I am trying to implement accessibility for a mobile application. The application is built using HTML, CSS and Javascript. I have a login page with input fields for username and password. For the password input field, whenever I try to type in the password, the screen readers (VoiceOver and Talkback) keeps saying "full stop" or "star" instead of the character I typed. I find this bad for people with vision disabilities since they won't know which character they entered. Is there away to override this behavior of mobile screen readers so that they read what the user typed, but still keep the text hidden for other users?
This behaviour is intentional, and not restricted to mobile applications. Screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA on a computer will also read out "star" when a user inputs their password.
This is for the same reasons that passwords are hidden visually: security.
It's not very secure to have a screen reader read out each letter of the password as it is entered, as there is the issue of people nearby and within earshot being able to overhear the password being typed. I would not suggest overriding this behaviour, as it is there for a reason.