The New Features, Changes, Improvements, and Bugs in macOS 12 Monterey for Blind and Low Vision Users

Does anyone know if updating fixes the current safari, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. problems?

One very welcome change that this version brings is improving VoiceOver's language detection capabilities, which not only brings them on par with but in some respects surpassing what iOS offers.

If your Voice is set to the "automatically select based on language" option, then VoiceOver now looks at the text to determine the language that should be used - previously this would only happen on the web if the author tagged it correctly. So for example, if you have a word written out in a different alphabet, like こんにちは this should now get read out in the Japanese voice instead of having Alex or whatever voice you're using just spelling out hiragana characters. This is also what iOS has done for years. Where the Mac goes a step further is if you added other languages in VoiceOver's voice settings, even if they use a Latin alphabet, they will also be taken into consideration for detection. This does occasionally cause false positives, but is correct 90% of the time which makes reading multilingual content great.

This is probably also what's causing the increased delay between some speech, because it's being split up somewhere. If you only work in one language and know you don't want the language detection and would rather have fewer pauses, then setting the voice with the VO+Command+arrow keys will make Alex or other voices work like they did before.

Another voice related change is that, at least on M1, VoiceOver now uses the neural version of the Siri voice rather than the older, more synthetic one that you got before or still get on iOS. It's slightly less responsive than the older generation of Siri voice, but still surprisingly usable and far more pleasant to listen to for things like reading longer articles.

Lastly, one minor change I noticed is that on the web, VoiceOver now tells you what kind of data an edit field is expecting - E-mails, phone numbers, etc.

Regarding Safari, it's definitely much better than it was in Safari 15.0. I think I still occasionally get a not responding message once in a while but if I do it happens on larger websites and doesn't last nearly as long.

Hi,
Unfortunately, the apple podcasts app is broken again. This means that you are no longer able to start specific podcast episodes, only the button "Latest episode" works reliably.

With macOS Monterey, Apple has fixed an issue that has been present for a very long time. In Safari, the braille display will now sync reliably with the speech output in most cases when using single item mode. Sadly, the braille panning is still broken and does not work at all in most places. For example, when you try to read through a wikipedia article only by using the braille display, and then move the braille output (i.e. by pressing Dot 5 CHORD), the speech output will not sync with the braille output.

Furthermore, Monterey introduces a bunch of new braille bugs.

TextEdit & Notes app: When you write something into the text field and then try to move the braille output by either pressing Dot 2 Chord (to move back) or Dot 5 CHORD (to move forward), this won't work in most cases. You have to press one of the arrow keys a few times to re-arrange the cursor in order to make braille panning work again.
Another frustrating issue occurs in TextEdit but other RTF-based applications too: When you write one line of text, for example, and then press enter and then type one letter, the line you've written above is shown on the braille display instead of the typed letter. In general, the braille display will always show the line above when you only type one letter - that's really frustrating!

The last issue I want to point out here is the fact that Live Text content is not displayed on the braille display at all. When you navigate over a canvas object within a photo in the photos app, the braille display will show, guess what, simply nothing.

In conclusion, I'd say that Apple has still a lot of work to do for braille users - and I can just hope that they will do so, because in the current state, macOS Monterey is not very well suited for heavy braille users.

Hi,
Another big issue I found in the release of Monterey is the problem that when you turn the VO Sound off (i.e. by double-tapping on the trackpad with three fingers) and then want to turn the sound on again with the same trackpad gesture, nothing happens. You have to restart VO each time when this issue occurs, instead. Especially for braille users, this can become really frustrating. When you now simply want to turn on the speech output (for example becuase the braille display shows nothing, like described above with Live Text) and then turn it off and after a short time turn it on again, this won't work.

After upgrading I got a dialog from Setup Assistant about whether I wanted to share diagnostics with Apple or not. I've seen this on several occasions in the past, and it normally isn't an issue, but today I was unable to navigate the dialog with VoiceOver at all. I instead had to use the mouse to locate and click on the Continue button. Thankfully VoiceOver was able to announce what was under the mouse cursor normally, so I didn't need sighted assistance, but I very nearly had to get help.

It's a good thing also that I got rid of the mouse announcement delay in VoiceOver Utility some years ago, so announcements happen immediately as I move the mouse, which isn't the default. If the delay was still active, I would've really had trouble here.

And yes, I did try every trick I know of to get VoiceOver focused on the window, including VO-F1, VO-F2, VO-Shift-F5 with the mouse inside the window, Command-Tab, turning VO off and back on, moving in various directions with the arrow keys, both with and without the VO keys, hitting the Return key, and even hitting the Power button (which did not put the computer to sleep, by the way). None of these tricks worked. Only using the mouse.

During installation, it is now possible to read the progress bar with VoiceOver. Also, when the Apple ID dialog appears, VoiceOver now prompts for a password. These have been long-standing installer issues that I'm glad to see finally resolved.

The install still breaks my shell script to read the time, triggered with Option+T. Every install breaks this, and I need to go into VO Utility and fix it. Crazy.

After upgrading, I'm no longer able to launch TDSR in the Terminal. This is probably because it's been eons since I upgraded TDSR, or possibly a Python issue. I'll grab the latest TDSR from GitHub and see if I can get it running again.

I can't for sure say if this is a bug or not...
Switching between Tab Groups with Command-Shift+Up/Down-Arrows,, seems to only do it's thing if you are among either the location/address bar (command+L) or among the Toolbars.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Those comments about the installer are encouraging. I have a new machine on order, so I'll be completing the initial setup process from scratch when it arrives.

My current late 2013 MacBook Pro won't upgrade to Monterey, but the new hardware will obviously have it pre-installed. I'm also in the "heavy braille user" category, and I'm glad there have been at least some bug fixes in that department.

Put VoiceOver focus in the menu bar with VO+M. Then use Alt+Tab to switch between apps. I would expect to hear the name of the app with each Alt+Tab keypress. Instead, I hear "Apple" for every app. Sometimes it announces the name of the first or second app correctly, but once it says "Apple", then every Alt+Tab keypress announces "Apple".

This issue has been around since Mac OS 11. I reported it to Apple long ago. As it is still present in Mac OS 12, I thought I should finally mention it here.

If my Mac has been asleep a while, when I wake it, it prompts for my password. I expect to hear keyclicks as I type my password, but under Mac OS 12, I hear only silence.

In the Mail app, when I send a message, I expect to hear the whoosh sound of the email being sent. Under Mac OS 12, sending a message makes no sound. The only way I know my message was sent is to go to the Sent folder and see it there, or check to make sure that the Drafts folder is empty.

Are these bugs?

Are the changes to Full Keyboard Access useful for VoiceOver users?

https://www.macworld.com/article/351823/macos-monterey-full-keyboard-access-accessiblity-navigation-hardware-viewer-how-to.html

Hello all!
So, I am about to take a dive and go for MacOs update.
What I was wondering was whether the Siri voices have improved? Remember the pesky bug where Siri voices would speak in echo or speak two of them simultaneously.
I love using the British male Siri voice as my default VO voice and if the bug still persists then I may take a raincheck for now!
Please let me know if this issue is resolved.
Thank you and have a smashing day all!

I think it's important to note that when VoiceOver announces "Safari is not responding", the website has in fact loaded and is responsive to sighted users who can scroll through it and follow links. As a result, this core problem introduced in Safari v15 still persists.

I have just installed Monterey but the FaceTime app is not usable with VoiceOver. VO doesn't read any user interface elements, when I pres the arrow keys I only hear the ding sound.
Also Books app is not responsive, I can read the books but when turning a page the app freezes.

I'd not really read about the new mouse pointer feature, but I was under the impressino you could actually change the pointer shape. But you can just change the 2 colours. Actually, I struggled to use the colour control. It took me ages to find it (it was on the bottom left of the screen but quite hard to make out), and then I wasn't really sure how to use the slider to do more than black ad white. But my enthusiasm had gone by that point.

Windows has had a pointer which inverts depending on the colours behind it. I was hoping for a similar option but sadly not.

I'm taking a pass on this one, at least for the time being. I was going to update on this Mac, but I've had it since the end of 2013 and it's starting to show its age. Purchasing a new Mac altogether would cost a lot, and I don't think my current financials can afford it. My mother encouraged me to keep up my keyboarding skills with a new Mac or just not updating this one. I think she's absolutely right, but my typing in iOS is starting to improve. In addition, there are a lot of ways to input text on an iPhone. So the jury's still out on this one. That said, the new release sounds really good as I've come to expect from Apple.

Having a major annoyance with Monterey and how it connects to my Beats Solo Pro headphones.

Like other Apple headphones in recent years, the default behavior is to try to connect automatically to whatever device you are using. The problem is that the behavior often picks the wrong device, at least in my experience, making me have to switch devices manually, which can be a pain at times.

I was able to switch the behavior from automatic to manual in the past, but it seems as if I can no longer do that on my iMac. After upgrading to Monterey, the default automatic behavior returned, and I have had my headphones mistakenly connect to my Mac instead of my iPhone on several occasions now. I went into System Preferences to try to turn off the automatic switching mode, and though the option does appear for the headphones, the popup menu is dimmed, making it impossible for me to change the setting. Trying to authenticate with my admin password first and then making the change doesn't work either, since the popup menu remains dimmed even after putting in my credentials. So I am now stuck with the automatic switching mode, and all of its bugginess I would love to live without.

I can still switch the connection mode on my iPhone and iPad running the latest iOS. It's only my Mac that won't let me change the setting, and of course there's no way to change the setting globally for all devices.

Can anyone else confirm this change in behavior, either with the Beats Solo Pro, or with AirPods or any other Apple headphone that comes with this feature? I would certainly love to know if there's something I can do to fix this annoyance, if anyone has any suggestions.

For context I have a 2017 model iMac. I cannot disable Bluetooth on this device, because the keyboard I use with it only works via Bluetooth.

I noticed when I turned VoiceOver on, it asked if I wanted to give it permission to Bluetooth which I think is new.

In Big Sur, I noticed that I can never seem to get rid of these dialogs. You click OK and seemingly nothing happens. (Similarly with Don't Allow). This still seems to be the case in Monterey which is really annoying.

The FaceTime app works fine for me. However, a friend using a 2014 Mac mini after updating to Monterey also noticed that it came up with a blank window. After running VOCR and asking someone sighted to look at it it turned out the app had come up with a prompt saying that he needed to connect a camera to use FaceTime, even though it was possible to use it without for audio calls before. Stranger still, he can still answer audio calls fine, and a different person this time on a 2020 M1 Mac mini also without a camera hooked up doesn't have this error and can use the app perfectly.

Regarding iBooks, Apple ditched the old app in favor of a new one which was ported over from iOS via catalist. Not that the original books app ever worked super reliably for reading, but yeah this one is even less consistent and trying to do something like a say all doesn't work at all. IIRC the iOS accessibility API has a type of role specifically designed for long text that things like the books app or Kindle hook into and this currently doesn't seem to translate to the Mac.

Here's a new problem I'm seeing in Monterey, and it's very reproducible on my 2019 iMac.

Place VoiceOver focus on a list view control, then put the Mac to sleep. When you wake the system, the Up and Down arrow keys produce no VoiceOver feedback.

To fix, move focus away from the list control, then back again.

I was hopiong that live text would work everywhere. I'm always getting Skype messages with images of text in them, and it would be great if I could just copy/paste the text out. It seems it doesn't work in Skype or Preview. It did work nicely in Safari and it was kind of magical when it did - just being able to highlight text in an image.

But not sure how to get VoiceOver to interact with it??

I'm wandering that are these bugs reported to apple? I have been written some E-mails about what I encountered. I hope they will fix them.
And Sorry for my mistakes, English is my second language.

Hi all,
I was wondering as to how to turn on full keyboard access in accessibility option? In my case, the button appears to be dimmed.
Is it the case that the full keyboard access can be granted only to external keyboards and not to the native keyboards?
As a reference, I was trying to turn on full keyboard access on my M1 MacBook Air.
Any thoughts?
Thank you and have a smashing day!

Not sure how new this is, but I've just noticed it for the first time.

Suppose you have a URL with an internal link target tag, like so:
https://www.magnetsandladders.org/#the-day-after-christmas-fictionwzxhzdk1142by-paul-martz

I have not been able to find a way to get VoiceOver focus to land on the target tag. If I click such a link, Safari opens to the start of the page, seeming to ignore the target tag altogether. If I copy the URL and paste it into the address bar, I get slightly better results: Safari visually displays the correct portion of the webpage. But VoiceOver focus is still at the top, so any VoiceOver navigation immediately scrolls the page away from the target tag.

Here are a couple low-vision related improvements I've noticed in Monterey.

The VoiceOver highlight rectangle (enabled in VO Utility, Visuals, Show VoiceOver Cursor) now correctly follows VoiceOver focus if you scroll the focused item, such as text in a word processor. This has been broken for many years.

Big Sur introduced a graphic window that would temporarily display every time you toggled Zoom on or off. Along with this came a new problem: VoiceOver focus would jump to the temporary window, and when it closed, VoiceOver focus would frequently not be where you left it. You'd also get a lot of verbiage from VoiceOver redundantly re-announcing the current application. All of this seems to be greatly improved in Monterey, and the temporary Zoom window is much less obtrusive.

Hey! I just encountered a great improvement. If someone sends me three emoji faces, VoiceOver used to read each one, like "red face with crossed eyes, red face with crossed eyes, red face with crossed eyes".

Now, VoiceOver reads the emoji once, prefixed with the number, so I get "three red face with crossed eyes".

Thank you, Apple!

Hi!
Not sure if this is a Monterey or Big Sur thing, as I skipped Big Sur entirely, but VoiceOver now also loads automatically on things like FileVault or Mac OS Recovery. I presume it checks whether VoiceOver is loaded in the login window and adjusts accordingly - I love this!

Best
Malthe

I've had numerous conversations with Apple. VO in Monterey can read a page or two in iBooks and then drops out, saying "no text to interact". Like thousands of other blind folks I really need this to work. They say they're working on it. But this is incredibly frustrating.

Steve Kuusisto, Syracuse, NY

Hi, I sent a feedback about Apple Books and some other issues about continuous reading and they said they could produced the issues I mentioned. So I hope they will fix them soon, hopefully on 12.1 update.

I've found a new issue for low vision users. With the Mail app configured to open messages in a separate window (as many users do), the message window opens in the bottom center of the screen. If the user drags the window to a better viewing location, new message windows will open in the new location for a while. But eventually they seem to forget the new location and open at bottom center again. I have not been able to identify what triggers the windows to open at the incorrect location.

Does anyone know if the Safari "busy, busy, busy, ..." bug has been reported to Apple? If so, does anyone have a link where I can track the status? I'm still running Catalina and I got the Safari 15.3 update and man is this bug annoying. Has anyone found a workaround for this? Makes Safari a frustrating experience currently.

Still present, and beyond “frustrating”.

My personal experience is that this issue has actually got worse with Monterrey. One change is that instead of saying “busy, busy, busy...” VoiceOver now says “AppName is not responding.”

This is on an M1 MacBook Air. I've no reason to think that it's any better on Intel Macs.

As I've said many times already on here, I won't be recommending a Mac to anybody who will need to use VoiceOver until this is fixed. Having your Mac frequently unresponsive for periods of up to 10 seconds is simply unacceptable when everybody else is blown away by the performance of Apple's latest Macs.

And, yes, I and others have reported this multiple times to Apple. I'm not aware of Apple offering anywhere to track the progress of the bug. The best you can do is check your own reports I the Feedback app for any updates. I did get a comment in there several months ago that they thought it had been resolved, so they wanted to know if I agreed. I did not.

@HEXAGON and others
On my MBP 2015, braille panning doesn't work anymore in Monterey with Pages and MS Word, but it works with TextEdit. Due to the bug, VoiceOver crashes in Pages and Word while trying to display braille, and my MacBook gets hot. The bug also occurs when starting the MBP in safe mode. Does anybody encounter that problem? Many thanks.

The problem with intermittently not hearing some sounds on my Mac, it turns out, has a rational explanation. Monterey changed the behavior of Do Not Disturb so that it takes effect on every device using my Apple ID. If I enable Do Not Disturb on my phone, my Mac also goes into Do Not Disturb, and stops playing sound effects such as the whoosh sound when sending mail.

I wasted quite a bit of time trying to figure this one out. I've often wondered if there's a way to measure the cumulative productivity hit of software upgrades that change behavior in subtle ways. This issue is the poster child for further investigation.