Apple Vision Accessibility: the 2023 AppleVis Report Card

We are thrilled to unveil our 2023 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card, which provides valuable insights into the experiences and opinions of visually impaired community members who rely on VoiceOver, Braille support, or the low vision features on Apple devices.

To gather the ratings and comments contained in the report card, we conducted a comprehensive survey where participants rated their experience using Apple's various platforms with the available vision accessibility features on a scale of 1 to 5. Additionally, we invited participants to provide detailed written feedback and suggestions for enhancing Apple's vision accessibility features and user experience. The survey also included questions that assessed Apple's performance in addressing vision-related bugs, as well as the new vision accessibility features added in 2023.

We greatly appreciated everyone who took the time to complete the survey. Your participation was vital to producing a meaningful and accurate report card that reflects the real-world experiences of blind and low vision Apple users. Every completed survey response voiced valuable feedback and plays a part in advocating for continuous improvements in Apple's vision accessibility features.

The report card below presents a summary of the survey results, showcasing the areas where Apple excels and where there is room for improvement. It also includes a selection of participant comments, providing further insight into the specific challenges and opportunities related to Apple's vision accessibility offerings.

TLDR: the 2023 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card reveals slightly decreasing satisfaction with VoiceOver features and user experience across iOS, iPadOS and macOS compared to 2022, contrasted by mostly improved ratings for braille and low vision capabilities. While reactions to new 2023 vision accessibility features were moderately more positive with a 3.7 average rating compared to 3.5 in 2022, Apple's performance in addressing critical bugs remains low at 3.0. Overall the latest report card points to regressions in the VoiceOver experience but progress expanding support for braille and low vision users, tempered by persistent dissatisfaction regarding bug fixes.

This report card enables our community to speak up and be heard directly by Apple. We hope that it will spark productive and inclusive conversations about the current state of accessibility on Apple devices for visually impaired users and influence the company's future roadmap.

Report Card

Section 1a: VoiceOver Features

• iOS: 4.3 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 4.5, Most frequent rating: 5]
• iPadOS: 4.1 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 4.2, Most frequent rating: 4]
• macOS: 3.6 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 3.6, Most frequent rating: 3]
• watchOS: 4.1 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 4.1, Most frequent rating: 4]
• tvOS: 4.0 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.5, Most frequent rating: 3]

Selected Comments on VoiceOver Features

Anonymous wrote: VO as a screen-reading tool is very mature with a breadth of useful features. Image recognition, QR code scanning and text editing could be made slightly better with new features, however much of the issues in these areas are affected both by bugs and less developed features.

Jimmy wrote: It feels like Mac OS Voice Over has been left abandoned, and fallen behind its iOS version very far by now. There are so many helpful features offered on iOS that the Mac version does not. Examples include the ability to leave out unnecessary voice off of rotor selection, ability to customise Voice Over's default keyboard commands or shortcuts, and the AI-powered screen recognition and image description features (not that although the option does exist on Mac, but its practical capacity is far inferior).

Brian wrote: MacOS: VoiceOver needs some work. VoiceOver on Mac used to be an amazing experience, but over the past several years the "accessibility" of the VoiceOver software has left something to be desired. MacOS overall is still a wonderful operating system, with its minimalistic design and user friendly interface. VO just needs some serious attention to bring it back to what it used to be.

iOS: The iOS experience is possibly the most attended to accessibility software by Apple. It is highly customizable and intuitive. The new features and functionality we receive every year just makes VoiceOver on iOS that much more interesting and beneficial in the day to day lives of those within the blind community.

Steve Burel wrote: I hope they will include a screen search for quickly locating words or phrases in text based apps such as notes, mail, messages, etc.

The Evil Chocolate Cookie wrote: This entire set of features is going downhill. It’s gotten so bad that I ended up leaving the platform. From blatantly ignoring issues to telling customers their bug will not be filed because they are not using the latest hardware, yes, that happened, I’m just done.

Devin Prater wrote: Some of the features in VoiceOver are really nice, like hearing a sound for items like links, attachments, and so on. Having Braille formatting in the Books app is really nice too, and is something that I've waited for for years to make its way from the old notetakers like the BrailleNote Apex.

Anonymous wrote: Although VoiceOver has been a game changer, there are still many apps and situations where its performance does not allow me to be as productive as I'd like. As with most screen readers, the features need to go deeper than just surface changes or limited use case things, especially on the mac. I am disappointed in recent mac updates and limitations or restrictions to VoiceOver performance including new keyboard installation and recognition, menu reading and single letter navigation. Over all, I prefer VoiceOver and the mac/iOS experience but some competition or more attention to VO bugs would be appreciated.

The Oliver Kennett wrote: We need built in OCR on mac. Aside from that, I'd rather not have new features, instead fixing the issues at hand, VO losing focus on mac in web pages, focus bouncing on IOS and keyboards working reliably with iPad OS.

Leah Dykema wrote: VoiceOver has been awesome and relatively easy to use. The only things I wish were improved upon is 1. Different settings in VoiceOver were more cleat and understanding, 2. Braille Screen Input allowed me to type the contacted form of the word (for), 3. Braille Screen Input more accurately worked on iPadOS, and 4. I wish there was an in-build way to twitch between Zoom and VoiceOver due to Zoom messing with VoiceOver gestures and Braille Screen Input.

Anonymous wrote: Overall, I find that the voiceover features are a great way for blind and low vision people to use technology. I love many of its features, such as image descriptions, braille screen input, the ability to change the voice and the smooth way it feels to use it. However, lately there have been a lot of bugs that have made it more difficult to use and have made my phone (and sometimes iPad) less accessible. Some of these include:

1. Image descriptions randomly stopping working, resulting in me having to restart my phone.
2. Siri voices deleting and voiceover changing to the default for the selected language
3. On iPad when speech is off, voiceover randomly turns back on and announces the orientation.
4. The inability to swipe to the top of a page with 2 fingers if there is a widget.

Anonymous wrote: After another year working with Apple products, I'm still able to do all of the things I've normally done including making complex spreadsheets, light video editing, video conferencing, word processing, text recognition, object detection and the like. I haven't been barred from enjoying any new features and I've purchased additional Apple products for my home that all integrate very well with VoiceOver.

mr grieves wrote: VoiceOver has a huge array of features on all the platforms I've used. For a while, the problem hasn't been the lack of features, it's the bugs.

So I would rather have no new features and have things run more smoothly - particularly on the Mac.

The only thing I would like to see are better quality voices (the Microsoft Natural Voices blow away anything on the Mac).

All the current voices have some quirks that mean it's hard to find one that feels exactly right. Do all the British English female voices have to sound like posh BBC newsreaders from the 80s?

I'd also maybe like to turn off the option that makes VoiceOver try to interpret what numbers mean. For example, when it reads a version number out as a date, or it interprets "5m" as metres instead of minutes. But only if it doesn't break anything. And fix the bugs first!!

Zach M wrote: VoiceOver features on iOS are amazing, especially regarding making apps accessible and access to printed content with iPhone pro models. Mac OS with VoiceOver are very robust and there's not much lacking in the feature set.

Jennie A Facer wrote: I am glad to see Apple fixing bugs, rather than focusing on new features right now. That makes a world of difference. Please continue working on the Braille bugs as well!

Tyler wrote: While Apple has consistently proven their ability to continue introducing new accessibility features with great potential, I feel some of that potential is going unrealized by the company's lack of communication with their users as to the practical utility of such features, as well as their apparent inability or unwillingness to transparently respond to user feedback regarding bugs or other shortcomings.

An example of this is in macOS Sonoma, where Apple decoupled Single-key Quick Nav from Arrow-key Quick Nav, allowing users to navigate webpages faster and with fewer keys and keystrokes, without needing to use Arrow-key Quick Nav. However, when Apple made this change, there was very little documentation as to the expected behavior of Single-key Quick Nav in various contexts, as well as an initial regression that prevented text entry in most text fields throughout the operating system when it was on. While this has since been largely corrected with a new setting in macOS Sonoma 14.2, Single-key Quick Nav is still not always reliable or predictable, with commands sometimes going straight to the webpage when focused on a large body of text, and other times being interpreted as navigation commands by VoiceOver.

Furthermore, for users who prefer the ability to toggle both Quick Nav Commanders by pressing the left and right arrow keys together, this change introduced possible disruption or confusion to their workflow, with no way, short of downgrading the operating system, to revert to the old behavior. This is something Apple could have resolved after hearing from users during the beta period or following the initial public release, by simply incorporating a setting in VoiceOver Utility that determines what happens when users press the left and right arrow keys.

While the above description is just one example, I feel it illustrates the need for Apple to more substantively engage with users of its accessibility solutions, to ensure that the new features and changes introduced to its platforms each year are carefully thought-out and reasonably stable when released to the public, in order to maximize their true potential.

Section 1b: VoiceOver User Experience

• iOS: 4.1 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 4.2, Most frequent rating: 4]
• iPadOS: 4.0 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 4.0, Most frequent rating: 4]
• macOS: 3.1 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 3.3, Most frequent rating: 3]
• watchOS: 3.9 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.9, Most frequent rating: 4]
• tvOS: 3.5 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.4, Most frequent rating: 4]

Selected Comments on VoiceOver User Experience

Jimmy wrote: It used to be the case where Apple was the first leader in terms of accessibility solutions. However, for myriads of persistent and disruptive bugs, especially the not-responding and erroneous crashing/quitting of Voice Over, it has long been the case no more. It feels like Apple might have been sleeping at the wheel for rather too long now.

Bruce Harrell wrote: Apple takes entirely too long to fix serious bugs, such as safari not responding and voiceover focus. I no longer upgrade MacOS until the following August on the theory it will take Apple until August to correct MacOS accessibility bugs as much as they will, and I am very reluctant to upgrade IOS for the same reason. Because of their bugs, I am also increasingly irritated Apple does not give the user a choice to downgrade to the OS they prefer.

Sindre of Norway wrote: Using VO on MacOS to navigate the web is more complicated than navigating by using JAWS on Windows. If VO on Mac had similar functions to navigate specific parameters like Headings, Links and so on, my experience using VO on the web would be better.

Devin Prater wrote: The features offered by VoiceOver are numerous, but I feel like Apple should seriously spend a year fixing bugs, and less making new features. MacOS needs the most work, but when a Pixel phone is faster to respond, with apps opening instantly even with TalkBack, and an iPhone SE 2020 already being sluggish, I think VO should be heavily optimized. The Mac is more responsive than previous years, and Safari stops responding less, but navigation in Safari on web apps, like Google Docs and Salesforce, is imperative for my job, thus why I must use Windows. I could tell my boss to get a Mac, but I'm not as powerful as Tim Cook; I can't "buy him an iPhone." Besides that, Apple has featured Google Docs in WWDC when talking about iPad using desktop websites. So it isn't a stretch to say that Apple should support the workflow that users need from their devices, and not enforce the Apple way and apps.

Anonymous wrote: The experience of being able to simply do average tasks on my phone or mac is still liberating and still gives me frustration. I do wish more UX design research from experienced users of VoiceOver was conducted. It feels as if the design of recent features and UI is for the beginner or someone new to sight loss. I need a more productive experience and often that just doesn't happen.

The Oliver Kennett wrote: The overall experience on IOS is pretty good, this includes iPad OS. As stated, the bouncing focus needs to be sorted, the reliability of bluetooth keyboard input needs fixing, and there are still apps, home app, music need sorting to work better with voiceover.

With mac, the issues remain. It's a convoluted form of navigation, safari (despite the reported fix) is still hanging, navigating safari is getting worse with loops occurring when navigating by tab key, some things are not being read out at all. I use edge as it simply works better so it can be done, but that's no excuse. Word is a mess on mac, so you need to work closer with Microsoft to make this industry standard software work better with voiceover. Voiceover also remains chatty when the computer is left saying empty window login .. or something similar. It's most irritating. There are occasions when voiceover stops reading when in edit boxes such as address bars in web browsers or type to Siri… Basically, it's still a mess and feels like beta software as it has for several years. Either you need to get iPad OS up to scratch, or sort out this mess. My next computer will be a windows machine.

Finally, there is a persistent bug with voiceover on apple TV where, if one does a voice search with Siri, the up button stops working meaning you can only click down through the list of results. As a whole it's not too bad, could be better, but it's the best streaming box out there by a country mile.

Anna D wrote: iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS have some focus issues. for instance, double-tapping an item in iOS or iPadOS can result in a different item being single-tapped. Arrowing down a list of messages in the Mac Mail app and pressing delete can result in focus jumping into the body of a message. There is also a problem for anyone trying to run Windows on a Mac using VMWare fusion; the virtual machine won't start if VoiceOVer is running. This issue was reported by me, VMWare, and at least one other person in October, and it hasn't been fixed yet. It doesn't affect a lot of people, but the effect is profound and unpleasant for those who have to deal with it.

Mister Kayne wrote: Repeated issues with VO focus and with other features leaves one baffled but one has to live with it.

Levi Gobin wrote: Voiceover on iOS has been relatively stable with fairly few bugs for me. That can’t be said for macOS, however. With the latest version of macOS Sonoma, I am experiencing lots of little bugs and things that don’t work right. macOS Ventura was better, and MacOS Monterey was even better. Some of the big bugs that I have experienced include Finder saying not responding when first booting up the Mac, and safari not responding when loading webpages other bugs I have faced include Siri voices deleting themselves (which I also experience on iOS), certain applications not working right after you’ve entered menus, and a whole host of bugs that I don’t feel like going into detail about. Almost none of these bugs were there in previous macOS versions. Point being, macOS Sonoma is one of the buggiest releases I’ve ever seen for macOS. I’ve used every version of macOS going all the way back to macOS lion, and I have to say that lion feels less buggy and more stable than MacOS Sonoma. I have a 2011 iMac, and when that thing was running lion in compared to macOS Sonoma using Open core legacy patcher, lion was more stable than even the latest supported version of macOS, Mac OS High Sierra. As far as watchOS bugs, none at all! watchOS 10 is flawless! I don’t use the widgets so I don’t know how accessible or inaccessible those are, but for the parts of watchOS I use, I’ve had zero problems whatsoever, except for Siri voices deleting themselves(which I seem to be facing on pretty much all of Apple‘s latest operating systems).

Anonymous wrote: I am pleased to report that my Voiceover experience for both Watch OS and Mac OS have improved since the previous AppleVis report card. The bug where my Apple watch default voice would revert back to Male Siri after recharging the battery has now been fixed, and Voiceover no longer stops working intermittently. For Mac OS, although this was not a deal breaker for me, I am pleased to report that the "Safari is not responding" bug is a thing of the past. This was very frustrating for the majority of Mac users.

Anonymous wrote: VoiceOver on iOS has been a game changer since it first became available on the iPhone and iPod Touch in 2009. Yes, there are times when bugs are introduced, but the overall ease of use and consistent behavior between devices is fabulous! I can do everything from pay bills through my bank app, to playing games, corresponding with friends and family, and even make phone calls.

mr grieves wrote: It feels like Apple isn't really testing VoiceOver before shipping releases. It would rather introduce a feature that no one has asked for than making anything better.

I avoided iOS 17 for a while because it seemed to break critical actions like double tap. It's now OK but it feels like each major release things are just getting a little more unpredictable with focus. And it's just a little slower to unlock the screen.

But it's the Mac where we have the biggest problems. VoiceOver on Ventura was really bad. But Sonoma has brought with it a very large amount of new bugs and as of 14.2 none of the critical ones have been fixed. As a coder, the Mac is a truly terrible experience when trying to perform simple text editing. It should not be this difficult just to understand what the code actually says.

Major new versions of the OS should be usable from day one. We shouldn't have to put up with this. And no bug reports ever get followed up, yet alone fixed. I have no faith that the new Sonoma bugs will ever be resolved.

The only exception is Safari Not Responding but it is criminal that it has taken so long. I was literally unable to do my job on the Mac for months because Safari would not let me access the web apps I depend on. I was forced to learn NVDA and Windows in a hurry just for this.

It feels that our community treats a new release as a success if it is only slightly worse than the one before.

Enes Deniz wrote: While multiple screen readers do exist for Android, VoiceOver is at least always one step ahead of TalkBack, and certain apps or features available on iOS, some of which are provided and/or maintained by Apple itself, are more accessible compared to their counterparts or equivalents on Android. This somewhat compels me to stick to iOS despite all the longstanding bugs, many of which have already been mentioned on AppleVis and reported directly to Apple at accessibility@apple.com or via the Feedback app by me and others. Apple's recent attempts to make its operating systems more flexible and customizable, some of which are reluctant steps demanded by the EU and other institutions/organizations, have been making VoiceOver an inevitable choice due to a lack of alternatives. It should be noted, however, that it is the very same lack of alternatives and competition that has made Apple so confident over the years and caused VoiceOver to stagnate, while Apple still promotes a barely-functioning, buggy screen reader as a tremendous breakthrough. It once was a tremendous breakthrough some 15 years ago when I knew nothing about iPhones, but this is no longer the case, as running on devices with touchscreens alone no longer suffices to become or remain the leading preference. Symbian at that time had screen readers that would have been more feature-rich and outperform VoiceOver had their development continued at the same pace, so what made VoiceOver was that it let users use touchscreen devices, but the novelty wore off and we now have a screen reader that has been lagging farther and farther behind. Someone has to go nudge whoever is the head of the accessibility team and tell this person that we need less talk and more work, and the years when VoiceOver could be advertised as the one and only screen reader that would allow the visually-impaired to use touchscreen devices are over now.

Joshua wrote: Voiceover is still very buggy voiceover still get stuck all the time in random places and apple just never fixes it, they don’t seem to care.

Troy wrote: TV os has not been very accessible since tv os11. You have to perform a lot of gestures just to make the thing accessible. I think as far as voiceover goes on iPad and iPhone the screen recognition feature could be easier to use.

Arya wrote: After the latest update of IOS 17 for iPhone and version 10 for apple watch the quality of voice over has gone down. Lots of bugs has crept in to the screen reader and has depleted the user experience. It is against the policy of apple of "" Just works"".

For example in apple watch OS 9 in the modular watch face Voice over will read the following:

1. Current BPM
2. Highest BPM of the day.
3. Lowest BPM of the day.

After updating to watch OS 10 VO is not reading those information.

Anonymous wrote: While I appreciate and enjoy Voiceover, it has declined significantly in the past few years. What once was a fantastically positive experience has morphed into a daily frustration that I would have abandoned some time ago if I had any other options. It's been very buggy for me for years now. The focus bug in particular has made using Voiceover difficult on all devices.

Gary C wrote: I am visually impaired. I use VoiceOver on my Apple TV using Direct Touch navigation. VoiceOver allows me to navigate between apps, and find content within apps fairly easily. When I watch a TV or movie trailer, voiceOver announces elapsed and remaining time in the trailer, which is very annoying. These announcement always occur, regardless of the "Read Screen After Delay" rotor setting. Each time I pause a video, the closed caption and audio settings are also announced. I would love a rotor option to silence the elapsed time and CC / audio settings, while preserving the "Read Screen After Delay" for hearing content details.

Decade Anne Frey-Shorrock wrote: My overall experience with VoiceOver across my devices is excellent! In saying that, there are a few difficulties: Since VoiceOver gestures and prompts Etc seem consistent and self-explanatory across these devices, I prefer to use them most of the time over my Windows PC, or even my Android devices. Unfortunately, however, as I expand the activities I participate in – games, a new job, steaming platforms, Etc, I have noticed some buttons and information – sometimes crucial material – that are either not clickable when VoiceOver is enabled, or are simply not presented at all, meaning I have to turn VoiceOver off and get my sighted partner to press the button, then turn VoiceOver back on again. I find this counterproductive, especially if my partner is not available. It takes longer and means there are some things I can't do independently. I do, however, love the image descriptions, especially when it-es to emojis in texts that I either send or receive. It makes my communication more equal and expressive with sighted counterparts.

Anonymous wrote: This year VoiceOver can be described as an extremely bad experience for me. After upgrading to iOS17 and Mac OS14, the overall performance of VoiceOver has declined across the board. It has many newly introduced bugs, the most prominent ones are the following: VoiceOver often interrupts for no reason when reading Chinese, causing a sentence to read a certain word in the middle and then stop reading;VoiceOver has errors in pronunciation of some Chinese words, especially when reading numbers;VoiceOver's image description crashes frequently and fixing it requires a long wait.

DPinWI wrote: The experience is downgraded by persistent bugs. For example, both my iPhone and Watch will stop using my selected VoiceOver voice, and I will have to redownload and reset the voice up. There are nagging focus issues in places like News. That said, iOS 17 and WatchOS 10 have been much improved in terms of major bugs.

Dave Nason wrote: The overall experience is fantastic on iPhone, though bugs continue to frustrate.

I love my iPad for media consumption. However for productivity, as a VoiceOver user, it's not great. It boggles my mind that the keyboard experience on iPad is still so lacking.

In theory I love the Mac, but the VoiceOver experience is disappointing. Sonoma has so many issues that I've opted to stay on Ventura, which also means I may not go ahead with my plan to buy a new Mac this year. Also, I still can't use Microsoft Office apps fully, which is shocking.

Section 2a: Braille Features

• iOS: 4.1 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.9, Most frequent rating: 4]
• iPadOS: 4.1 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.8, Most frequent rating: 4]
• macOS: 3.6 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 3.3, Most frequent rating: 3]
• watchOS: 3.7 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 4.3, Most frequent rating: 5]
• tvOS: 4.0 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.4, Most frequent rating: 4]

Selected Comments on Braille Features

Devin Prater wrote: I love that, still, when I plug in just about any Braille display into a Mac, it works with VoiceOver. I cannot find good ways to incorporate it into my Mac usage, with commands that aren't as similar to iOS as I think they could be, or not doing what I expect, with space with dot 4 going down a line, instead of going to the next object.

The Oliver Kennett wrote: I've got a Vario Ultra 20 which is a pretty old machine. You managed to keep it running and, not only that, allow me to connect with it whilst my iPhone is locked, this is amazing and wonderful. It takes an age to connect, up to 90 seconds sometimes, but it is a wonderful way of using my iPhone so I'm really pleased you've addressed the issues there.

Gianni wrote: I'm disappointed that you are not supporting VarioConnect Braille display anymore.

Anonymous wrote: I use the Braille screen input on a daily basis. I almost never use my bluetooth QWERTY keyboard any longer because the Braille screen input is so good.

makkenai wrote: i use the Hable One remote with braille option it does not really interact with the braille feature of the iPhone itself.

Zach M wrote: This year, Apple massively improved the feature set of braille, with the introduction of launching apps with the enter key. It is one of the biggest productivity changers with braille I've ever seen.

Anonymous wrote: The only thing that makes them difficult to use is the scrub gesture that can't be removed. We need to be able to turn that off. Otherwise BSI on iOS is fine after some tweaking of its commands. I couldn't use it at all on iPad.

Decade Anne Frey-Shorrock wrote: I love both Braille Screen Input and the ability to pair a Braille display to all my devices. I'm a tactile-visual learner, meaning if I have to look at something closely, I much prefer to use Braille and have the information presented in front of me.

Sebby wrote: Sound Curtain is a nice little trinket, and a good example of Apple designing new VoiceOver enhancements thoughtfully.

Section 2b: Braille User Experience

• iOS: 4.0 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.7, Most frequent rating: 4]
• iPadOS: 4.0 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.5, Most frequent rating: 4]
• macOS: 3.5 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 3.2, Most frequent rating: 3]
• watchOS: 3.9 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 4.2, Most frequent rating: 5]
• tvOS: 3.4 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 3.6, Most frequent rating: 4]

Selected Comments on Braille User Experience

Anonymous wrote: Braille is an area that Apple need to take seriously, — for those who use Braille, it's often not just a nice to have, it's something that makes work more efficient, and that all goes down the drain when Braille has such variety of bugs and general lack of reliability. Braille for many Braille users is equivalent of a screen for sighted people, — as Apple wouldn't accept flickering, blurry or otherwise visually compromised screens on their devices, because customers wouldn't accept it, Apple need to take the same position with Braille and the existing bugs with Braille, because, quite frankly, Braille users cannot and should not, accept such bugs, many of which have existed for some years.

Devin Prater wrote: More focus should be given to Braille on every Apple product, because if I can't type in contracted Braille without the translation subsystem freezing and needing to press Space with dots 4–5 to get things temporarily unstuck, then I might as well not even use Braille on that system (iOS in this case).

Josh Kennedy wrote: braille is sluggish in mail app when typing. It doesn't matter if you are composing or replying, voiceover can't keep up.

daniel j. semro wrote: I wish Apple would make it easier to find lists of braille commands, particularly when it comes to using Freedom Scientific's focus 40 blue with a mac. All the commands I seem to find relate to iOS.

Anna D wrote: Apple has made an effort to make editing with a braille display work more smoothly in the past year. They were more responsive during the testing cycle last summer before iOS 17 came out than they had been in the past. However, there are some braille displays, including the NLS zoomax eReader, that still don't connect reliably to iOS devices in iOS 17. This needs to be fixed. On the Mac, cursor routing often doesn't work correctly, which is really frustrating.

Anonymous wrote: Sometimes, using an external Braille display/keyboard can be tricky when pairing, but overall I find it to be excellent!

Zach M wrote: As stated previously, launching apps with the enter key is a breeze. Not only that, but in iOS 17, they seemed to have majorly improved other long-standing bugs such as cursor tracking in longer text fields, like ulysses, notes, pages, etc. There are a few bugs, however, that still somewhat annoy me; for example, when using bluetooth, the cursor routing key on the next track button jumps me to the home screen, and when reading and writing in a long text field, the braille decides to either jump up a few lines or just go to the top of the document, which is frustrating at best.

Misty Dawn wrote: Braille is always the first thing that suffers for blind and DeafBlind users, especially in iPhone iOS. For many DeafBlind users, Braille is a lifeline. Much more attention should be given to Braille than is currently.

Anonymous wrote: Mostly good, could use some refining and more input from blind users who use it frequently.

Decade Anne Frey-Shorrock wrote: As much as the Braille features increase my efficiency and productivity, there are some bugs, which still need some attention. When I use Braille Screen Input, I notice that a two-finger swipe right for a new line can often stop Braille input and by the time I navigate back to it with the rotor, I can lose track of what I wanted to say, or where I was in a given piece of text. Further to that, at times, when I start BSI and rotate my phone, it will go silent and start recording, rather than starting BSI. It is then difficult to stop the recording and restart BSI. There are even times when, whatever I type, my phone or iPad will say "not to recognised" and I have to restart the device in order to fix that problem. When I use a display, there's a lot of erratic behaviour. I was delighted to see the introduction of the "bluetooth on start" feature. However, there is still no guarantee of a reliable connection, whether this feature is turned on or off. I sometimes even get a notification that my BrailleSense Polaris Mini is not supported by the device I'm trying to connect to. I then have to reboot both devices, and even then that doesn't always fix the problemV frustrating! When inputting text through my Braille device, I can't type more than two words before checking the cursor is still in the right place. I sometimes end up typing in the middle of a word three lines back from where I wanted to be. On top of that, the cursor often doesn't represent accurately where I am. For instance, the cursor might be 3 cells to the right of what I wrote, when I might not have even put a space in. I fear if I backspace something, I could be deleting something I wanted to keep. Conversely, if I type the next word, it could become part of the previous one. Finally, in BSI or on a display, I have trouble typing Email addresses and passwords. There seems to be no way to differentiate between symbols. A colon in a time field, for instance, a colon is interpreted as a double C, or con, or if I use the WH contraction, as in computer Braille, it's WH Etc.

Sebby wrote: As ever the Mac is the weak spot. It's better than it was, but we really need a professionalising mission for Braille, and in particular it should be entirely possible to actually use a Mac with speech off, credible Braille input, all announcements Brailled, the possibility of multiple cursors to review the screen while editing text, and so on. The Windows screen readers have always been ahead in this regard. As it is, it's a nice-to-have, that I am not ungrateful for, but it should be better.

Anonymous wrote: I wish Apple and other companies as well had more #Blind and #LowVision people working on #Accessibility for them. I'm concerned with the ongoing issues pertaining to #Braille in the Mac OS that remain present and haven't yet been addressed.

Section 3a: Low Vision Features

• iOS: 4.4 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.9, Most frequent rating: 4]
• iPadOS: 4.3 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.5, Most frequent rating: 4]
• macOS: 4.7 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.5, Most frequent rating: 3]
• watchOS: 4.1 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.0, Most frequent rating: 3]
• tvOS: 4.5 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.0, Most frequent rating: 3]

Selected Comments on Low Vision Features

Sindre of Norway wrote: Using a mouse cursor on iPadOS when zoomed in is clunky and frustrating to use in comparison with using a mouse cursor on MacOS and Zoomtext on Windows.

Using Smart Typing when zoomed in on iOS and iPadOS is clunky and frustrating when switching between apps and screens - it's not fluent at all.

Anonymous wrote: Some apps not having a dark mode, Safari dark mode extensions that interfere with iOS with no Apple alternatives that might work better, large fonts breaking even Apple apps, and things like Smart Invert not working as advertised are all very frustrating.

Gary C wrote: I am low vision. I am able to use my Mac when I set 720p, classic invert colors, zoom and speak selected settings. Please don't ever remove classic invert colors! Low vision people like me NEED white font on a black background. Smart invert colors does not correctly handle images and video. Also, Sonoma broke speak selected on PDF files, but I expect that will be fixed at some point. One feature I would love to see in iOS and macOS: allow me to "promote" font weights, forcing lite font weight to normal, and forcing normal weight to bold. Over the last 5+ years, web pages and PDFs have gone from using regular font for most text, and bold for emphasis to using a lite font weight for most text, and normal weight for emphasis. This is really difficult for a low vision user. These font weight changes are industry wide, not Apple specific.

Section 3b: Low Vision User Experience

• iOS: 4.4 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.7, Most frequent rating: 4]
• iPadOS: 4.5 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.4, Most frequent rating: 4]
• macOS: 4.5 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.4, Most frequent rating: 4]
• watchOS: 4.0 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.0, Most frequent rating: 3]
• tvOS: 4.3 (Most frequent rating: 5) [2022: 3.0, Most frequent rating: 3]

Selected Comments on Low Vision User Experience

Anonymous wrote: In a word, frustrating. It's nice that low vision options are here but it would be nicer if they worked consistently or as advertised.

Gary C wrote: I am low vision. I use dictation and speak selected on iOS to send and receive text messages, and to read emails. When trying to read text messages, it is really frustrating that I can't always see the "Speak" pop up menu option when Messenger thinks it finds a calendar event. I don't want to create a calendar event, I just want to listen to my text message. Please give me an accessibility option to disable the automatic identification of calendar events. Also "Speak" should be above "Translate" as people are more likely to listen to a text message in their native language. Dictation should NOT be using Roman Numerals! XL is always extra large, not 40. Medicare Part D is not "part 500"

It is also very difficult now to use the two finger swipe down gesture to read emails, as this gesture is now also used to bring down the control center. Please don't overload accessibility features with new iOS features.

Section 4: Other Ratings and Comments

Rating of the New Accessibility Features Introduced by Apple in 2023 for Visually Impaired Users, in Terms of Their Effectiveness and Usefulness in Enhancing the Experience With Apple Software

• Rating: 3.7 (Most frequent rating: 4) [2022: 3.5, Most frequent rating: 3]

Selected Comments on the New Vision Accessibility Features

Anonymous wrote: I haven't used the new Apple watch gestures much but from what I have used them, they are amazing! Please expand the gestures so that everything can be done via gestures. It's super easy to use and convenient.

Dennis Long wrote: I think point and speak could be better. I also like you added the community dictionary to eloquence. I wish it were updated more or better yet give the user the ability to update this. I would also like an option to make voiceover louder than anything else. Note it should also have its own audio channel. Over all apple is still the best and truly cares.

Ashley wrote: Some useful features, but nothing that will make a great deal of difference for the primary user base. I'm seemingly in the minority who doesn't care about Eloquence, though I appreciate its inclusion for no other reason than having more choice on the MacOS and iOS platform. There is a higher quality implementation of eloquence available which should have been used, however. I think key features are still missing and that the accessibility solutions on the Mac at least remain behind even free solutions like NVDA on Windows.

The Oliver Kennett wrote: I really don't care. My brief test of them they are messy and pointless. Maybe they'll be good with vision pro, but they are a waste of time. Fix the bugs you have rather than working on show boating features to impress the general public. I don't appreciate my disability on which you build public virtue.

Bruce Harrell wrote: I wouldn't waste resources developing new features until pre-existing bugs have been fixed. Introducing new features when existing bugs greatly impair the utility of their products communicates management's own blindness, deafness, and lack of judgment.

Anna D wrote: I love being able to launch apps from the home screen using braille- pressing Enter, typing a letter or two, pressing Enter, selecting an app, and pressing Enter again. I'm glad more thought has been put into how braille displays connect and stay connected.

Anonymous wrote: I've tried point and speak, but it seems to be more of a gimmick than useful software.

mr grieves wrote: I tried Eloquence on the Apple Watch and after I rebooted VoiceOver lost all speech and didn't work. So that was the only new feature I tried, and it has now been backed out.

On the Mac, the new context switching for activities looks useful but it seems to have broken very basic activity functions, namely VO+X to switch activity. The new feature is also not documented properly so it is hard to know what it actually does.

However, in theory, having different activities or different parts of the same application could prove useful. But it's not worth the cost of the extra bugs, so I would rather it was removed. Plus no applications I actually use make use of this and it's unclear how they would support it.

I tried messing about with the new VoiceOver voice tweaking settings but reverted them all back to defaults as they only made the voices worse. The Eloquence tweaks look good perhaps but I struggle with Eloquence so not sure they are useful to me.

I don't use any of the new iOS features - they don't seem that useful.

Zach M wrote: The new accessibility features added things I never knew I needed, but are now contributing to daily life. For example, point and speak is amazing. I mainly use it to skim over printed text on a piece of paper, but it is amazing. Personal voice, while not sounding the best, is very neat to play with and experiment with. Also, that enter key to launch apps… absolutely amazing.

Anonymous wrote: Although the detection with finger feature is welcome, it needs work. I specifically purchased an iPhone 15 pro for this feature & was disappointed in the performance. I tried pointing at controls on a toaster & microwave. I tried pointing at a can of corn. I tried pointing at a cereal box. In each instance, I either received no or very little useful feedback & information. Additionally the features for image detection & screen recognition use up the battery. Therefore, I don't use them. Both would be helpful, but not at the cost of battery loss.

Decade Anne Frey-Shorrock wrote: To date, I've only dabbled into the new voices offered for TTS. I usually use Braille in preference to speech, but the introduction of different and more natural voices not only offers flexibility, but makes content easier to understand when read with speech.

Sebby wrote: Point-to-speak is a feature of Magnifier, and I would say that this was the weakest addition, to be euphemistic: it doesn't work, and I'm not sure how Apple imagined it was ready to ship. Although I'm always pleased to see little improvements, again honestly, I'd prefer to see more refinements and fewer bugs in the stuff we already have.

Piotr Machacz wrote: The 2 features I'm most happy with are the expanded voice options and the extra options for when notifications should be read. For the voice options I wish Vocalizer based voices had more options particularly to turn off dictionaries like you can with Eloquence. Biggest disappointment has to be point and speak though, a feature I thought would be very useful that I in practice couldn't really get to work on the devices I tried it on (which had text over the touch buttons). I have to give Apple some credit for performance improvements on Mac OS which for me at least have made a noticeable difference, as well as this the ability to assign a hotkey to toggle audio ducking which is also something I use very regularly. At the same time, the contexts feature for assigning activities to specific kinds of applications just straight up doesn't work, VoiceOver announces the change and then immediately switches back.

Rating of Apple's Performance in 2023 in Addressing VoiceOver, Braille, and Low Vision-Related Bugs

• Rating: 3.0 (Most frequent rating: 3) [2022: 2.8, Most frequent rating: 3]

Selected Comments on Apple's Performance in 2023 in Addressing VoiceOver, Braille, and Low Vision-Related Bugs

Anonymous wrote: I’m sorry, not good enough. New bugs have arrived, like speech stuttering, and long standing bugs are still there.

Jimmy wrote: I have really contrasting, mixed feelings about this. On one hand, many of the bugs I reported (multiple times) have been addressed. But on the other hand, there are extremely critical bugs that despite how many times I reported, they have never been addressed. Examples include relating to Voice Over repeating random strings of text, instability working with content with multiple languages, or relating to the bug where in the Notes App, creating headings, followed by a list will make Voice Over unable to read anything correctly at all.

Dennis Long wrote: When feedback is sent about braille bugs or issues that are present or need added please address them faster. There is still the spell check issue if precdictive and auto correct is turned off in the mail app that is unresolved and the hiss for Eloquence when high sample rate is on is still present.

Ashley wrote: Bugs aren't being fixed. The long-standing Safari 'not responding' bugs still exist, and there are a plethora of bugs in Voiceover as well as MacOS in general. iOS is better, though I'll admit I don't use it as extensively. Engineers no-longer seem to respond to submissions through feedback assistant, Apple Accessibility responses seem quite generic. There needs to be communication directly between engineers and users wehre accessibility is concerned, especially if the engineers developing these solutions aren't also using them in a day-to-day context.

Devin Prater wrote: It really doesn't feel like Apple addressed that many issues this year. Mostly, I'm very glad the Mac has gotten a bit of love from Apple regarding the Safari not responding issue, even though I expect it took a Hacker News post to do it. Maybe I should just post issues from AppleVis there. Still, I hope to see smoothness return to VoiceOver this coming year, and the Mac become a viable work computer for me (at least). My real dream is for it to become a computer I can enjoy using for personal stuff, including gaming and Terminal use (with VO and not needing a separate screen reader).

Anonymous wrote: I am disappointed that bugs in using Text Edit on the mac have not been addressed. Since Ventura, and particularly in Sedona, VoiceOver often stops reading with arrow keys, routinely shifts focus to the status bar and requires a restart of VO to clear these issues. Since this basic text editor is a primary tool for many people, how did these bugs still exist?

Ida Grace wrote: I am extremely disappointed with the secrecy policy apple has, and the fact that I have never received replies to feedback reports. Or, when I do, I receive the generic "thank you for your feedback" message, but bugs never get fixed.

Anonymous wrote: An OK effort to squash Safari not responding, however there are still notable bugs in Mail, Music and other Mac apps.

Anonymous wrote: Bugs will always be present in software, so the fact that bugs happen in the update cycle is not a huge issue for me. I'm impressed with the fact that it doesn't take Apple a ton of time to fix new bugs and I think overall they have done a good job at fixing most bugs in a thorough manner.

Enes Deniz wrote: The short answer is, "Awful!". The long answer is, "Apple has unofficially stopped fixing bugs in practice, and I consider the release of an official statement confirming this to be more likely than the release of new updates fixing all the bugs that make me reach this conclusion."

Zach M wrote: Apple finally fixed the safari not responding bug, which that in itself is good. They also fixed cursor tracking with braille which makes my life a lot easier. I still get the occasional weird bug with voiceOver or braille here and there, but overall, it is good.

Tyler wrote: The way I see it, Apple's culture of secrecy, coupled with a possible lack of interdepartmental communication between the engineers tasked with addressing bug reports made via Apple Feedback, and the accessibility staff who reportedly have little or no access to this information, is a major impediment to sustain action on serious or longstanding accessibility issues. If reports from AppleVis community members that accessibility staff are unable to respond to bug reports in beta versions of Apple software are true, this further compounds the problem, as critical insights by users who rely on these technologies, including Apple employees tasked with supporting such customers, may be missed, delaying action on issues that could prevent or significantly hinder customers' ability to use the software.

In addition, particularly on macOS, I suspect based on other users' reported experiences that there is a lack of thorough internal testing within Apple for specific use cases, like coding and complex word processing. When testing new versions of their software, Apple should actively consult with affected users to minimize the chance that tasks essential to their livelihoods will become difficult or impossible to perform. Especially for users who perform such tasks professionally, installing a beta version of an operating system and attempting to emulate their workflow may introduce unacceptable risk. For this reason, Apple, in my opinion, cannot rely solely on volunteer testers to identify and report such issues, and must take care to minimize communication breakdowns and other triaging bottlenecks that could delay the resolution of serious accessibility issues and oversights reported in beta and public versions of their software.

Misty Dawn wrote: Overall, their responsiveness grows increasingly abysmal. They really need to listen to and connect with blind and low vision users on these issues.

Anonymous wrote: The release of iOS 17 has been a nightmare for accessibility and it seems like Apple is more interested in rolling out half baked or unwanted features than in fixing what was broken before or what has been broken in the latest versions. It is no consolation that massive problems have been happening for sighted phone users too, that just ensures even fewer resources are given to the already understaffed accessibility teams. It saddens me that Apple is the best when it comes to blindness accessibility on the mobile market because if this is the best that really hammers home how very little anyone cares about the needs of the disabled in the grand scheme of things.

Sebby wrote: Apple simply isn't triaging bugs in VoiceOver any differently than they are in any other part of the system, when they clearly should be, and despite receiving feedback well in advance of releases. I absolutely enjoy using my iPhone and Macs for doing so much, they're empowering in so many ways, but the level of frustration caused by bugs, especially on macOS with the continual struggle to compensate for longstanding responsiveness issues in Safari, and now the new showstopper crashing bug for VMware Fusion that is the result of a breaking change by Apple that has made the situation particularly bad for those using multiple operating systems, in part to work around other bugs, is giving me serious doubts about the wisdom of continuing to use Macs as anything other than getaway playthings, or servers. I really, really wish they'd fix it–all of it–even if I had to wait several years for new features to emerge. We desperately need a Snow Leopard-like release for VoiceOver.

DPinWI wrote: Apple has made progress, but the last couple of years have set a low standard. I'm very hopeful things will continue to improve.

Dave Nason wrote: It feels like Apple is over-reliant on its VoiceOver users for bug reporting and tracking, and the lack of transparency from Apple about reported bugs is frustrating.

Piotr Machacz wrote: A couple of long standing bugs have been addressed this year, Safari not responding on Mac being the biggest, also reading PDF's in the preview app has been considerably improved. At the same time, there are still some issues that I find have been frustratingly not addressed for years on Mac that make coding require more workarounds. Eloquence still runs multicase strings together which no other synthesizer does, loading custom punctuation schemes still requires a VoiceOver restart for them to start working which makes them unusable as part of an activity while the default "all" scheme is extremely verbose for coding, and the Terminal app still reads really badly by default requiring a dedicated screen reader. Also, unlike iOS when a notification of any kind comes speech gets interrupted rather than getting queued, which can get very frustrating when I'm trying to read a longer article when a chat group becomes very active. That being said, the fact we've also seen things like the tone based indent indication be an option which got further refined in Sonoma gives me hope these might eventually be addressed.

Selected Suggestions for Improving Apple's Vision Accessibility Features and the User Experience, and How Apple Could Better Serve the Needs of Their Visually Impaired Customers

Jimmy wrote: Having real-life users, who should better have the needs for using each accessibility solution to do continuous, on-going tests will be far more effective than whatever the current arrangement is.

David Taylor wrote: more keyboard shortcuts getting directly to features, introduce all keyboard shortcuts from iPad to phone.

Josh Kennedy wrote: I have a few suggestions:

1. the hiss when high sample rate is on in eloquence needs fixed.
2. the spell check bug in email is still present this seriously effects productivity and needs fixed. Note auto correct and predictive need to be turned off.
3. when typing with devices such as the orbit writer which shows as an Orbit reader 20 typing in email is sluggish.
4. please give braille users the ability to double tap and hold on buttons. This is especially useful for recording voice messages in iMessages, WhatsApp Telegram, and in any radio app or in the Bard app where you have fast forward and rewind buttons. Keyboard users have this option.
5. Please fix the braille bug when you assign a command to switch keyboard using a braille display it doesn’t work. It should switch to the Emoji keyboard. It doesn’t. This can be accomplished with a Bluetooth keyboard by pressing control option space.
6. Orbit devices aren’t on the list of supported devices this needs to change.
7. when using non apple headsets or headphones back to back Siri requests don’t work.
8. give an option to make accessibility volume louder than any other volume.
9. allow the user to update the eloquence dictionary.
10. allow the user to set the volume of the new message tone.
11. please make the new AI Siri work on iPhone 15 pro or pro maxes or later.

Leah Dykema wrote: VoiceOver has been awesome and relatively easy to use. The only things I wish were improved upon is 1. Different settings in VoiceOver were more cleat and understanding, 2. Braille Screen Input allowed me to type the contacted form of the word (for), 3. Braille Screen Input more accurately worked on iPadOS, and 4. I wish there was an in-build way to twitch between Zoom and VoiceOver due to Zoom messing with VoiceOver gestures and Braille Screen Input.

Dennis Long wrote: Please put a higher focus on fixing voiceover bugs prior to release. It is critical. We can't see and rely on our devices to work properly. If it were a bug for a sighted user you would give it high priority we need the same level of commitment.

Mister Kayne wrote: Don't break things that were working perfectly but are not after updates.

Ashley wrote: Make Voiceover open source so the community can help to contribute, fix and improve it. Facilitate a more direct path to submit bug reports to engineers, through which engineers can respond and conversations can be had. And if Apple remains committed to a closed-source, unresponsive and buggy solution, document undocumented SDKs and APIs to ease the development of 3rd-party solutions like VOSH, so we can come together and build something that actually works.

Devin Prater wrote: I think they should be more upfront with us. They should talk to us and ask for feedback. I know they won't, but I honestly don't see any other way. It really looks like, internally, the blind people that work there are not given the ability to move bug fixing higher up the priority list, and they seem to only recently have gotten any kind of greenlight on making the Mac a useful machine for users other than musicians. I don't care how they do it. An accessibility tester group, surveys, employees on Mastodon; it doesn't matter. And if they don't have what it takes, just tell us so we can go to Google and Microsoft. I know Apple has a ton of user groups they have to look out for, but if they have hundreds of people working on the camera, they can afford to put a hundred blind people to work on VoiceOver. They tell us to please submit feedback, but they don't pay us. If they want our feedback, we need to get something out of it too, other than a nebulous idea that they might make it better. I don't submit that much feedback outside the summer beta cycle simply because I don't think it'd do any good. I've heard "we're listening," and "we care" so much that it means nothing to me now.

Daniel Angus MacDonald wrote: one thing that is great on macOS is the getting started tutorial. I do not have a Mac that can run Sonoma, so cannot vouch for that. there should be a tutorial on all apple platforms. this will aid new users in learning Apple products out-of-the-box, with no supplementary documentation required if wished.

The Oliver Kennett wrote: Apple needs to engage with its further need customers more directly. We are fed up with sending emails into the void and nothing being done. I know the rest of apple has its cloak and dagger thing going on, but we need an open and clear line of communication, to know what you're working on fixing. The gap between us needs to be transparent, not the one way mirror that currently stands between us.

Employ someone to be direct interface with us, bring your progress reports to us as if we were share holders. You are losing our loyalty. Sorry.

PS, if there are any spelling mistakes here, it's because you broke spell check in your most recent mac os update in edit fields in safari.

Bruce Harrell wrote: When I contact technical support because I'm having a problem, technical support wants to see what's happening on my device, so to accomplish this, they send something to me that I can't find, read, respond to, or use. They say it's on my screen. I can't find it. They say there's something I'm supposed to click on. I can't find it. Then, whatever they sent times out and vanishes, not ten minutes after it first appeared, not five minutes later, but way to quickly. Technical support asked me to activate it. How am I supposed to do that if it's inaccessible? Does this strike you as asinine? It sure strikes me as stupid and insulting, but last I called, Apple was still using this means of rubbing my face in my own blindness. Truly, it leads me to seriously consider alternatives to using Apple products.

Anna D wrote: Apple should hire more blind, visually impaired, and deafblind people who actually use the features regularly to help and improve accessibility features.

Levi Gobin wrote: Rather than focusing on new or shiny features (related to accessibility features or not), focus on stability. Make an OS that is stable, has no bugs, and is as accessible as possible. Just fix these annoying bugs, then I would be happy and update my devices to the latest versions of their software.

Vic wrote: Create more gestures such as an L (90 degree angle) movement, allow one finger to make an arc for rotor actions, recognise commands like "set brightness to 0$" and "set screen brightness to 0%" are the same.

Anonymous wrote: No new features. Squash the bugs. Tune up the engine.

mr grieves wrote: We could do with a year without any new features and just have the existing ones fixed.

Apple could do with actually testing VoiceOver before release new versions.

I suspect that the annual major release cycle is not helping things.

If I submit a bug to Apple accessibility I would like to be able to track its progress. It would be good if we could collaborate with each other on bugs. Firstly to give Apple more information and secondly to cut down the amount of time it takes to file a bug.

I always get replies to the Apple accessibility email address but they are never actually useful. I get promises that the issue has been passed on, but it feels like a tiny pebble being dropped down a well. A barely audible splosh and nothing more.

I don't understand why a company like Apple can't actually try to engage with its customers. The whole secrecy thing is so damaging.

Anonymous wrote: Provide a forum, where we could see exactly what bugs they are working on fixing. And have a way for community members to give feedback on what is deemed a priority There are several things that. Apple seems to consider a low priority, but in some peoples minds are quite high.

Anonymous wrote: I think Apple should provide audio (& video for low vision users) tutorials on using new features on new IOS operating systems. Not just for voice over, but for all of them. Same comment for TVOS.

Anonymous wrote: Talk to your blind and visually impaired customers, work in tandem with accessibility teams to make sure new features won't break things we're using, put some time and concentrated work into looking through everything on offer in accessibility and making sure what you have is working as advertized, clean out bugs and ideas that have never been fully implemented, get some blind users on your testing teams.

Gary C wrote: In my opinion, Apple does not consider how low vision users will be impacted by new features, or by changing existing functionality.

For example, several years ago, macOS changed the disclosure triangles in finder from a solid easy-to-see triangle to a "V" in a lite font weight. This is an arbitrary change with no functional benefit that negatively impacts low vision users.

When existing functionality is changed it often takes years to resolve, such as when Apple broke invert colors while developing dark mode. The "classic invert colors" functionality was not restored for quite some time.

Ideally Apple would have a low vision advocate present during new feature discussions, to remind developers about the impact their proposed changes will have, and to suggest when an accessibility setting that disables the proposed change would be appropriate.

Apple support staff is not trained on Apple TV voiceover features or rotor settings. Several support people I spoke with told me the only training they received involved restarting or resetting. At a minimum, support people should understand the two Voiceover navigation styles, and how to select/change them.

Decade Anne Frey-Shorrock wrote: When I enter a text field on my computer, it will give me a sound indication that I'm in the text box and am ready to type. I then get a different tone to indicate that I've exited the text field. I'd like to see Apple implement a similar feature, along with different tones to indicate whether a checkbox or radio button is checked or unchecked. Further, when sighted users input text, there are audible, but not overpowering, keyboard sounds, which vary in tone for such entries as space, backspace and new line. I'd like these implemented with the use of both Braille Screen Input and the use of an external Braille or Qwerty keyboard. That would make it easier for a totally blind user like myself to know whether or not the device has registered a button being tapped and entered the given text. When using the normal virtual keyboard, predictive text suggestions are read out by VoiceOver and a press of the spacebar will prompt the device to write that suggestion, or you can select a different one. I'd like this to be included for Braille both on screen and from an external device, at least as an option to turn on or off, since some people may find this feature a nuisance. I think it would make inputting text quicker and more efficient. Finally, there's a lot of mentions of OCR within the Blind and Low Vision tech space. It might be too big an ask, but I'd like to see a scanning feature for images, text or maybe both, even just a basic one, included as an optional accessibility feature. It's difficult and confusing for users to find the right OCR app for them – or at least in my case. If there was one already included, it might offer a simpler solution than having to do research as to which app will scan or recognise what types of items, learn different processes for different apps, Etc.

Anonymous wrote: For Chinese-speaking users like me, we have continued to provide a lot of feedback to Apple over the years and reported a large number of bugs, but perhaps less than one tenth of the bugs have actually been fixed. China is the country with the largest number of Apple users after the USA. In comparison, the number of visually impaired users in China must not be a small number. Apple seems to pay too little attention to the voice of such a large group.

Piotr Machacz wrote: On the Mac side, my #1 request has to be bringing over the screen recognition feature. There are many apps with accessibility issues, particularly various audio plugins, where I think a feature like that would be invaluable. I would also love to see better feature parity between how some features, like dictionaries or sound customisation is implemented - how iOS dictionaries can be applied to a specific voice only and you can dictate a phonetic replacement for a word, while the Mac VoiceOver dictionary is far more basic. Meanwhile for iOS, I wish it had as many verbosity settings as the mac does, in particular if I could change the order information is presented in. I'd rather hear "Wi-fi off switch button" instead of "wi fi switch button off." Still on the topic of verbosity I wish that both OS's let you have a way to be notified about specific changes in text attributes, and not just with speech. If I could have VoiceOver change the voice pitch or play a sound every time it reads bold or underlined text, or have it temporarily just read color changes if a form on a website doesn't convey where I filled out something wrong, I would find it very helpful.

David Goldfield wrote: Apple should have a publicly accessible bug tracker that allows users to not only file bugs but also to track the progress and status of reported bugs.

Sebby wrote: Ultimately, Apple need to be willing to listen to our reports, take feedback, and act on it in a timely manner. Accessibility is not a feature, it's a core function. If they are, as they say, committed to accessibility, then they should be willing to either directly implement and fix the features and bugs, respectively, to our standards, or provide sufficient access for a third party to do it on their platforms. I also think it's way past time for their App Stores to have accessibility ratings, which could be automatically and manually verified, and corroborated by users. It isn't much, but it would go a long way to at least make accessibility an objective priority both for Apple itself and the third-party developers they're supposed to be vetting. As things stand now, it's hard not to feel that accessibility, while undoubtedly important to some within Apple, is mostly just a PR benefit of complying with regulations, somewhat like their environmentalism. This is not a bad thing, in itself, but risks becoming a cynical joke when expectations continually fail to be met by the supposed beneficiaries of accessibility features that are constantly broken and frustrating to use right out of the gate. Perhaps most seriously of all, we need assurance that the features and functions and bug reports are being acted on in part by people with a clear interest in those features actually working. Yes, I am advocating for blind and low-vision users inside Apple having a say, and not just benevolent management with a conscience. All the feel-good in the world doesn't help, but working hardware and software can.

Selected Additional Comments About Experience as a Visually Impaired User of Apple Products

David Taylor wrote: Still overall my fave.

Ashley wrote: Here's an eMail I sent to Tim COok's office that was acknowledged by Apple Accessibility. It sums up my thoughts. Subject: "I am deeply concerned about the current state, and future, of MacOS accessibility"

Dear Mr. Cook,

I write to you, as a long-time Mac user, with concerns regarding Apple’s commitment to MacOS accessibility. As I see MacOS accessibility continually take a backseat while the Mac platform surges forward, I fear that unless action is taken the Mac may become unviable as a computing platform for those of us who rely on its assistive tools. The Mac is the best personal computer in the world. A true statement for many of its users. But no-longer so, I fear, if you are disabled.

I am a totally blind Mac user. I started out with a 2007 Mac mini, then running Leopard and shortly after snow leopard which brought tons of accessibility improvements not to mention bug fixes across the OS. I was using NVDA, an open-source screenreader on with Windows 7 at the time.

I installed snow leopard on the day of release. I can still remember the buzz around that release, and the excitement as it installed from the DVD. When I hit the desktop, and had began using it, I remember thinking "wow, the accessibility is so good, I could switch to the Mac". And so I did - for a week. I then found some things that at the time the accessibility of the Mac couldn't handle like basic audio editing, websites with adobe flash (it was still a thing) and almost no word processing support, for example the inability to interact with a table in a document.

I went back to Windows, and the Mac became a curiosity. I was a software developer and kept up with developments in MacOS. But I stuck with Windows until the Windows 8 and 8.1 era. Tiles and apps on my desktop? No thank you. So I bought a MacBook Pro with similar specs to my PC of the time, and didn't look back. Voiceover was improving in leaps and bounds at the time. Apple engineers were responsive to feedback, and it seemed that, though you were making some odd mistakes, Apple had my best interests at heart. Even Logic was becoming accessible, and is now one of my most used apps.

In recent years things have declined to the point where I’m wondering if you are as committed to accessibility as you once were. Mac accessibility is lagging far behind open source solutions like NVDA under windows, and even the accessibility solutions on iOS. There are bugs a plenty. No response to beta feedback submissions where responses were once common, and though your accessibility team are generally very responsive and a pleasure to work with, things just don't seem to be getting fixed. Especially the critical bugs on the web, perhaps the most essential aspect of the personal computer in today’s world.

The situation is getting to the point where I have windows 11 ARM virtualised in UTM, just to run certain tasks in Chrome with NVDA or windows equivalents of MacOS apps. Voiceover’s web rendering is dreadful, with many websites difficult or in some cases impossible to use. It lacks key features that are commonplace in competing tools, such as screen-wide optical character recognition and extensive support for document formatting.

The introduction of iOS and iPad OS apps on the Mac has caused a lot of fragmentation in the Mac app space, and the accessibility of native, ported, and iOS apps on the Mac is suffering as a result. MacOS updates seem to break more than they resolve where accessibility is concerned, and the argument from many that accessibility is just a marketing buzzword for Apple is getting harder to ignore.

I wish you would dedicate the next MacOS release solely to fixing bugs, optimising performance and improving features, rather than adding new OS features, like Snow Leopard was to Leopard. With every release MacOS gains extra functionality, but at great cost. MacOS needs a serious spring clean, optimising every aspect of its code for faster, more reliable performance. For us, that would mean fixing bugs in Voiceover that have existed for years.

Fix the HTML rendering. Fix the PDF rendering which gets incrementally better but is way behind where it should be, given that PDF rendering is a core component in Mac OS. Properly integrate OCR into VoiceOver, and use some of that machine learning power in Apple Silicon to automate OCR, image recognition and screen recognition to give a more seamless experience. Tune Swift's SDKs, especially Swift UI to be as clean, logical and accessible as Coco was. Make the Mac experience for us as disabled users the pleasure that it once was, because right now using the Mac can be a chore.

If things continue as they are, I'm not sure whether the future of accessibility on MacOS is bright or not. I support and commend apple as much as anyone, and I am for ever grateful for the work you have done and the opportunities in work, entertainment and life I have had as a result. But I am also a paying customer. A paying, pro customer who buys high-end devices at significant expense.

I have a reasonable expectation that the solutions promised by MacOS will work to a high standard, and that there is a commitment from Apple to maintain and develop them as well as you do the rest of the operating system. That is not the case at the moment, and there is only so much neglect a customer will stand before they say "you know what, maybe the grass is greener on the other side."

MacOS accessibility desperately needs your attention. It needs the software A team at the top of their game. It needs you to work with users such as myself and others who are committed to the Mac and to Apple, if you are willing to commit to us in return. I implore you to personally ensure that accessibility and inclusivity are not just words, but core values held within Apple that are enacted and treated with the same respect, dedication and effort as every other feature.

If things don’t change, you won’t just lose me as a customer. I am only one customer among billions, and I know that I alone don’t matter. But you will lose a worldwide customer base of dedicated people who are hoping against hope that you will reinforce your commitment, and show us that accessibility matters. Show us that we matter and do so with actions, not just words.

Devin Prater wrote: I now use a Pixel 8. I don't know how long, but for now it works well. Apps open instantly. TalkBack doesn't lose focus, or lag, have tons of little bugs that make me feel like using my phone isn't even worth it, like my iPhone does. There aren't as many features, and Braille could work better, but overall I love my new phone. I know my MacBook Pro from 2019 isn't the greatest and latest model, but Apple devices are supposed to last long. I feel like sighted people love their Mac computers a lot more than blind people can right now, and I really want to get away from Microsoft's ad-infested Windows. But I need Apple to show that they take fixing bugs and making things run much faster as seriously as they take their press releases. Apple's DNA may be diverse, with music and other values, but accessibility should be at its center.

Bruce Harrell wrote: What Apple does that helps the blind is great. What Apple does to harm the blind is awful. Why are both true? Why does Apple hide who in the chain of management is the problem? And why isn't contact information for the entire chain made public so the blind can open their eyes?

Anonymous wrote: Overall, I still get lots done with VoiceOver every day. I'd never switch to Android even on VoiceOver's worst day. I've used both and VoiceOver is still way more elegant than Talkback.

mr grieves wrote: I don't feel like Apple takes us seriously as customers. I feel like an unpaid beta tester. How much of my free time should I be expected to spend filing these bugs that don't get fixed for my incredibly expensive Mac?

It takes a long time to file detailed bug reports with screen recordings, crash logs, steps to reproduce and so on. I've spent time creating sample HTML pages that clearly demonstrate problems with VoiceOver in Safari in a stripped back way. But I am neither being paid for this nor are the issues being addressed.

I feel incredibly angry at Apple for how bad things have got on the Mac. At the risk of being melodramatic, I genuinely feel that using VoiceOver on the Mac is bad for my health. At one point last year I was genuinely beginning to think I was going to end up having a heart attack because I was becoming so stressed trying to do my job on the Mac.

I take baby steps towards moving to Windows but I have invested a lot of my time into using the Mac with and without VoiceOver so this isn't a trivial exercise.

Sonoma is the worst operating system I have ever used. OK I've only been using a screen reader for the last few major versions of the Mac so much of this is comparing it to using a computer with sight but even so I have never used anything so badly riddled by genuinely shocking bugs.

Enes Deniz wrote: They should stop abusing our needs and the fact that many visually-impaired users will still stick to Apple products no matter how severely persisting bugs have been impacting our experience.

Anonymous wrote: I really wish I had the kind of options that sighted users have when it comes to products and services. I've been an Apple user since my very first smart phone but the way accessibility has been mismanaged this year has made me deeply wish I had any other options but Apple.

Sebby wrote: I've used Apple stuff since 2008–2009 starting with the polycarbonate MacBook running Leopard. Then, it seemed like anything was possible, with Apple taking a clear interest in making the experience better and responding to comments. I still use Apple products every day, and they provide a meaningful boost to my quality of life, no doubt about it. When Apple get it right, they get it right, and I am grateful for and appreciate that. But although I think iPhone is the only real choice of smartphone, and Apple Watch the only smartwatch, I have not been more disillusioned with the Mac than in recent years. The hardware is brilliant–really, the best option for portable computing there is, if we're being honest–but the software now risks being a liability. I hope and pray that things will turn around, keep reporting issues, but ultimately my prized Apple possession may be a fine 2020 Intel iMac that can run Windows. My next notebook will be Apple Silicon, but it will be a long-term purchase, and I will mostly use it for travel. It may be that my faith in Apple computers is running out, and that my belief in the mainstreaming of accessibility championed by Apple was misguided. I still think they could turn it around, but it will require acknowledgement by its fans and its leadership that accessibility needs to be taken seriously, and is not just a compliance or feel-good exercise.

Sasquatch wrote: I want to take a moment to recognize and applaud Apple for their dedicated Disability/Accessibility phone support line and the Apple personnel who staff it. As a new "Smart Phone", iPhone, and Voiceover user I have had to call Apple's Disability/Accessibility phone support line a few times during 2023. On every occasion I have been struck by the helpfulness and concern so clearly manifested by their support personnel. More to the point, I have been heartened and lifted up by the genuine empathy I have sensed from the support personnel I have dealt with during my calls to the Disability/Accessibility phone support line. The support personnel are patient, friendly, and engaging, and one gets the definite impression that they care about making iPhone and Voiceover technology work for their blind and otherwise differently abled customers. These observations are aligned with my general comments elsewhere in this survey regarding Apple's clearly deep and steady commitment to enhancing the ability of differently abled people to use and improve their lives via iPhone and Voiceover technologies.

Dave Nason wrote: While there are issues with iPhone, particularly bugginess, the overall experience remains excellent. I tried Android for six months this year, and was glad to return to the more polished and advanced screen reader experience on iPhone.

The iPad is similar of course, but frustrates as it has potential to do more, and it feels like this just isn't being heard.

The Mac is a huge disappointment, seeming to go backwards rather than forwards for us.

Marcia Yale wrote: Apple's impact in our lives can't be understated–they have given us the opportunity to use mainstream technology without extra tweaks or add-ons, and that technology has replaced, for some of us, the assistive tech we used to have as our only choice. I am still amazed at the fact that Apple has managed to make a flat screen talk. The novelty still has not worn off after my almost eight years of use.

Notes

To determine the ratings on this report card and gather comments, we conducted a survey between January 8, 2024 and January 14, 2024, which was open to all registered members of the AppleVis community.

Participants were asked to consider the following before submitting ratings and comments:

1. Before starting the survey, we recommend that you review last year's report card.
2. When submitting ratings and comments, please only provide responses for questions where you have personal experience with the accessibility feature and platform in question. For example, if you exclusively use VoiceOver on an iPhone but do not use any of the low vision accessibility features on Apple's platforms, we ask that you please only submit answers for the questions relating to VoiceOver and the platforms that you use. This will help ensure that the survey results accurately reflect the views and lived experiences of real end users.
3. The 1-5 rating scale we're using is a typical model where 5 is the best score. So, if you give a rating of 5, it means you're highly satisfied with the aspect being rated, while a rating of 1 means you're highly dissatisfied.
4. In this survey and our report card, "vision accessibility features" refers to the available functionalities and capabilities of the software, while "user experience" refers to your overall user satisfaction with and ease-of-use of the software.
5. In one question, we ask about the new accessibility features introduced in 2023. To help you answer this question, we recommend taking a look at the preview of these features and Scott Davert's blog post discussing what's new in iOS 17 accessibility for blind and deaf-blind users.
6. Before submitting the survey, please take a moment to carefully review your ratings and comments to ensure that they are a fair and accurate representation of your experience and opinions. By providing thoughtful and well-considered feedback, you can help ensure that the survey results are meaningful and constructive.
7. By completing this survey, you grant AppleVis permission to feature any of your comments in its Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card. You can opt to be attributed by your AppleVis account display name or quoted anonymously."

To ensure ethical treatment and respect for participant comments, we have refrained from making any grammatical changes or spelling corrections to the quotes included in this report card. This way, we aim to present the authentic voices of members of our community as they share their genuine experiences and opinions.

We carefully reviewed and appreciate all the comments provided in the survey, and we regret that we were unable to include more of them in our final report card. However, with so many responses, it was necessary to condense the feedback to provide a concise and representative overview of the results. Everyone's contributions were invaluable, and we couldn't have achieved such insightful results without the help and time from so many in our community. Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us.

We would like to give credit to JASON SNELL for inspiring the creation of our report card through his outstanding work on the Six Colors' annual Apple report card.