We’re Making it Easier For You To Keep Up-To-Date With The Status Of Accessibility On iOS And OS X

By AppleVis, 19 February, 2015

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

We are pleased and excited to be opening the doors today on a completely new area on AppleVis, one that we hope will help to keep you up-to-date on the current status of accessibility on iOS and OS X.

As AppleVis has grown and evolved over the past 5 years, we’re aware that it’s become increasingly more difficult to keep track of what accessibility-related problems have been reported and discussed on here.

So, to make this easier, we are pleased to announce the launch of The AppleVis Accessibility Bug Database.

The purpose of the AppleVis Accessibility Bug Database is to be a central location for users to find up-to-date information about accessibility bugs in Apple software. The Database contains a listing for all accessibility bugs which members of the AppleVis Editorial Team have encountered and reported to Apple; workarounds for the bugs, if available; and a comments section where users can add observations of their own.

At this point, it is worth stressing that we make no claims that the Database is definitive - there are simply too many variables to make it possible for us to encounter and document every accessibility-related bug that may be present at any given time.

We also need to stress the continued importance of reporting to Apple’s Accessibility Team every single bug that you personally encounter. Listing or reporting a bug on AppleVis may be helpful and informative to others, but ultimately it is only Apple who can make that bug go away.

This post explains more on the importance of reporting bugs to Apple and provides some tips on the best way to do so. However, the short explanation is that Apple can only fix bugs that they know about; the more reports that they have on a bug, the more likely it is that they will allocate developer time to fixing it; and, just maybe, the additional piece of information that you provide might be exactly what the need to find a fix. So, even if a bug that you are encountering is already listed in our Database, please do be sure to report it to Apple.

Having said all of that, we hope that you find this new addition to AppleVis as helpful as we believe you will.

Please use the comments section on bug listing pages to share any additional information which you think others would find helpful.

Each bug listing also offers the ability for you to indicate that you have encountered the bug. Apart from confirming to us that we are not the only ones, it will place a link to the bug entry into a new tab on your AppleVis Account page. This will provide you with an easy way to track the status of these bugs.

As with other areas of the site, you can use the Subscription facility to be notified by email of new comments posted to the bugs that interest you or to be notified of new bugs added to the Database.

Once again, we really hope that you find this new addition to AppleVis helpful and informative.

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Comments

By Mike Fulton on Saturday, February 21, 2015 - 17:14

I think this is a great idea and will prove to be very useful!

Thanks, Mike. Obviously this is very much in its infancy, but we are looking forward to seeing how it grows and evolves as iOS and OS X updates bring us fixes and new bugs.

By Ekaj on Saturday, February 21, 2015 - 17:14

I just had a brief look at this new database and like it. Although I personally have yet to encounter a lot of the bugs mentioned, I think this will be a great way to keep track of bugs and report them. You go AppleVis!

By J.P. on Saturday, February 21, 2015 - 17:14

This will be very useful.
I would like to add, Tech blogs are reporting with ios 8.3 Apple will open public beta. For anyone comfortable using beta version... There is no better way for us to help our community. Hopefully squash a larger amount of accessibility related issues. With faster results.

By Chelsea on Saturday, February 21, 2015 - 17:14

Hi AppleVis team,

This is great news! No more scrolling through pages and pages of bug lists just to see if the one I'm encountering is already known!!

To that end, can ordinary users add a database entry, or should we keep using the forums and then it gets added to the official database? I have a nasty bug involving dictation and VoiceOver, but don't want to repost it if it is buried in an iOS 8 bug list somewhere.

I have two recommendations for improving the database, which is already great to start with! The first: If a user reports that they have encountered this bug also, make a drop down list or check box appear that asks which device they've encountered it on. then you don't have loads of comments saying, "Me too, but on this device!" You can also get a sense of the bug's reach that way: Is it more device or iOS specific?

The second feature might already be implemented and I'm missing it. Could you make it so the database is sortable by bug category, like the app directories? this may help people in tracking down a specific bug in a category vs. looking through the whole list.

Great job! Hopefully this will help everyone. Now off to report bugs!

Chelsea

Hello Chelsea,

Thank you for the feedback.

At this point, bugs can only be added by members of the Editorial Team.

As for sorting by bug category, the lists already offer the ability to filter what’s displayed by category, severity, or a combination of both.