The Accessibility Bugs in iOS 10 for Blind and Low Vision Users, From Serious To Minor

This is something which has existed since the early iOS 10 betas. While I consider it a bug, others may not. When browsing the home screen, the name of the icon is read, VoiceOver then pauses for about one second and then says "Actions available." This is, of course, to indicate the fact that actions which allow the app to be moved are available. Still, I would love the ability to turn this "Actions available" announcement off. I don't need to hear it after every single icon. This announcement remains, even if hints are disabled. While this is probably considered a minor bug, it is still very annoying!
Jim

Hi there,

I've been able to find quite a bit of bugs myself. Last night I emailed the following message to accessibility@apple.com. You might say that some of these are more feature requests than bugs, but they still need to be taken care of I think to improve the experience of the user. If you are able to reproduce these bugs on your devices, I strongly urge you to report them to Apple as well:

"The following is a list and description of the VoiceOver related bugs I have encountered while testing iOS 10 GM on my iPhone 6S over the last five days.

LOCK SCREEN SPECIFIC BUGS:

1. After waking the device with the new ”raise to wake” function, the screen will sometimes turn back off although the user is interacting with it via VoiceOver. If you instead turn it on by pressing a button, the screen will not turn back off until a few seconds pass without the user touching or swiping on the screen. I.e., VoiceOver is currently not telling ”Raise to Wake” that the device is in use and the screen should not be turned off.
2. Swiping left and right on the lock screen to move between elements does not behave reliably. The VoiceOver cursor sometimes jumps straight from the time to the notifications or the ”press Home to unlock” text (thereby skipping the date). Other times it gets stuck at an element, for example, the notification on the bottom, instead of continuing down to the ”Press Home to unlock” text and the ”Page 2 of 3” control.
3. Once or twice after waking the screen, VoiceOver started reading the elements on the widgets screen although the basic lock screen was actually being displayed. I could swipe to move around the widgets, but nothing would happen when double tapping.
4. In the Widgets view, when trying to add new widgets, VoiceOver does not read the names of the available widgets; it instead just says ”Insert New” and ”New”. I.E., VoiceOver says the word ”new” rather than the name of the widget.
5. The new sound that indicates that the device has been unlocked with TouchID, as well as the beep that indicates that the screen has been turned off, are not always played. To help make things clear for the user, I believe it is important that they are played in every circumstance. For example, the unlock sound is not played when the passcode screen is visible or when unlocking the device immediately after waking it, and the beep is not always played when pressing the Sleep button if the device is unlocked.
6. When using ”Quick Reply”, accessed by 3D-touching an iMessage notification, there is some VoiceOver lag while typing, making it slower than usual. Also, it is not possible to swipe left and right to move between the received and sent messages and the section with the ”Compose Message” text field, the Send button, etc.
7. After swiping down on the ”Page 2 of 3” control to get to the widgets, the VoiceOver cursor tends to land on a random (unpredictable) position, usually in the middle of some widget. It would be much better if it would always initially appear on the Search text field, at the very top. Also, what would then be the ”Page 1 of 3” control is nowhere to be found in the widgets screen.
8. Handoff/Continuity is currently broken when using VoiceOver. VoiceOver only says ”double tap to continue using the app” without saying the actual app name, and it is not possible to swipe into and out of this button.

KEYBOARD AND TYPING BUGS:

1. When swiping up and down to move the typing cursor within a text field, VoiceOver has some issues reporting emoji. This happens particularly when the new ”Emoji suffix” option is enabled inside VoiceOver’s Verbosity settings. VoiceOver will remain silent instead of saying the emoji name, and sometimes it takes 2 swipes to go past an emoji instead of one.
2. When using the iOS emoji keyboard, VoiceOver will say a number after an emoji name, for example, ”grinning face with squinting eyes 36”.
3. On iOS 10, it is now possible to type in two different languages without having to select a different keyboard; iOS will automatically detect what language you are using and offer corresponding typing predictions and corrections. These predictions should be read in the appropriate language by VoiceOver, for example, if my device is in English but I’m typing in Spanish, VoiceOver should use the Spanish voice to read the typing predictions and completed words. No voice switching occurs right now.
4. An option should be added within the Accessibility or the VoiceOver settings to disable moving the typing cursor by 3D-touching the keyboard. The only way to do this currently is by disabling 3D-touch altogether, and I do not want to do this for obvious reasons. Unintentionally moving the typing cursor with 3D-touch is, perhaps, the most common cause of me making mistakes while typing.
5. When using third party keyboards, it is sometimes not possible to swipe right when the VoiceOver Cursor is on the ”Compose Message” text field to move to the Send button. This happens not only inside the Messages app, but also inside other messaging apps like Whatsapp.

OTHER BUGS:

1. Inside the Mail App, VoiceOver no longer reads email message previews on a message list, it just reads the mane of the sender, the subject and the time when it was sent, followed by the ”Actions available” hint. Previously, I believe that the preview of the content of the message was incorporated into the hint, i.e., if you disabled hints, you would no longer hear the preview either. Now, the preview is not read by VoiceOver regardless whether hints are enabled or disabled.
2. On iOS 9, quickly 3D-touching any element on the screen with VoiceOver enabled would activate it (same as double tapping), and if an item had specific 3D-touch actions, it would display them after 3D-touching for slightly longer, about 0.25 seconds. With VoiceOver on iOS 10, it is not clear to me whether now a slight press on an item will activate it, and a deeper press will reveal its 3D-Touch actions, or if the time it takes for the 3D-touch actions to appear just got shortened considerably. In any case, I believe that the way things were handled on iOS 9 is better since it makes it easier for users to tell iOS what they actually want to do. I’ve activated an app icon’s 3D-touch shortcuts several times when I actually just wanted to open it.
3. Apparently, within VoiceOver’s code, there are two hints which mean the same thing: Actions available”” and ”swipe up or down to select a custom action, then double tap to activate”. The problem is that VoiceOver seems to randomly pick and say one of these hints as it pleases. I believe that only the ”actions available” hint should be kept to avoid confusion.
4. In general, there are some issues when swiping left and right to move between elements, or when using the 4-finger tap near the top or bottom of the screen to move to the first or last element. The VoiceOver cursor gets stuck in random places or it does not actually move to the top or bottom, but to a random place. I’ve particularly noticed this inside the Podcasts app and while navigating webpages.
5. The new Speech section within the VoiceOver settings is much improved, I am very thankful for the extra voices, however, it still needs some work. After downloading a voice, it sometimes disappears from the list of available voices, i.e., the VoiceOver cursor cannot land on the voice name until you go back to the previous screen and then return to the list. Also, it took me some time to figure out that you had to double tap on a voice name to enter a different screen where you can then select its default or enhanced variant and the speech rate. I consider myself an experienced user, so I believe this will be very confusing for less tech-oriented people. I suggest that every parameter (voice name, voice variant, speaking rate, etc.) is kept within the same screen for each language. Finally, I believe that new Spanish Siri voices are now available on iOS 10, but I do not see an option to use them with VoiceOver in the Speech settings.
6. The additions that were made to the Messages app still need some work for them to be VoiceOver accessible. For example, if you send a heart or a kiss using digital touch, VoiceOver only says that the received/sent message ”contains digital touch”, rather than identifying it as a kiss or a heart. It is also unclear to me how to send full screen effects, such as the balloons or fireworks, while using VoiceOver. I have not yet tested stickers but I am concerned that they also might not be properly identified by VoiceOver.
7. The sound that is played when activating Reachability by double tapping the Home button does not always work. VoiceOver Sometimes plays no sound at all.

I hope you find this list helpful, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need further clarification.

Best regards."

started the update over the air as always. all was going well then I clicked install. after several minutes with the apple logo on the screen, it went into recovery mode prompting me to connect to ITunes. I am still attempting to sort it out to no avail. any suggestions??

I have not been a beta, so my question to you is that you said you sent this report last night. Was the version of iOS10 any different from the release version today? Is there any chance that some of these issues may have been fixed between the last beta version and the release of iOS10? Thanks.

Hi. On both my iPad Minnie 4th gen, and my iPhone 6 I ran into an interesting thing when entering my passcode after the phone rebooted right after the update. Swiping over to the area where you enter the passcode resulted in VoiceOver reading the letters that each of the numbers represent. For example instead of 1, VoiceOver said, A, B, C. 2 read as D, E, F. 3 read as G, H, I, etc. The only way to get around this was to press the lock button and try it again. After the 3rd try on both devices, VoiceOver read the numbers as actual numbers and I was able to enter my passcode. I did try pressing the home button but it didn't work as expected. Other than that everything seems to work as expected.

The update went well. However, my default speaking voice is gone. Oh well, I guess that gives me an excuse to pick a new one.

The update put my phone in recovery mode as well. I was able to restore my phone and I'm now doing the update through ITunes. Apple clames it fixed the error so hopefully others won't have this issue.

Here's an odd one I just found, VoiceOver, no matter which Voice you use at least in American English, mis-pronounces the word iMessage. It says iMessEdge. So to fix this, I went into pronunciations and changed the spelling of iMessage to iMessij. that's I capital M E S S I J. an odd spelling for sure, but it works.

I have also experienced the passcode issue. I will say though sure beats that hello setup screen that apple had in previous versions.

The bug in the contacts app is still there where using the table index it does not go to the letter selected and seems to randomly take you to a letter. For example if I go to h I'm at G contacts, S I'm at contacts that start with a P. I have reported this bug to the accessibility team. A work around for this is to move by headings.

i have bin a beta tester through out the pupplic beta program. I have more bugs on my iphone 6s then my ipod. I only used my ipod for the betas and it was more stable. fx voiceover looses sometimes focus when swiping through items f.eks in apps and home screen

I have the iOS text size set to a value larger than the default size. In Mail, the body text of emails isn't uniform. Some have the (correct) large text and others have what I assume is the default text size. This makes reading some emails challenging.

Hello! I have just upgraded my iPhone 6 to iOS 10, and am unable to unlock my phone! The issue seems that VoiceOver does not seem to read out the letters at all. All it says is the Greek symbol that belongs to the letter. It is also not reading out the numbers, either. Anybody else having this problem?

Update: I was able to get my phone unlocked. I had to enter my password by guessing the keyboard layout.

I too had to guess the letters as it wouldn't talk. Not even changing the voice from the rotor fixed it. Hopefully this is a 1 time thing.

OK, so here's the blog said that in iOS 10, moving apps out of folders doesn't work, but it does. So, in a folder, swipe down to arrange apps, then select move app, then choose that dropped out of folder, and then when you find the place where you want to drop the app, just choose dropped before or after, and you'll see the app on the home screen. I think someone confused this for a bug, because I just tried it, and it worked perfectly well

This works you can also pick move app then do a scrub and go to where you want the app and pick move app before or after folder-app.

I also ran into the problem with the passcode entry screen not announcing the digits on the number keypad. I simply used Braille Screen Input to get through that screen.

As far as I can tell, the issue only applies to the initial welcome screens after installing iOS 10. I have since been able to navigate the passcode screen without issues each time it has come up.

yeah i also ran into that problem, but used BSI to input my passcode, but working great now

I just noticed that when using Braille screen input, VoiceOver doesn't announce the character/word you're deleting, it just makes the keyboard click sound. Does anyone know if there's a way to fix this?

When encountering an alert while using a bluetooth keyboard, Quick Nav will be disabled and I have to reenable it by pressing both the left and right arrow keys simultaneously every time. Has anyone else experienced this? I've been able to reliably reproduce this on an iPad Air with a Logitech keyboard case.

Also, in the iCloud Drive app, the, "Delete," rotor action is doubled, requiring the user to flick down to the second instance of it for the action to work as expected; with the first one doing nothing when double tapping it.

When I first went into the edit widgets screen, I experienced the, "Insert widget," bug. After a few minutes, I went back and this time Voiceover read the available new widgets as expected and I have not been able to reproduce the issue since.

Hi

After upgrading to iOS10, I experience that VoiceOver has some challenges when it comes to closing notifications on the lock screen.

1. Suppose that I receive a message from Twitter while my iPhone are locked
2. When I subsequently unlock my iPhone up, I can flick down with one finger on the right side on my iPhones display, and hear the message before I pres om the home-button and really open my iPhone
3. Under iOS9 I immediately could flick down with one finger after the announcement of the icon of the message, and VoiceOver fine announced "close message"
4. Under iOS10, VoiceOver now instead of announce "Clear weather"
5. If I double tap on this message, the message disappears well enough from the lock screen - but the text is very imprecise
6. I also experience that VoiceOver not say the incoming message I receive when my iPhone are locked, but only what the time is.

Is other people experiencing the same issue?

My iPhone is an iPhone 6 64-GB.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Anders

I'm not sure if this is a bug, but it appears to happen by default when entering text using braille screen input.

If you make a mistake, voiceover doesn't report what you're deleting like it normally does.

It still deletes text, there's just no feedback.

A work around is to delete text with the on screen keyboard, unless you memorise what you're trying to erase.

Hi all, could anyone confirm this bug please? I'm generally impressed with how IOS10 works on my IPhone 5, however, there is one nuisance which is a deal breaker, hope they fix that soon. In the "More info" screen of the message thread there was an option to view all the available audio attachments, right now, when I click "Attachments", my VO freezes and I can't do anything with it. It's a shame if I won't be able to save my attachments anymore. Thank you.

Hello all,
I have not used iTunes to update a phone. Can anyone give me some instructions as to how to do this? Thanks.e

Can anyone create this one? When in the app store I will go under search and search for an app. The first time it works fine, now let's say I wanna go back and search for another, voiceover will not give me feedback on what I'm typing nor deleteing. Also is voiceover playing a sound instead of saying screen locked a new feature?

@Troy if you have Voiceover sounds enabled, then yes, the lock screen sound is new instead of speaking "screen locked."

A bug which was with us I think since iOS 9.1 seams to be finally gone, if replying to or forwarding a email, VO isn't silent anymore for a while after pressing send, VO continues working right away.

I also had the issue with the passcode on my iPhone 6 after updating and having to enter it for the first time, but afterwards I had no issues with the passcode field since.
Something strange which also happened after the update, my VO voice was suddenly on Tessa enhanced, where before the update I had it set to the normal Tessa voice, anyway no biggy.

Over all I'm a happy camper.

Hello,
I have noticed something odd with BSI since the update. When I am in screen away mode, the dots don't line up right. Dos 1 and 4 are not straight up from dots 2 and 5. They seem to be set sorta diagonal from the other dots. I am using a iPhone 6+. Is anyone else seeing this? Also I am not seeing the issue where you are not hearing what you delete whith BSI.

Regards,
Greg Wocher

Hi,

In general I rather like the update. However, often whilst scrolling, if for example I want to activate a button via double tapping, nothing happens, This is the case if I find the button by touch, or scroll to the left and right of the item first. THis has happened in the facebook, and audible apps, I haven't actually been able to log back into my audible app because the phone won't let me click on the sign in button. Any ideas?
Also, don't like the new mail setup for threaded conversations, but that's probably just because I have no idea what to do with it.
I like the bugs fixed in apple music :)

Greg, don't remember how to do it, but you may wish to re-calibrate your dots to get them lined up how you like them. HTH

Hi! Before IOS 10 was released, i heard several times that quite a few new voices would be added to VoiceOver, but, when looking through the Speech settings after installing IOS 10 today, most of the new voices don't show up anywhere in those settings. Both Fred and Victoria show up among the available US English voices, Fred already there and Victoria available for download, but none of the new Nuance voices, such as Tom or Lee or Kate or Ava, appear in any lists of voices under the Voiceover Speech settings; I can only assume that there was a slight glitch when I downloaded IOS 10 over the air, or that my IOS could be a bit confused by the fact that I live in France but have set my region to UK English because I am originally from the UK. I know this is a minor bug, since I already have the voices I liked to use in IOS 9, but it's still a disappointing one to have, as I would like to have at least tried out some of the new Nuance voices.

I noticed a bug when I use a Bluetooth keyboard to switch songs. Voiceover reads the track position every time the new song starts too play. Also, when I did the update on my iPod, the first time I was asked to unlock my device it only announced letters, not the numbers. but since I know what numbers correspond to which letters, I was able to get into my device. For example voiceover would read ABC for 2, DEF for 3, rather than reading the numbers. Since that first unlocking I've not had this problem.

Hi Clare! I don't know if you're aware of the language rhotor in VoiceOver, this allows you to have several different languages available just by swiping up and down when the language choice is selected. So, what you might try doing is adding US English to your language rhotor and see what kind of results you get. It might be entirely possible that the new US voices are only available via the language rhotor. Just a shot in the dark there.

Thanks for the tip, but I already have US English in my language rotor, as I sometimes use Alex for reading, and Fred and Victoria were the only new voices in the list of US voices when i opened up the US English screen in the Language Rotor settings, Fred already there and Victoria available for download. I should point out that, as a fan of human-sounding voices, Fred and Victoria don't appeal to me at all, so I would have liked the chance to at least try out Tom and other new human-sounding voices, but that is not to be for me, not for now anyway.

I upgraded to IOS 10 and I cannot delete multiple emails in the Mail app. I used to be able to do this in IOS 9. I get a lot of emails and it takes a lot of time to delete one message at a time. I am using an iPad and a Focus 14 blue braille display.

Also, moving apps with a braille display is much, much easier with IOS 10.

I now wish to report that, after mentioning my missing voices bug on another thread, I was advised to restart my iPhone, and now that I have done so the new Nuance voices have shown up in the VoiceOver Speech settings. Why they didn't appear at first is still a mystery, but, if anyone else encounters that missing voices bug, I suggest they follow the advice I was given and restart their i-device, hopefully with the same result as I got.

If you are not getting proper typing echo during Braille Screen Input, either while typing or while deleting characters, go to Settings - General - Accessibility - VoiceOver - Typing Feedback. There are three categories for typing feedback there: software keyboard, hardware keyboard, and BSI. Make sure they are all set the way you expect.

Additionally, I found that the typing feedback I got for BSI didn't match up with how the settings were set. I was able to fix it by disabling feedback for all three categories, then re-enabling feedback for each of them. After doing this, BSI has behaved properly with whatever setting I use for it.

Last night, I updated my iPhone 6s to iOS 10. Everything worked pretty well, but when deleting text with a braille display, the braille display says the actual character you're deleting, and it won't go away until I move the VoiceOver cursor. For example, I was sending a message, and I deleted a space. The braille display showed the word "space". I had to move the cursor to the "Show More" or the "Send" button to make it go away. Another bug that I found is that sometimes the braille translation inexplicably changes from English US to UEB. In most of my apps, it stays on English US, which is what I have it set on. But in apps like Safari, it switches to UEB for no reason. Has anyone else experienced either of these issues, and is there a way to solve them? Thank you in advance for any help!

Has anyone noticed this, when I'v finished using Siri and the Siri window is still on the screen voice-over is very laggy when I try to flick through the items. For example if Siri has done a web search and I try to flick through the results then voice-over becomes very slow

After updating to IOS10 my voice over is literally not working. I have tried speech on and off with 3 fingers, tried to put on my earphones, and even tried turning voice over via siri.

Have you tried contacting Apple Accessibility? They might be able to help you solve the issue with VoiceOver not working. Also, try resetting your iOS device. Nothing will be lost. Another suggestion would be to restart your device.

Sometimes the volume control goes way down. Make sure you turn up the volume. That's happened to me before when I thought Voiceover wasn't working.