iPhone, FireTV (sans Plex), etc.
I am happy that you do not have to rely on Accessibility options.
I also posted this to the fireside chat thread, but I wanted a post that I could easily locate…
Here is the URL that explains,
Implement VoiceView Accessibility Features (Fire TV)
Inside the document, find…
Consider the Amazon Fire TV launcher screen used to navigate a movie catalogue.
The text at the top of the screen updates to show the title, description, rating, and other information about the item currently in focus.
Because this non-focusable content updates each time the user selects a movie,
the node containing the selected movie should be described with the describedBy extra.
This will cause this information to be spoken automatically after a brief pause on the item.
Code Sample:
// You can set extras on a button which is described by some
// static text elsewhere on the screen as follows.
Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button);
button.setAccessibilityDelegate(new View.AccessibilityDelegate() {
public void onInitializeAccessibilityNodeInfo(View host, AccessibilityNodeInfo info) {
super.onInitializeAccessibilityNodeInfo(host, info);
info.getExtras().putString(“com.amazon.accessibility.describedBy”, R.id.movie_title_1 + " " + R.id.actors_1 + " " + R.id.description_1);
info.setEnabled(host.isEnabled());
}
});
That took me 10 minutes to find.
You should hire me…
Please reconsider prioritizing Accessibility support to your FireTV app.
