The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 12 for Blind and Low Vision Users

the recent calls log bug appears to have been fixed. i know it doesn't bother most of you, but for those who know what i'm talking about, this is a small consolation.
and no, i'm not going to say good job apple or nonsense like that. why should apple be praised for something they broke, refused to fix it for one year and just put it back to it used to be? for a company selling their top of the line phone for $1500, it is not good enough.

To the one that is having trouble with the swipe gesture for notifications on the iPad Pro, I cannot reproduce your problem on my iPad Mini. The gesture works consistently for me in all four orientations. Of course, this isn’t an iPad Pro, so the issue may be specific to the larger iPads.

Have you tried performing the gesture from different parts of the status bar? That is, instead of swiping from the top center, swipe from the top left or top right. As long as you go straight down with your gesture, it should still work, but maybe doing it from a different starting point may allow it to work more reliably? I’m just guessing here, since I’m not seeing the problem myself.

Hi! To the person asking about shortcuts:
You have to go to the app store, and search for Apple shortcuts, and download it from there. Or you can click the app store link in the app entry on here to make things easier! Hope this helps!

Hi!
To the person asking about shortcuts:
You have to go to the app snre, search for Apple shortcuts and download it there. You can also click the app store button on the app entry on here to make things easier. Hope this helps!

Oh, and it was all going so well too.
For some reason, in iOS 12, voice-over freezes completely.
Siri works but all the other sounds stop working and swiping my finger across the screen does nothing,though voice-over will occasionally read out a solitary word before becoming silent again.
The only solution I found so far to this problem is to ask Siri to make a phone call, and then double tap the screen to exit out of the call, voice-over works normally after that.
I’ve shut down my phone and will turn it on tomorrow, hopefully that will solve the problem, but if anyone else is having similar issue, it would be great to know.

What phone are you using?

I don't know if this was done by design or possibly a bug, but I've noticed that, even with my Bluetooth turned on, the status icon is no longer visible.

Was this something that was done by design or is this a bug?

OK, on my iPhone 6s I do have a 4 digit password to unlock my phone however I can’t activate notifications. After entering in my four digits and then bringing up the list of notifications and again tapping on them, I still can’t open them.

If I flick up I get to hear all the new options like view and expand etc. and these work fine. So far some notifications will let me read them via the view option.

I did ask someone to look at the screen for me and was told, each time I double tap on a notification a little square like a tile, pops out to the left which voiceover doesn't announce.

If voiceover is turned off, tapping on the notification again activates the little square which when one taps on it, the notification opens.

Note with voiceover back on, double tapping the tile doesn't activate the notification.

So I'm not sure if this is a bug or a setting that has been activated.

I couldn't resist any more. I pulled the trigger and upgraded. I'm sad to say that I too am seeing the issue of broken image disscriptions. O well. Is it annoying? For me, it is because I love that feature. But, at least there's work arounds. My only other complaint is that it's taking me a while to get used to the knew design of News. I liked the old design better. Other than that, it's just some minor adjustments, like my numbers and emoji keys are moved etc. But, they are opposite of where they were before. So, it's not that difficult, as long as I don't put emoji where there should be numbers! lol I'm also loving the snappiness! I didn't think I had much lag, but man, I opened my app store today, and it opened before I could blink! Closing it was just as fast. Overall, for a 1st time release, I'm loving it! I'm giving Apple a big pat on the back! I started playing with Siri shortcuts, and I think it's something I'll end up using. I already enabled 1. I can't wait to see what apps will do with these features. Can't wait for 12.1!

Hello all!
I must say I am really loving this update on my iPhone 8! I also have not really encountered many issues with the descriptions. It has cut out on me one time but all I did was toggle off Voiceover off and back on again and it is working properly . Also I am not having any trouble with the four finger swipe between apps and I do not have the settings app running. For example, I used it with Safari Photos and News and I was able to use the gesture with no problems. I am also enjoying shortcuts and would love to learn How to use this feature even more. With this update I completely erased my iPhone and restored from a backup and then downloaded the new iOS I must say my experience has been stellar so far !

Upon investigating further I have found that the forefinger gesture is a little inconsistent it works but it’s inconsistent at times

Hey guys:

Just experienced this earlier on my iPhone SE running iOS 12. When I come upon a word that is written in all caps voice over spells out the word rather than reading it normaly. Is there a setting related to this that I got messed up somehow or this is really a bug in voice over? Anyone experience this too?

Hi Applevis,
This is the first time I update iOS so early and am not disappointed at least for now. The update of my 6 and SE was a breeze. The phones work really feel faster.

The new Shortcuts app appeared in the updates tab of appstore.

There is a VO bug that annoyed me for few versions now and it is fixed. I have added Russian language to read Cyrillic alphabets. For some reason the second language didn't respect the user setting to speak slower or faster than the main one. I was very impressed to hear it working again.

Another partially fixed bug is when reading by line. If I do, VO eats the first letter on the line. When you flik up, it reads the whole line. When you flik down it reads ok too. On the next line it eats the first letter again. In the previous versions it dismissed first few letters.

Hope I'll see more goodies soon.

Hi all,

I noticed when using the Alex voice on an iPad air 2 in iOS 12 on the lock screen, VO would read the “Press Home To Unlock” button at a slower rate then it would read the rest of the content on the lock screen. I use Alex at 100%, and i couldn’t identify what speech rate Alex spoke the “press home to unlock” button.

Sincerely,
Maddy

Hi all,

i‘m using ios 12 on an Iphone X and have also noticed the unlock issue on IOS 12 in acess with the Iphone X. I reported it to Apples accessibility team and they answered:
Thank you for your email. We appreciate the feedback and wanted to let you know that Apple is currently investigating this issue. We cannot comment on when it may be resolved.

I can confirm that four finger swiping through apps does work sometimes, it’s just very inconsistent.

I’ve also found that Voiceover will sometimes get choppy for no particular reason. It’s happened in facebook and safari, I believe — cant remember if it was only with my air pods on though....

Hey! I think I just found a really cool feature! And am wondering if anyone else has noticed it yet.
I was using Siri to read notifications this morning. I was on the other side of the room from where my ipad was. Normally, in previous versions, Siri would be done reading notifications, or whatever she was doing, and would stay on screen until you hit the home button. But, after she was done reading my notifications, after a few seconds, I heard my ipad say: `News, double tap to open` She shut down automatically. I tested it a few more times with open the podbay door, and something else, and it still happened! Persodally, I don't think it's a bug. I think this is a good feature, as I am doing other things in the morning when I ask Siri to read notifications, and sometimes throughout the day, I'm doing other things, and I may need to have her check the weather for instance on my way back to my room from jhe kitchen for example.

So far, I’ve encountered two bugs in IOS 12: First, when using my Braille Edge 40 Braille display to navigate to the last item on my iPhone 7 Plus home screen by pressing dots 4-5-6 plus the space bar, this keystroke no longer moves the phone cursor. Second, in the Books app, when Voiceover reads the text of a book, it only turns a couple of pages automatically when the font size is at the smallest, instead of automatically turning all of the pages as the text is spoken. However, when reading a book with the braille display, with page turning set to On when panning, Voiceover turns the pages as it should.

When you activate the pass code you cannot gain access to the item without putting in the code. The process may make you safer, but it is in no way practical. I have tried it both ways, and both ways are clutsy. I assume that this is a flaw.

The blog posts reviewing new features should really remind users to always restart one more time manually after updating to clear out glitches, since that has always seemed to be a "thing" with Apple devices and it's hard to know which bug reporters have remembered to do this. Most, I'm sure.
On my SE, 12 doesn't seem really any faster than 11.4.1. Although it speaks the name of an opening app or screen faster, a slight pause comes next and it's about the same in the balance. Most of the more dramatic speed-up users experience is probably down to a fresh reset, since I'm on a new SE and it ran 11 for only a couple of weeks before upgrading to 12. I have no complaints now, and I had no real complaints before upgrading. The new phone did eliminate some hickups with my previous SE, which had been dropped maybe 20 times too many with no case.

Hi all. Since updating to iOS 12, I have noticed a very strange braille bug.
I have my braille code set to UEB. Up until now, I have had no problem inputting web and email addresses in contracted braille using braille screen input.
This morning I tried to log into an account on the phone using my email address and the full stop kept coming out as double d. I had to input the address using the on-screen keyboard. As you can imagine, this was very slow and annoying.
I did check that my braille code is still set to UEB in settings and it is. As UEB has done away with the double d contraction in order to make the inputting of character strings such as web and email addresses possible in contracted braille, I can't think why this bug should be introduced into braille screen input.
Also, I have noticed that while using a braille display to read text in the Books folder, there is a longer delay when scrolling. I scroll manually using the scrolling buttons. In iOS 11 there was no delay after the button was pressed. Now I have to wait a couple of seconds before the next line of braille text appears. I am a very fast and fluent braille reader so this lag is a massive problem, particularly when trying to demonstrate the efficacy of braille technology with the iPhone to a room full of people.
Just wondering, has anyone come up with any workarounds to either issue?

I’ve seen some complaints here that the unlock screen does not have haptic feedback when unlocking it. I’ve upgraded to iOS 12 and I do get the haptic feedback. Sometimes a passcode will then come up but most of the time the Face ID works just fine.

I have been running iOS 12 since it was out and it works beautifully on my iPhone 7
Firstly, I love the password autofill feature built into Safari, when I logged in here on my iPhone, after clicking log in and being brought to the appropriate screen, iOS already prompted me and asked if I want to use my saved credentials to get in and I just click on the provided suggesttion and verified it with Touch ID and then double-tap on login button, how hedy and easy that is
I have absolutely no doubt about the performance improvements iOS 12 brings to the table, it is beyond noticeable
And I am also very happy to report that image description which was kind of broken for me on iOS 11 works again and quite consistently for me
So, there's no doubt this is the best major iOS release by far, hands down

I also downloaded iOS 12 and am loving it so far but there is one issue I'm having. When switching to speaker phone on a call, it cuts out initially for a good 30 seconds or so before coming back. I'm using an iPhone x. Anyone else experiencing this?

I am pretty sure I figured out why the four finger swipe only works sometimes when switching between apps. If someone else can test this out, I would really appreciate it. It seems like it works when you switch between a native iOS app like Messages or Settings and any other app. Where it seems to fail for me at least is when you try switching between two apps that aren’t iOS-native... although I just tried switching between messages and Safari and it doesn’t work. This is a really weird one. I did launch help by accident and did a four finger swipe right though. It says that it supposed to switch through apps, so they didn’t intentionally disable it.

For me anyway, Apple Books seems to take a lot longer to load than iBooks did in iOS 11.
Also, there is a longer Gap between the sound for the page turning effect, and voice-over reading the next page.

Scrolling in general in mail or specially facebook with a Focus first generation display works in inconsistantly. Braille and speech seems to get out of touch, speech has the correct focus but on the braille display you see the wrong text, it seems to get worse the more you get down to a list e.g. in facebook or the native mail apps. Braille is really getting much worse on iOS!!! new bugs is introduced and old bugs not solved.

Unfortunately this seems to happen only in Danish. When I write text I will here the dots read out not the letters or contractions! tested on 2 devices, both in mail when searching, and when composing a new message in messages. The old problem with speech when composing mails has not yet been solved!

This happens from time to time and Apple used to fix it, but this bug was also in 11.x, and reported both to Apple Accessibility and during the ios 12 beta test.

I have played around with haptic feedback. What happens it seems is that you get haptic feedback when you swipe up from the buttom of the screen, nno matter if the phone is unlocked afterwards or not. So the haptic feedback I think used to be happening when the phone is unlocked is no longer there, and is needed in the instances where you are outside and the first atemt does not always work.

Despite major improvements, there is one bug, 4-finger swype gesture left or right to switch between open apps does not always work. Hope this will be fixed in future updates.

Wanted to add a little bit of information to the serious bug regarding not being able to activate notifications on the lock screen. The blog post says it applies to phones without a passcode set. This isn't entirely accurate. It applies any time the phone doesn't need to ask for a passcode. Certainly that means a phone without a passcode, but it also happens in situations where the phone is unlocked but still on the lock screen. In my example, I touched my home button without pressing it, which activated touch ID but left me on the lock screen. I was then unable to activate any of my notifications.

This isn't that big of a deal since there's no real reason why you'd actually need to unlock the phone but stay on the lock screen, and you can still go to the notification centre after unlocking and manage them that way. But I like things to be as technically accurate as possible, to make sure people know where and when the bug will occur and also for reporting it to Apple.

Hi all, I have been looking at various new apps on ios 12 today to do various things. and I have noticed that I don't seem to be able to read descriptions of apps in the appstore on my iPhone x, I can see reviews, and screenshots but I am unable to see descriptions for any apps. can anyone else confirm this is an issue? and if so are there any work arounds, as clearly I need to be able to see descriptions to find out if apps have features I need. another problem I have found is that I can no longer see options for app support when looking at apps directly on my iPhone in the appstore.

when activating a button f.x in settings or a tab in facebook, voiceover will not always activate the button. It can also happen other places too. I noticed it sometimes on my IPhone 7, an iPhone x running the official stable release of ios 12 and an ipod running the first ios 12.1 public beta so if you sometimes have this problem please confirm it here. It can help to restart voiceover when it happens.

when you trying to adjust The Voice over volume using the router, and set it into one percentthere is no speech at all.but if you use Alex as your synthesizer, the problem will be fix temporarily

Hello all. Apologies in advance if this has already been asked, but I've got limited time. Just updated my iPhone 7 to iOS 12 earlier in the week, and based on my limited usage it works very well. I have a question though, and I'm not sure whether this is a longstanding bug or just the way it's supposed to be. But I've noticed that sometimes VoiceOver will read each notification twice. This was the case for me in iOS 11 as well. It doesn't happen all the time though. But it seems to happen particularly when I press the Home button while my screen is locked, upon coming back to my phone after doing something else. Anyone else had this happen? Just curious. I'm loving my iPhone, and if only I could ever do more with it that would be sweet.

With iOS 12 using Oliver enhanced as the reader I’ve noticed pronunciation of contractions has changed. For example:
He’s is read He S
She’d is read She D
We’re is We Re

Not prohibitive but certainly annoying!

Hi, I've submitted this bug to apple multiple times and was curious if ios 12 finally fixed it? When using 2 language keyboard, for me it was English and Korean, When I type Korean in an message field and flick up and down to scroll through what I've written, it is properly spoken in Korean when the keyboard is in Korean, however when I'm on the English or emogy koboard, it is spoken in English voice or just says unreadable text... Anyone able to check this? TIA

I have a blind friend who has limited movement in his fingers. He only has the use of 3 fingers on his right hand. In the previous ios 11 he encountered a problem deleting a contact. This problem continued with the ios 12 installation. For some strange reason a sighted person can delete a contact on his phone but he can't. The delete button appears to be missing. I havegone through a possiboity of checking tboth facebok and messenger to ensure there is no contact connection in his iphone contacts. These settings have been turned off. I have gone through the normal process of deleting a contact with him but no luck at all. The delete button seems to be gone. As I say a sighted person can delete any of his contacts. A very strange issue. Any help would be very much appreciated.

I know this isn't a bug report, but how do you set up the siri shortcuts? I've hunted threw the settings on my phone and IPad several times, but haven't been able to find anything.

Go to the app store, download the shortcuts app. From there, you can select shortcuts jo enable. Hope this helps!