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Is there any way I can detect when a user is using their phone's Speech-To-Text feature with Xamarin?

The application I'm working on needs to be HIPAA compliant and the Speech-To-Text APIs are not HIPAA compliant. I would like to find a way to prevent the user from using these features. I'm willing to reject Speech-To-Text input, disable the ability to use these features, or at minimum detect when Speech-To-Text is used.

Any and all help is appreciated.

lampposteffect
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  • Can you explain a little further why is an API (= a set of interface declarations) not HIPAA compliant? One solution could be to block the microphone while the user is in your app, if this is the issue here... – Kaarel Jul 23 '18 at 19:43
  • The text to speech APIs don't encrypt the patient information. I would block the microphone if I could figure out how. – lampposteffect Jul 24 '18 at 19:33

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Only a single app can use the microphone at a time (although this might change in the future). So to block the microphone or to find out if another app has done it, you could simply construct an AudioRecord (and possibly call some methods on it).

Note that some speech-to-text implementations might meet the privacy requirements by doing on-device speech recognition or use a server in the local network. So blocking these would be unfair and not what the user would expect.

Kaarel
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