Apple Releases iOS 8.3 with New Features and Bug Fixes for Blind and Low Vision Users

I really, really want to update now! So happy that Apple has picked up the ball again for the most part. Some commenters want to know if Siri is usable in iOS 8 since they use it all the time in 7. I haven't got the 8.3 upddate, obviously, but I do have 8.2, and Siri works like a charm for me. Clear speaking is the key, and I tend only to use Siri in my apartment where random strangers can't hear what I'm saying. Hope this convinces the 7 user to update. Also, I'm glad to hear about the descriptions for the wallpapers. I didn't even know that was a thing! I'm updating straight away when I get home. Sorry for the novela. Done now. Cheers!

The headings bug in Safari has also been fixed. Previously, when you would go to the bottom of the webpage and go back up, with the rotor set to heading voiceover would act like there were no headings. With the latest update, voiceover reads the headings.

I believe another bug that has been fixed is the one that was the greatest annoyance for me since ios8, and that is the issue where if you were deleting text the method didn't matter either a Bluetooth keyboard, the on screen keyboard or braille screen input. you would frequently find that several characters would be deleted together making text editing extremely frustrating and time consuming. I have sent several messages today and so far I haven't experienced this behaviour at all. This fix definitely makes the update worth it for me. Trying to edit text and then finding you accidentally deleted half a word is seriously not fun, especially when you don't realise this has happened till you try to correct your first mistake and make the problem worse by say for example joining words together that weren't in the first place, trying to correct that then finding you deleted half of the word that your original mistake got joined to.

Hey all,
Okay people are going to think I have lost my mind, but I took the leap and updated my eight gig four S to IOS eight. Just a note for those who want to do this, Do it through ITunes, it doesn’t use a lot of space this way for some reason. Here’s what I mean. When I updated my phone to 8.2 over the air, I had something along the lines of 1.9 gigs free space. Today, when updating to IOS 8.3 through ITunes, I now have 2.00 gigs free at the moment. Yes, this is not a lot of space, but for me it’s okay because I have my IPod touch, and personal hotspot for when I am on the go. The phone itself is not slow like I thought it was going to be. It’s actually responsive. I can not comment on earlier versions, because I just now updated my phone. I can’t comment on the HQ voices either, because I removed them for space reasons. Bluetooth keyboards, I’ll have to get back to you all on that, but the over all performance of the IOS on the four S seems to be as good as it can be on an older device. I have not seen the bugs mentioned, but I have not really what you said messed around with it too much today. For those of you who want to update the four S, this seems to be the best update for it in my opinion. 8.2 was a bit laggy, especially when opening apps. Now, when you unlock the device with 8.3 or open apps it is faster. I can not comment on brail screen input, only that for me it doesn’t seem to be working well on the four S. All though, it could be user Error on my part, I just can not get the hang of it. I hope this post was of some help to some, and I will update the more I use the phone.

spent all evening trying to figure out why this wasn't working. Embarrassing for Apple slightly, a flaw in an otherwise fantastic update.
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/04/09/touch-id-not-working-app-store-ios-8-3/
Many Users Reporting Touch ID Not Working in App Store on iOS 8.3
macrumors.com

The bug in which the iOS device doesn't read the carrier name on the status bar isn't major, but it can get somewhat annoying, especially for those of us who have the Wi-fi Calling feature through our carrier. I have T-Mobile, and it's always nice to know whether my phone is using Wi-fi Calling or not, since looking at the Wi-fi signal strength isn't good enough in terms of determining whether it's using it or not. Sometimes it fails to turn itself on when connected to Wi-fi, so I constantly have to double check.

Downloaded 8.3 last night to my IPhone 5s and it works very well. I do notice the product thing with facebook, I also notice the Siri responsiveness is also better. Apps seem to load more faster as well. I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed the no tone sound when the phone is turned back on, none the less no big deal to me.

I'm liking iOS 8.3 a lot. There are a few bugs which I'll list below. Note these aren't complaints but they are bugs.
1. As I stated in another forum topic, apps that make use of the camera like Tap Tap See, Cam Find, and Be My Eyes don't seem to work.
2. I use Sprint as my carrier, and for some odd reason, I don't see a Wi-Fi calls button under settings/phone, but my girlfriend does, and she also has an iPhone 6. We're on the same plan and everything. She has a Wi-Fi calls button and I do not. So there's your weird bug report for the day.

In addition to the touch id and app store bug, I've been thrown out of settings unexpectedly in completely random places twice since updating. Also, I'm noticing a pronounced battery drain on my Iphone 6, 20 percent during the night, something that wasn't evident under 8.2. Not complaining, overall much better from an accessibility perspective, but, as you use the software more, you see some issues cropping up. I can understand the frustration with the status bar bug as well.

Can anyone else confirm that a four-finger single tap at the top of the lock screen announces "Notification Center button"? From what I can tell, there is no such button, and performing a one finger double tap after this announcement does nothing. It is truly odd and I have not seen it in prior iOS versions; the four finger single tap at the top of the lock screen would announce the time prior to iOS 8.3.

It appears as some quick nav letters, such as buttons and headings, works even in non html-documents. I haven't noticed that before.

Hello everyone,
With this latest update as a Sprint customer I can now use the WiFi calling feature. I found where to turn this option on, I don't really understand how WiFi calling works. If I turn this option on will all the calls I make or receive be on my WiFi, or does the other person have to have WiFi calling as well? If someone could explain a little more about WiFi calling and how it works I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

The Swedish voice is horroble in 8.3. If I decrease speech rate it's bearable but then speech is annoyingly slow.

If punctuation were set to none, the announcement appearing on Facebook should disappear. My phone exhibited the same issue, but this resolved it. Hope it helps someone. I have the punctuation setting enabled in my rotor; therefore, configuring this option might prove extremely useful, since you don't have to navigate among various screens to set it properly.

Reading further statuses on FB indicated a somewhat mixed experience: While having punctuation turned to none removes the announcement, VoiceOver will read a status without stopping. This means that each post will sound like a run-on sentence, making reading a little annoying--at least for me. But the option is available for anyone who's interested and doesn't have a problem with having posts read this way.

Disabling improved speech quality improves things when using Swedish VO. Still think the voice sounds like a Stockholm teenage girl with a lisp but I guess I can live with that. :)

Ever since updating to 8.3, my credit card keeps either saying not valid or it was denied. I did not have this problem on 8.2.

i'm not able to update my iphone4s on ios8.3,when i top the software updates the messages is ios8.2 your software is updated.means i'm not able to updates on the previus one.can you help me about this?thank you so much!

I'm seeing 1 nasty bug.

1. Go in to the iTunes store.
2. Go all the way down to quick links.
3. Tap send a A gift.
4. now type in the name of the person,or try to. It is a search button if you will and voice over just clicks. You have to search for the name
5. Type in a message and try and read it. It is at this point where the app crashes. I've reported this to accessibility as well as submitted them a recording of what happens. Let's hope it is fixed.

As for dice works you can tell if you don't see a bosun item in the game. Also I woudl email accessibility@apple.com with yoru thoughts and issues. include screenshots if possible of the areas.

This site is absolutely marvelous, anyway that's completely off topic. I have just now discovered some rather odd behavior in the featured tab of the app store. Although VO focus remains positionally correct and it navigates as expected, I have found that it will occasionally read apps consecutively without distinguishing between them. For example, in one swipe, it will read 3 apps, placing the focus on the last app it spoke and if you decide to double tap, it will launch the third app info, meaning that the app you want to get to can be obscured. I simply closed the app store, toggled VO off and on, and that seemed to return things to normal. Be fascinated if anyone else has encountered this, or does in the future. I hope I described the behavior appropriately, so you get an idea of what I mean.

Have you reported it yet? I don't look at featured apps but will take a look.

Take care.

In regard to the app store featureed bug i could not reproduce it. here is a small demo

Let me know if I did it wrong.

No, you did it absolutely correctly. Great demo. I will report it next week, though I'm loathed to because of all of the fantastic fixes they did include. Mine is now working fine, so this is probably an occasional issue that is difficult to isolate, though admittedly it was doing it consistently before I quit the app store and restarted VO. I didn't see this at all under 8.2, hence the comment. Regardless, if anyone does indeed encounter it, It's a simple fix. Thanks for going to all the trouble of posting an Audioboom.
Best,
Darren.

Hello,
I am having the same issue with my UK voiceOver voice being distorted. I have tried to turn the phone off and back on, restore it, going to the default voice and deleting the enhanced and re downloading it,no luck so far. . No improvement. Note: This is not the Siri voice, is the VoiceOver voice.

Hello Liz,
Just as you described.
Using iPhone 6.
Sincerely,
JLove

It's definitely slightly distorted, previous comments highlighted the same issue with some of the other voices. Personally, I prefer the Australian voice, and that hasn't changed luckily. I wish I could suggest something for you to fix it.

Absolutely will, many thanks again.

A lot of people, at least on this site, are very unhappy with the Daniel UK voice. I personally use Alex, so am not experiencing this issue, but just for a goof, I did happen to change the voice to Daniel as I have the UK voice in the rotor settings, and I didn't notice any kind of distortion. Does it sound like the voice is actually being played too loudly, or could this just be the way he pronounces different things? I define distortion as either being played too loud, or other audio is in there causing the audio to be somewhat muffled or otherwise fuzzy for lack of a better term. Is that what you guys are experiencing? No matter what, I'd quite definitely write to the accessibility email address on this one.

It's a strange one. Not using the voice regularly means it is difficult to identify a precise explanation. I'd anecdotally say it is more a pronunciation issue and there are times when the voice sounds fine, then there are occasions when it doesn't. I haven't used it for any length of time myself prior to 8.3 really, but there is something in the claims of those experiencing it certainly.

Hello,
Wi-fi Calling basically let's you use your Wi-fi connection as a phone tower. This is not exactly the case, but it's probably the simplest way to explain it. You can make regular phone calls while using it, regardless of the other person's mobile carrier, and it will use your caller ID as well. It will also work in areas where you might not have any signal at all, as long as you have a decent Wi-fi connection. As for the punctuation on the Facebook app, I think the Alex voice has always had this issue, so I'm wondering if the Facebook accessibility team could fix this on their side? They did make VoiceOver think the hints it's giving out are actually on screen, so I'm assuming they could simply remove this symbol for VoiceOver users.

I have heard that finger print doesn't work well in this new version. is it right? because i haven't inistal this update just because of what i refered on the above.

Hi.
this bug to me still remains active in many editing fields
and in spotlight, is a disgrace...
can not use the spotlight for nothing...
I can not understand why Apple did not resolve a bug as serious as this...
this bug should have been a priority on the list that apple did for corrections.
and the bug in the edit box in the apple store to delete the text in the search field, it is still present.
I use an iPad 2.
cheers.

Apple have now resolved the issues with touch id and the app store, fixing it server side presumably. Combined with the fixes in the update, searching and downloading apps is now a very slick experience indeed.

I retract my earlier comment about first letter navigation being broken. It actually works, but it is turned off by default. Pressinf VO-Q turns it on. I didn't realize until now that VO-Q is independent of the Left+Right Quick Nav setting.

As another poster pointed out, the double letter problem when typing with a Bluetooth keyboard has not been fixed. As before, the problem is intermittent and can be worked around by turning VoiceOver off and back on, but it is still very annoying.

I have also noticed several places where VoiceOver announces things in a different order than it used to. For example, in Downcast, when focused on a podcast episode, details like running time and publication date are now spoken at the end, after the episode summary. The presentation on screen is unchanged, but VoiceOver is speaking the info differently.

Although my overall experience in Safari is improved, I have noticed that webpages take significantly longer to load. My connection speed is unchanged, verified with the Speed Test app, and the issue is global, not just certain sites, so I'm pretty confident when I say this is a change caused by the iOS update. Maybe it's taking longer to load because of the necessary changes under the hood to ensure that VoiceOver behaves itself, in which case I will gladly deal with the delay.

In response to the one complaining about the Music app defaulting to the Radio tab, have you tried rearranging the tabs? At least on my iPad, the Music app will tend to default to whatever is the first tab in the list. You can move them around by tapping on More, then Edit.

I'm not experinecing any sort of double letter bug on my end. I've also kinda noticed the pronouniciation thing with daniel, it just seems like the inflection sort of changed a little bit, I guess thats what they mean by distortion. I have the voice in my rotor, but don't actually use it much.

As this was my major concern about ios8, I'm absolutely delighted they've fixed it. I've also noticed a slight delay in sight loading times, and also there are occasions on some of the sites I visit when you need to double tap and hold on links or imbedded media to activate the action or play the content.

I am experiencing a very annoying issue when trying to enable my sim pin, this is the pin code that actually locks your sim card found under phone and sim pin in settings.
I disabled my sim pin before restoring and updating my device, once the update was done though, I went to enable my sim pin once again and now I am literally not seeing a number pad for me to enter my sim pin to enable it, all I see is a screen that says enter pin to lock sim, 3 attempts remaining and that's it.
I can't use a Bluetooth keyboard to enter the pin, and I don't have access to braille screen input from the rotor in this dialogue to enter it either.
I have of course tried turning the phone off completely after quitting all apps and turning it back on with no luck.
I also tried physically removing and replacing the sim card again no luck.
can anyone else confirm this as an issue? I have a 6 plus.
what's even more annoying is that I can't try restoring my iPhone either, because something went badly wrong when apple released its latest iTunes update, and it has completely corrupted my iTunes installation and uninstalling it along with all other apple components hasn't helped, so I had better hope I don't suddenly need to restore.
as reinstalling fails. I can't do a system restore under windows either due to some kind of hard drive corruption.

Hi guys. Just as everybody reported the bug where when your reading a facebook status and Vo reads .Product is also happening in other places too. When i was checking my email on one of them it said .Product just like it does on facebook. So this must be a Voiceover problem.