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Hi Ed, Thank you so much for these suggestions. I've been reviewing them and merging them in. Hopefully it should be live. I've included a thank you note too in the article.

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Ah, this bug can only be fixed from the framework side (and has already been fixed). I'm marking this as infeasible since there is no way but to have the user update to a newer release (Q)

There are two dialogs, one from the framework and the other from androidx.  The androidx one also has the same bug, attached is a video of it.  I think this would be a separate fix and would resolve the bug for users that see the androidx dialog.

Ah sorry, I assumed it was only on API28 from comment #1. I'll re-open this bug

I think we just need to do setContentDescription(String) on the hint view whenever the text changes

Looks like the "Help message area" text is being set as the content description for the TextView in the layout XML, so I don't think calling setContentDescription is the right fix. We should probably do one of two things:
1. Use android:hint instead of android:contentDescription, so that it augments the visible text instead of overriding it
2. Remove the android:contentDescription attribute altogether and let TalkBack just read aloud the visible text

Any thoughts on which of these would be preferable, Kevin?

Actually, I take that back. Option 1 doesn't actually work the way I expected (the hint text is read aloud instead of the visible text), so I'll probably just go with option 2.

Project: platform/frameworks/support
Branch: androidx-master-dev

commit 256a01352379845d17ba8b0198aca2be4ba445bb
Author: Curtis Belmonte <curtislb@google.com>
Date:   Wed Jul 03 11:31:14 2019

    Remove content description for fingerprint dialog error text
   
    Currently, the fingerprint dialog shown for API < 28 sets a content
    description on the error message TextView, causing that to be read aloud
    by TalkBack instead of the actual error message. This commit fixes the
    issue by simply removing the content description for the error TextView
    so that it doesn't override the visible text for accessibility.
   
    Test: Run androidx biometric demo on Pixel 2XL API 26, launch the
    fingerprint dialog with TalkBack enabled, and set focus on "Touch the
    fingerprint sensor" view. Verify that TalkBack now reads aloud "Touch
    the fingerprint sensor" instead of "Help message area". Also trigger
    other errors such as "Not recognized" and verify that these are also
    read aloud by TalkBack as they occur.
   
    Fixes: 123572331
    Change-Id: I11b351e1ab88c828e2114a357850880759e083be

M       biometric/res/layout/fingerprint_dialog_layout.xml

https://android-review.googlesource.com/1011377
https://goto.google.com/android-sha1/256a01352379845d17ba8b0198aca2be4ba445bb

I'm using the androidx.biometric 1.0.1

on the motorola moto x4 with Android 9 installed, this doesn't seem to be fixed. Help Message Area is still read out.

Can we please have a look at this again?