The Accessibility Bugs in iOS 11 for Blind and Low Vision Users; From Serious To Minor

By AppleVis, 19 September, 2017

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Today brings the release of iOS 11. And, as is generally the case with major updates of iOS, it comes with some new bugs for blind and low vision users. So, to help you with making an informed decision as to whether to update your device, we bring you here, details of the bugs that members of the AppleVis Editorial Team have identified during their own testing of iOS 11.

As is now our routine practice, each bug has been given a severity rating; these ratings are based upon what we believe to be the implications for accessing and using iOS features and functionality and the level of impact on the overall user experience.

If you have not already updated your device to iOS 11, we strongly recommend that you read through this post and any comments before doing so—as this will allow you to make an informed decision on whether to install iOS 11 at this time. This is particularly important for those who use and rely on braille displays, as there are some significant problems in this first release of iOS 11 that we believe you should be aware of before updating.

As we always stress, we can make no claims on the completeness or accuracy of our testing. We are only a small team, and it is simply impossible for us to test all devices, configurations, applications, and use cases.

Some of the bugs listed below will be specific to a certain device, configuration, or use case. So, it is entirely likely that you will not encounter all of what we list; and it is also very likely that you will encounter bugs or regressions that are not mentioned here.

To help us ensure that the information on this page is as complete and accurate as possible, we would appreciate feedback from those who have installed iOS 11 —both to confirm whether they are encountering the same problems (or have found workarounds), as well as to let us know of any additional issues that are not on this list. Of course, it’s even more important that you let Apple know of any additional bugs that you find (they already know about the ones currently listed here). This post explains why you should report bugs directly to Apple, as well as the best ways to do so.

With all of the disclaimers out of the way, here are the new bugs for blind and low vision users which we believe to be present in iOS 11:

Serious Bugs

  1. When using a braille display or braille keyboard for text input, if you type quickly, the translator will not recognize all text typed. We have observed this behavior occurring both with US and UEB braille, and with both uncontracted and contracted 6-dot input. The longer the string of text entered, the more characters the translator will miss.
  2. When using the VoiceOver Actions Menu to delete a conversation from the Messages app, it is not completely removed from the list of message threads. In it's place will be left a “broken” item in the list which VoiceOver announces as “null”. Whilst in this state, the message list will not update to display or give access to any new messages; to resolve this, you will need to close the Messages app via the App Switcher. To avoid this problem, we recommend that you use the “Edit” button to select and delete conversations and not the Actions menu.
  3. There are multiple issues when attempting to read a PDF file with VoiceOver. These issues are sporadic in nature; problems our team has identified include:
    • Upon opening a PDF document, the document sometimes is not seen by VoiceOver at all;
    • PDF documents sometimes are not read in their entirety by VoiceOver;
    • An inability to swipe around the screen to locate the beginning of a document, necessitating that VoiceOver users explore by touch or use the “Headings” Rotor option to attempt to locate the text; and
    • An inability to consistently navigate PDF documents by heading, even when headings are present.

Moderate Bugs

  1. When using a braille display to edit large blocks of text, you may find that the braille cursor and VoiceOver both become sluggish if you try to move the cursor to a different place in the text.
  2. When you have both VoiceOver and Zoom enabled, you cannot enter “Edit” mode on the Home screen—meaning that you cannot delete or organize apps/folders.
  3. When both VoiceOver and Zoom are enabled, the behaviour of multitouch gestures (typically those which have you use 3 or 4 fingers) is inconsistent and unreliable.
  4. If you use the VoiceOver Actions Menu in the App Switcher to close the app that you were just using, you will commonly find that your device will crash and respring. This does not occur if you close other apps.
  5. As of iOS 11, Home Screen icons are managed using a new “Drag” option accessed through the VoiceOver Actions menu. If you start performing a drag, and then use the “Cancel Drag” option from the Actions Menu, you will commonly find that the item initially marked for dragging ends up in a different location on the Home Screen to where it was at the start.
  6. You can no longer use the “React” option from the VoiceOver Actions Menu on notifications of new messages. If you use the “More” action to interact with a notification; the resulting page shows the message and a reply field. The Actions Menu can be accessed here on the body of the incoming message and includes “React”, but double-tapping on this does nothing.
  7. After using the “More” option from the VoiceOver Actions menu on a Lock Screen notification, you may find on occasions that 1 or more other notifications which were previously listed on the Lock Screen are now gone.

Minor Bugs

  1. When on the Lock Screen or Cover Sheet (formerly the Notifications Centre), flicking up or down with 1 finger on the “Page x of 3” control no longer moves you between pages. The control itself will change (for example, from “Page 2 of 3” to “Page 1 of 3”, etc.), but the page itself does not change.
  2. When VoiceOver speaks a notification when it initially arrives, you may find that on occasions part of that announcement will be “in 1 minute”, rather than “now”.
  3. If you are playing audio through an external device, the “Playback Destination” button on the Mini Player screen of the native Music app no longer includes the name of the destination device (although this information is visually present on screen, it is not spoken by VoiceOver).
  4. In the Files app that is new in iOS 11, the VoiceOver Actions Menu for files and folders includes two separate instances of “Delete”. In some instances, one of these will be “Delete Now”; on other occasions, both will be “Delete”.
  5. After performing a search in the App Store, VoiceOver will behave as if the list of Trending Searches is present at the end of the list of search results. This is not the case; this list is not visually present on screen, and apps reported by VoiceOver as being in this list cannot be accessed. Note that the list of Trending Searches is present and works as expected before you perform a search.
  6. When you first go to the Apps; Games; or Updates tab in the App Store, you should find a “My Account” button near the top of this page. However, if you swipe some way through the list of apps shown on this page, you will find that this button can no longer be located (either by swiping or touch). To temporarily resolve this issue, we recommend that you double-tap with 1 finger on the Status Bar.
  7. When reading text that includes the “£” symbol, VoiceOver speaks this in the form of “Pound Sign 10” rather than “10 Pounds” (note that this is the symbol for the UK currency).
  8. On the Emergency SOS settings screen (Settings > Emergency SOS), there is an unlabeled element immediately after the “Emergency SOS” heading. This is a graphic showing the location of the Power button, but it is not spoken at all by VoiceOver.
  9. On occasions, audio will begin to break up and “crackle” (this has been seen with the device's internal speaker, and when playing audio through a connected speaker or headset). We have found that toggling VoiceOver off and back on again will typically resolve this issue.
  10. VoiceOver no longer provides feedback when using the physical buttons on a device to change volume.
  11. When bluetooth is enabled, but no devices are connected, VoiceOver will announce “Bluetooth Connected” when focus is placed on the bluetooth icon in the Status Bar. In this scenario, VoiceOver should preferably announce “Bluetooth On”.
  12. This behavior itself is not new in iOS, but we have detected what we believe to be a slight increase in the frequency of voiceOver becoming unresponsive and needing to be restarted to resume normal working behavior. In particular, it seems more common that spoken output from VoiceOver will stop, but the other VoiceOver sound effects continue.

If you encounter any additional accessibility bugs in iOS 11, please let others know by posting a comment below. When doing so, please provide as much information as possible so that others know exactly what to expect; when and where the problem occurs; and any possible workarounds you have found.

Changes, Not Bugs

As is common with major OS updates from Apple, a few changes to VoiceOver behavior have been made in iOS 11. The first time that you encounter one of these and find things not working as you expect, you might reasonably believe that something is broken. so, to help avoid this, here are some of the more notable changes that we are already aware of:

  1. You now need to set the Home Screen to “Edit” mode before the VoiceOver Actions menu is available in full on app and folder icons. This is achieved by placing VoiceOver focus on to any Home Screen icon, and then performing a 1 finger double-tap and hold until VoiceOver announces “Started editing”. The Actions menu will now have the option to “Activate” (which is used to delete an app) and “Drag” (which is used to move and organize icons).
  2. In some apps (notably the Mail app), the last used option from the VoiceOver Actions Menu is persistent as you move VoiceOver focus between items. For example, you may use the Actions Menu to delete an email. With VoiceOver focus now on another email, a double-tap will also delete that email. Until you get used to this change in behavior, we would suggest that you check that the Actions Menu is definitely on your desired option before double-tapping. This need for some care is exacerbated by the fact that this pattern of behavior is not currently consistent across the OS and apps.
  3. In Safari views embedded within other apps, the positions of the address field, Reader button, and Done button have changed. Reader is now on the right, whilst Done is a little tricky at times to locate by touch. We recommend that you use a two-finger scrub instead, or touch the address field or Reader button, then swipe right.
  4. In Mail, double-tapping the body of a message when composing an email now puts you at the start, rather than at the end.
  5. The Status Bar can no longer be located by touch when in a Home Screen folder.

One final observation that we wanted to make in this post, is that our testing has suggested that the display of notifications on the Lock Screen is not completely consistent or reliable. If you believe that there should be more notifications displayed on the Lock Screen, then one suggestion is to use a 3 finger swipe down on the Status Bar, as we have found that on occasions this will reveal additional notifications. However, do not be surprised if when accessing the Cover Sheet (the new name for what was the Notifications Center when your device is unlocked) you find notifications that were not displayed on the Lock Screen. We have no reason to think that this is a VoiceOver-specific problem, but wanted to mention it here as it might be easy to assume that it is.

To close, we want to stress that based upon our own experience with the iOS 11 beta cycle, Apple's Accessibility Team has strived to make the final release as free of bugs as possible for blind and low vision users. Naturally, it is disappointing to be reporting that there are new bugs, but it is our expectation that Apple engineers will be working hard to resolve these and the other outstanding bugs as soon as possible.

Options

Comments

By Crysania on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hello

I have found a bug in the new Podcasts app. When I try to use the New option of continuing where I left off, it incorrectly announces the amount of time in the podcast elapsed. Like if the podcast is 58 minutes long, but you’ve listen to 20 minutes, it will still say that there are 58 minutes remaining in the podcast. I don’t know if this is an accessibility bag. I have already reported the bug to Apple.

By DMNagel on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

I will locate this keyboard settings and test my luck.

No this is a bug. Even with persistent banners, show on lock screen enabled and always speak notifications set to on in voiceover settings, this does not work.

By Charlie on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hi,

I have reported the following to Apple Accessibility. I think that this might only apply if you use SIRI voices as your default for Voiceover.

I am a blind person, using the latest IOS 11 on an IPhone 6S+ with Voiceover.

I live in the UK and decided to select the SIRI Female Voice as my default for Voiceover use and the American Male Voice for SIRI itself. All works well until an alarm, which I have set via the Clock app, goes off. If I press one of the physical volume buttons, to snooze the alarm, it seems to crash the speech. When I restart the phone and get sighted assistance to log in, I try the triple tap Home Button, to activate Voiceover, to no avail. I then use SIRI to start Voiceover, which does then start, but only with the standard Daniel voice. When I go into Settings, General, Accessibility, Voiceover, Speech, I discover that neither the SIRI Male nor Female voices have been downloaded and I have to download them again, befoe being able to go back and use them as my default speech.

It seems that there is a bug somewhere which removes UK SIRI voices, if they are the default, when an alarm goes off and is snoozed. This issue has happened consistentely to me now, after I have downloaded both Male and Female SIRI voices. This could be a major issue to blind people, if they lose speech on their phone and do not have sighted assistance to help them.

By Bingo Little on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

@Charlie you've described exactly what I found but more helpfully as you've got more of an idea about the scenario that caused this to happen. When it happened to me, I couldn't even power the phone off and was seriously concerned about what exactly I was going to be able to do. Luckily, some random swiping changed the voice to daniel on my language rota. I was very fortunate I had an additional Language with Daniel as the voice. have you also noticed that the Siri female in particular is somewhat sluggish with Voiceover? I now wish I'd stuck with martha (enhanced) which was the voice it used immediately upon the update, because I can't now get her back and she is different from the new Siri female voice. For the moment I have gone back to Daniel.

By cjsims on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

The following bug has already been reported to apple last night. Doing a 3D touch on the messages app while the context menu comes up, when you select a contact from that list, your not placed in ready to type your message to this contact. In stead, your put at the top level of the app, and then need to find the person who you want to message. Sent a screen recording to apple. The bug has been reproduced and a report put through.

By Curtis Chong on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Prior to iOS 11, whenever I wanted to launch an app, I could enter the Spotlight Search and type part of the app's name (e.g., pand for Pandora). Then, I would find the app listed. Now that I have upgraded to iOS 11, Spotlight Search requires me to enter the full name of the app (e.g., Pandora) before it shows up on the results screen. Fortunately, using Braille Screen Input (BSI), I have a work-around for starting an app that happens to be burried in a folder, but I am wondering how those who depend on Spotlight Search to start an app are finding this to work for them.

Thank you.

Regards,

Curtis Chong

By alex wallis on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hi all, OK I have a question about notifications under ios 11, I am not sure if this question is an accessibility bug or apple breaking something with all there notification center tinkering.
OK so the way I have my notifications set up is that I don't have them display on the lock screen because I don't want VoiceOver randomly reading me things out when the phone is locked in my pocket or sometimes reading me the time date etc.
So under ios 10 what used to happen is that the phone would be locked in my pocket, and I would get a sound play when something happened e.g a message on WhatsApp, then I would unlock the phone, and sounds would then play again and notification banners would pop up with whatever notifications had been triggered off while the phone was locked in my pocket.
Now though under ios 11 when I unlock my phone I get no sounds, and no banners but notifications do still display in notification center. this means for example if I have put my phone down to go and eat I must unlock it then make a point of checking notification center or looking at app icons to see if anything happened while I was away from my phone because I don't see banners or hear sounds once I unlock my phone.
If the phone is just locked in my pocket I do hear sounds as I would expect though. any ideas how I can get old behaviour back or is this just a bad move on apples part?
if I have the phone unlocked in my hand and an event happens then banners do still display and are read by VoiceOver and disappear as I would expect its specifically when the phone is locked I am having issues.

By chris R on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

I can’t tell any difference between the iOS 11 uk Siri voices and iOS 10 ones and in fact I’m a little underwhelmed by Siri, can’t see anything that has changed.
I can still open apps using spotlight just typing in a few letters however the app you want never appears in the top hits as it used too but instead is somewhere lower down in the grid of results. Also for some strange reason VoiceOver reads the top hit as whatever letters you searched for. E.g if you type in WI, perhaps to search for Wikipedia, VoiceOver reports the top hit as ”WI” which isn’t anything!
Edit: I think I found a solution to the spotlight problem. If you turn off Siri suggestions in search in the Siri and search section of settings this seems to revert spotlight to the old behaviour.

By Ipadman on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Could someone explain a bit more about the problems with the PDF Support please.
I use this format consistently and was wondering if the problems occur on all devices running iOS 11.

By Jesus R on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hello,
This looks to be a bug, and I am not sure if its only me. Safari seems to have a problem with longesh bulletted lists. I was reading this article on Safari this morning:
https://www.cnet.com/news/get-a-moto-g5s-plus-for-229-99/
and on the list of items in it, I seemed to be jumping back up to the address bar when flicking to the next line.

By Daniel on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

After updating to iOS 11, when I activate VoiceOver in Safari, the browser locks up. Happens sporadically in Chrome too. Still trying to figure out why. Tried reset settings but didn’t help.

EDIT: Solved through reset of content and settings.

By Travis Roth on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

iOS 11 seems to not disconnect from Braille displays when the screen is locked. This is a change in behavior. It does not seem to bother all displays, e.g., I've not noticed any crashes, etc., with a Focus display. However using a Handy Tech Active Star with an iPad and iOS 11 this seems to cause issues, it works for a time then the display will stop displaying Braille, or keys will stop responding or both. I still have iOS issues with actilino too but this may or may not be related. My advice for any Handy Tech user who hasn't updated yet would be to wait. Or if anyone has solved this please let me know.

By Ather on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

I use a sparin wireless keyboard for most of my bluetooth stuff, and I've definitely noticed one annoying thing that has changed. if anyone can offer a workaround for it, I'd appreciate it.
Before, I would be able to press the button at the very top right-hand corner of the keyboard (the button to the right of the F12) and it would conveniently lock my device for me. this is no longer happening. the button now does nothing at all. Does anyone have any other ideas how else I can lock the device using the bluetooth keyboard instead of the device itself?

By peter on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

I am finding this new "feature" of the last used action item being persistent in the mail app very, very annoying and prone to errors.

First, when one swipes through the list of actions when focused on a mesage in the list of messages in the mail app, the "activate" action is described as the "default action". Thus, when I move to another mesage in the list, I expect that if I single finger double tap the default action will really happen. This is not the case.

Secondly, if the user always have to check which action is actually active before performing the action, this is a waste of time and very inefficient. I shouldn't have to check which action is active if there is a "default action" (and there should be a "default action" for any item).

If you are as frustrated with this new behavior as I am and have accidentally deleted as many messages as I have and/or or had to take more time to check which action will be performed, I encourage you to let your voices be heard by writing to the Apple Accessibility support team.

--Pete (hopeing this will be changed back to how things were in iOS 10 really soon)

By Bobcat on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Audio routing seems to be missing from the roter.
Also the switch in Siri to choose the microphone she listens with seems to be missing.

By DJX on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

@Alex Walis, not sure about all apps, but I have my Outlook notifications set to banners, but not to show on the coversheet (lock screen), and it works as it use to in iOS10, I only get the sound when a new mail comes in, but then once I unlock my phone, the outlook notifications play again and the message previews show up, unless there are allot of them, in which case outlook just shows an alert telling you how many new notifications/items you have.

I don't know if this behavior is app specific though, since this is the only app that I have set to not show me notifications on the coversheet, and mainly because I get allot of mail.

But it has been my experience that VO will not say anything when a new message comes in or a new notification comes in, unless I unlock the phone, or if it's just sitting right side up on a table, and the proximity sensor is not blocked. If you have your phone in your pocket and don't want VO talking, just be sure to have the proximity sensor covered or facing your leg/inside of the pocket, and VO should not speak, since the phone will not even wake up since it knows the proximity sensor is blocked. If you have raise to wake on though, this might be triggering the speech and awakening of the phone; I noticed that VO would randomly speak while the phone was in my pocket if I had the feature turned on, so I got rid of it, and with it got rid of that problem. :)
If your phone is on the table and you don't want it speaking, turn it right side down, so the proximity sensor is covered, so the phone won't turn on when notifications come in, unless it's a phone call.

I've been using my phone is this way since the 4s days, and have never had an issue with it.

By DJX on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

For those who are bothered by the constant alerts from the phone about the new do not disturb while driving feature, either turn it on and then turn it off while driving, or have your phone unlocked while you start driving, and select "not now" when the alert comes up, and it *should not* come up again.

By DJX on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

I reported this minor 1 in beta, but I see it's still around: if you do a 3 finger swipe right from the first page of the home screen (the today view), VO will not change pages, but it will say "page 0 of X" where X is the total number of pages you have available on the home screen. This doesn't happen if you swipe left to the last page on the home screen.
Anyone else notice that?

By DJX on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Has anyone been able to get alternative characters to work when using the default keyboard?
When using touch typing, I would place my finger on the desired character, such as n, and wait a second or 2, and the alternative characters such as n~ would come up. I would then slide and pick the 1 I wanted. Now they don't seem to work or show up at all. Can anyone else confirm or deny this?

By Frank on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

No, its broken.
I too have to use the braille input method as well. Sucks because I use a bluetooth keyboard exclusively while traveling and it was of great functionality to use spot light search. Now I have to bring the keyboard out of quick nav and right arrow to the app I want. I can still press enter after typing the start up spelling of the app I want, but since there is no verbal verification I have opened other apps with similar spellings.

By Frank on Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hello. I am dealing with a bug that was randomly present prior to IOS11 while typing in edit fields.
When using a blue tooth headset or ear buds, a beep is heard after every word voice over speaks.
It is a bit of a random happening according to devices, but for my 6s is pretty consistent.
Makes it a pain to work with because even blind square is hunted by it.

I am also having external devices dropped with no warning randomly after a few seconds of activation.
Again this one is random.

My admittedly imperfect work around for the Do Not Disturb while driving annoyance is to set it to automatically turn on when Bluetooth is connected. Our car, doesn't have Bluetooth, and since enabling this feature, I have not received a single DND nag.

By PaulMartz on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

When I compose a new text and start to type in a recipient name, a list of candidates appears. Normally, I can swipe right to get into the list and land on the topmost candidate. This works fine as long as I'm not using a bluetooth keyboard. Since iOS 11 on my iPhone SE, VO+right arrow (to swipe right) takes me to the "add contact" button and then stops - I can not continue into the recipient candidate list. In fact, I have to VO+left arrow multiple times, and focus eventually takes me to the list, but takes me to the bottom (least likely) candidate in the list.

The odd thing is that just having the BT keyboard turned on causes this behavior. Swipe right on the screen either takes me into the list, or doesn't, depending on whether or not the BT keyboard is powered on.

Why would the simple act of turning on a BT keyboard change the swipe order of controls in the text message app?

I could not reproduce the issue in the Mail app when I tried to perform the equivalent function, so this issue is specific to the Message app.

By PaulMartz on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

My fix for the DND notifications was to go into Setting and set Do Not Disturb to Off. The iOS installation apparently sets this to Manual, which triggers the notifications.

Once the notification is displayed, I could never find a way to do anything effective with it via VoiceOver. It's not an accessible notification, as near as I can tell.

By Patrick Hurst on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

In reply to by Milica Milić

Found that bug as well; street names are read as you flick on the screen, but when using turn-by-turn guidance, the guidance voice is interupted in the middle, e.g. "In 200m, turn left on F..." when it should say "Fifth Avenue".

By Kerby on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Has anyone experienced this voice mail bug? When I hit voice mail in my phone, I can hear the voice mail but I can't delete it. I have to close the phone in the app switcher and go back to it then the delete option is there.

Hello,
to help out.
You can turn off do not disturb wile driving by going to the do not disturb setting and setting do not disturb while driving to manual.
But this does not affect do not disturb in general. You can still use it how ever you want to.
I am referring strictly to the do not disturb wile driving setting itself.

By Jeff on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

I've experienced a problem being notified of my incoming texts on my new iPhone 8. I've received several texts without hearing any sound and the text is not spoken, although I want it to be spoken. I even received a phone call where the caller ID was spoken, but the phone didn't ring. That too was very strange. Any ideas or work arounds? Do Not Disturb is off.

By Holger Fiallo on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

First let me start by stating that I am very disappointed with iOS 11. It is the worse iOS ever. I been using iPhone since 4. Second action does not work well. When I am in notification and slide up to clear a notification does not work well. also in email. The roter does not work well. When I select action in email, to delete email, works for 3 or 5 emails but later it changes. I also get the beep from my Bluetooth. It hurts my ear. I like apple but this is the worse iOS.

By DPinWI on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

I have been trying the new Siri American female voice for voice over. On my iPhone 7, the "B" bug is back. The letter is pronounced as "E" when typing, and words starting with a capital B are often mispronounced. I am back to using Ava. Despite liking the new voice for clarity and expressiveness, I don't like the pregnant pauses, and this letter B issue.

By Troy on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Not sure about Siri, but Samantha has been doing the b bug issue since ios9.

I can confirm that smart invert is limited in its usefulness. A workaround for me is to have the color filters option turned on, and select a grey theme. That can be toggled on and off by triple clicking the home button.

The biggest issue for me with smart invert on, is that any incoming calls received appear on a screen so light that I cannot tell what number is calling. If it weren’t for having voiceover on, telling me who is calling, the phone part of my iPhone would pretty much be useless!

By Holger Fiallo on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

To delete emails,go to edit, select email you want to delete, go to trash button and tap on it. It seems that old way to delete does not work. Also notification still not working and when you want to delete message, action does not work. I have to use the roter to select action. It does not stay still.

By Reggie on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

As was noted, a very annoying bug is currently out there showing the remains of a broken message after you delete a text message using the action menu. The nul item goes away after I have closed and reopened the messaging app and I am hoping this is resolved very soon.

As for the notification screen, I get a lot of push notifications, primarily from my Overcast podcast application alerting me to new episodes and when alerts come in from MLB At Bat. IF I am working inside another app with my screen unlocked, such as when I am viewing a video in YouTube, the alert will read as it always did in the old versions of iOS. But if the screen is locked, all that VO announces is the time. I have to physically swipe around to get the notifications to read and I find this annoying.

One other thing and I don't know if this is unique to those of us using VO, but some times the device will run hot and battery levels quickly drain. However I can't seem to identify the particular app that is draining the battery. Powering down and restarting the device seems to be the only solution as this was happening at one point yesterday with VO indicating when I doubletap the home button that no apps were open to be managed. Any thoughts and observations on the above items are appreciated. I'm a heavy user of VO and iOS for over 3 years, so I can hopefully help some folks out as well. DM me at 1baseballnerd on twitter.

By Holger Fiallo on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

First let me start by saying that I had an apple iPhone since the 4 came out. I got the 4s, 5, 5s, 6 and currently have the 7. Love apple and like the iPhone. With this mind, iOS 11 is the worse system ever. It has more bugs that any other iOS in the past. Notification does not read messages, clearing notification does not work well, message does not delete messages by flicking up finger any more, email does not delete emails by flicking finger up anymore, app switch sometimes does not close the app when I finger up to close, instead it spells the name of the app. Also roter does not stay where I select. Action moves and sometime letter is selected. It is sad that I have to say this because I like apple and always downloaded the new iOS as it came out without any issues.

By Cliff on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hi all!
I can't find that this has been mentioned here before, so maybe it's a bug on only my iPhone 7?
Ever since updating to iOS 11.0.1, I constantly' have the region tracking icon, or location tracking, showing to' the right of the clock in my status bar. I was a bit worried that this will drain my battery faster, so I went through the list of apps using location services under the privacy settings, but no apps is currently using location services.
Even when I completely shut off all location services, VoiceOver still gives me the location icon up in the status bar, and that shouldn't be possible. I have yet to get a sighted person confirm that the icon actually is showing, and that it might just be a VoiceOver bug that causes VO to announce the icon.
Anyway, I think this is a bit wierd, and I don't like having that icon there 24/7. For once it might affect my battery, and for second I don't like having my location constantly shared, especially when I don't know where that information is going. I was for a moment thinking that my iPhone might have been hacked, but I doubt it. But you never know. Either way, I don't like it.
By the way, my iPhones language settings is set to norwegian, so sorry if I don't use the correct english terms for location tracking stuff. :)
But is this just me, or have others seen this too? Is this a VoiceOver thing, or is this location tracking icon real?
Cliff

By Cliff on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

In reply to by Cliff

I also forgot to mention that to the right of the location tracking icon in the status bar, I also have a icon that says "Bluetooth connected", even though no bluetooth devices is currently connected. My AirPods is currently disconnected and sitting safe in it's charger, and my Apple Watch is left behind at home while I'm now at a hotel several miles away from home, so nothing should be connected. That is also confirmed in the bluetooth settings, where I've checked to see if anything is connected at the moment, and nothing is...
I think this is a bit spooky...

By Missy Hoppe on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

While I agree that this new IOS has some pretty annoying bugs, I like most of the changes to notifications and app switcher. There are things that absolutely need to be fixed ASAP, especially in messages and reading notifications when phone is locked, but even with those bugs in the equasion, I remember ios 8 being far worse.

By Dipendra Manocha on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

I am using IPhone SE and IOS 11.02. With the upgrade to IOS 11 I am facing problem in messaging app. I am no longer able to delete messsages in the message app. I swipe up with one finger to go to delete option and double tap while a conversation is selected. Nothing happens and the message is still there in the list. If I activate edit button on the left top corner and double tap on an conversations, again nothing hapens, message is not selected and the delete btton on right bottom of the screen is inactive.

f I double tap any conversation from normal message screen, I get to the list of messages in the conversation. Here I can swipe with single finger to go to "more" option and use the delete command from here. It does show confirmation and I am finally able to delete the selected message. When I am back in the manu list of conversations, the conversation still remains. It is only after re- starting the app when this conversation is finall gone from the list.

This is a majour bug and I haven't seen any such bug reported till now. Is it specific to IPhone SE or am I missing something?

By steve t on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

I use a variety of IOS devices and am noticing the following symptom on ios 11. in an app where you are scrolling down a page or more of information and then trying to navigate away from that (going back for example), although the button is announced, it does not perform the action. You can scroll back up to the top (page one of an article) and then it will work. a good app to check this out on is something like the guardian newspaper app or apps like Lire.

My other observation is that in a small number of cases the focus is announced as usual but on double tapping I can activate a button next to the one announced. this is not consistent across apps at all - but within apps very consistent. a good one to try is thetrainline where selecting a return train ticket results in selecting terms and conditions.

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By Matt92Machine on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hi there. I’ve experienced a bug with Siri where it will just randomly crash after I ask it a question, and the whole phone will just hang for a few seconds, then it will come unfrozen and start working again. This is with voiceover enabled and on the iPhone 8+. This bug is inconsistent, most of the time Siri works just fine, so I am wondering if this happens with sited users as well. Also, having a problem with a bluetooth keyboard where sometimes when I turn it on, it will just make that end of list sound whenever I type a key, then when I turn the keyboard off, it will be stuck on a number and won’t stop spamming it until I turn the bluetooth keyboard back on and press the number. I’ve experienced this bug much less often since I upgraded to the iPhone 8+, but it was a serious issue for me on my 6+, as it would happen a lot more frequently. I use a Logitech keyboard. I hope Apple fixes all of these issues. This hasn’t been as bad as IOS 8’s release at least.

By peter on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Yes, I have noticed this in several apps, but not very consistently. IN the News app, for example, I will sometimes double tap the "back" button from within an article to get back to the list articles, but no matter how many times I perform the double tap, I will remain in the article. sometimes I can fix this by scrolling the page, other times by getting out of the News app and then back in again.

As I said, most of the time double tapping works, but occasionally it is kind of persnickity. Performance could be more reliable.

--Peteof article,

By Kerry Fielding on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hi folks. Pretty discruntled. I've managed to hold off upgrading to IOS11 until last night and then my phone left me with no choice but to upgrade to IOS11.03 and frankly, I'm not enjoying the experience particularly. I cannot delete messages and despite coming here to find out how to get around this, the proposed method does not work for me. I'm on an iPhone SE. Any tips?

By That Blind Canuck on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Ouch, sorry to hear you were forced. I also keep getting the notification on my iPad Mini, saying that iOS 11.0.3 has been downloaded, but that is only because my device was plugged in and on wi-fi. I found that if you simply turn off wi-fi while your device is plugged in for charging, and then unplug when charged up and then turn on wi-fi afterwards, that prevents your device from downloading in the background. If your device has downloaded iOS but not installed it, just go to Setting, then General, then I think iCloud and Device Storage, and then select the Manage Storage for your device, not the iCloud, you can find and delete the download.

As for those who've the download and upgrade has already been done, for the iMessage glitch, I believe that this may be resolved in iOS 11.1, so once it is released in a week or two, that should fix many of the bugs we've been encountering. In the meantime, if you encounter bugs, keep sending your comments to Apple Accessibility. The more people send them feedback on issues, the more they'll realize the severity and ensure it gets fixed in a future update.

This is the nature of new iOS 1.0 upgrades, there are always bugs. Granted that most of these should have gotten picked up in the beta testing. Although every year when the new version of iOS comes out, there are always bugs. My best recommendation is to folow my tip, especially when a new 1.0 update is available, follow my suggestion to prevent the update to download, and wait until the x.1 update is available. Usually by this point, most of the bugs have been fixed and you'll get a much more solid version. HTH!

By tunmi13 on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Sorry for typos. Not so used to this new braille display editing thing. Wish the old editing mode was still around, but...
 Hi,
I cracked my old iPad running iOS 9.3.5, and I have to say, 4 years of using it was not making me prepared for iOS 11. The glass was already at its breaking point, and without knowing, I pressed the home button to activate Siri, and cracks appeared on the screen various spots, also causing some glass to break. But anyway, my Mom gave me an iPad Mini 2 I think, maybe a 3 or 4.
Anyway, this comment's not about that, it's about my experiences with iOS 11 with my iPad.
Honestly, I have to say, it's ok. However, as you guys stated in the blog, yes, for me, the volume buttons are giving no sound that they are decreasing or increasing.
Also, I've found on the suggestions screen below the dock, that it is a slight bit sluggish. When trying to navigate it, it takes little while to respond.
Also, I've noticed that the My Account button disappears, but I have a solution around that, you can four finger tap at the top of the screen and flick right a few times.
This is only a work around, but it works pretty well on my part.
Hope this helps.

By Richard G on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hey, Wanted to add these bugs in case their not posted.

On google news site with rotor on links, when encountering each link, it reads the links line by line instead of reading entire link, so you have to flick down several times to get through each link.

Also in Safari using item chooser to jump back to a previous spot on a long page, it's not finding items that I know are there, and it jumps out of focus when swiping right or left, then seems to disappear.

By alex wallis on Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 22:59

Hi all, I am not sure if this can be classed as an accessibility bug but its certainly really annoying and I don't know if its a deliberate change to ios or a bug. I tried reaching out to apple accessibility several days ago, but so far they have been silent.
the bug is as follows, under ios 10 all my apps used to pop up banner notifications when I unlocked my phone no issue they would play a sound, pop up the banner etc. this was really handy as I don't let any apps display notifications on my lock screen.
Now though I have found that if I have the show in history option turned on for any app under notification settings, then when I unlock my phone no banners or sounds play to indicate an event has happened in an app. this is incredibly annoying, as lets say I put my phone down then come back to it a few hours later after doing stuff and go to unlock it, I get nothing to indicate anything has happened in any of my apps unless I either check an apps icon to see if there are any new items. or I must make a point of going into notification center to check it.
But if I disable show in history for any app then it behaves as ios 10 used to, for starters I am not going to go into notifications and disable show in history for over 100 apps individually, secondly lets say its an app like WhatsApp the benefit of having banners show when the phone unlocks and things showing in notification center I could pop into notification center to read what people have said to me without opening WhatsApp and letting them know I was online or have read there messages. so now to get the old behaviour back I have had to sacrifice my way of previewing messages, emails etc.
if my phone is unlocked and a notification happens it displays as a banner regardless of weather the show in history option is enabled or disabled. thanks to this change before I realized how to fix it I did actually miss several WhatsApp messages and other things before I worked out how to fix it, as surely its not just me? I hardly ever bother with notification center unless I am in the situation with messages or WhatsApp I described above. also with banners if you have a lot of messages WhatsApp might show a notification of 6 WhatsApp messages, with having them show in notification center I could see what those 6 messages said now I can't do that without opening the app.

another issue I have noticed is the VoiceOver rotor has a habit of drifting one setting to the right quite often away from the actions setting, where you get things like activate default then flicking down delete etc. in my case this means the rotor sometimes is put on the sounds rotor option rather than the actions item.