Android Recyclerview Talkback issue

It would appear that at some point in the construction process your Recycler View is marked as importantForAccessibility. When a container view is marked as important for accessibility it gathers all of the information within that container and announces it as the content description.

This should remedy the situation.

android:importantForAccessibility="no" //Or "auto"

If at no point in code did you set this otherwise, this would appear to be a bug with your flavor of Android. This is certainly not desirable default behavior.

Edit:

Changed "no" to "auto". Really we just want it to not be "yes", which is the value that creates the poor behavior. Auto behaves better with Switch Control on modern devices.

Been investigating this on and off for a bit, I don't think there's a Android OS Version agnostic solution here. Android APIs have changed their definition of Focusability vs Accessibility Focusability too many times across too many versions.

Contrary to ChrisCM's answer, you should NOT set...

android:importantForAccessibility="no"

... on your RecyclerView. This will disable all native accessibility functionality related to your list, including the ACTION_SCROLL_FORWARD / ACTION_SCROLL_BACKWARD actions (Accessibility Source), and the ability to append "In List" / "Out of List" context to accessibility announcements.

Instead, you should set...

android:focusable="true"
android:focusableInTouchMode="true"

...on the root layout of your List items, which will enable them to gain focus individually when the accessibility user navigates to them.