The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 for Blind and Low Vision Users

VoiceOver Recognition work on iPhone XR?
thanks.
cheers.

Hello,

I am running iOS 14 since the first public beta. The problem with the incorrect heading movement in safari is there since the first beta and I hate it! I cannot scroll between google search results.

The problem with the slow VO is there sincethe last 3 public betas.

I am using an iPhone XS.

First of all, as stated in the article, the voice response speed of VoiceOver has regressed. Even if a new auxiliary voice is added, there are still slow voice responses on some pages such as the main screen.I tested the iPhone XR and iPhone XS Max and got the same result.
Second, the voice response speed of the keyboard when typing is significantly slower. I use the simplified Chinese Pinyin input method. If you use this input method like me, you can observe it. Now when I press the letter on the keyboard, VoiceOver will not promptly say the name of the letter but will A noticeable pause.You will easily observe that when you press a letter on the keyboard, you will hear the typing sound first and then VoiceOver will read the input letter name. If you type faster, it is likely that you will hear it. Less than a part of the letter name.
Third, the interpretation of the candidate characters of the Chinese input method is still unreliable. A large number of Chinese characters are still interpreted in ways that are incomprehensible or inaccurate. For example, sweat sweat will be strangely interpreted as Afghan sweat.
Fourth, when you wake up the iPhone, VoiceOver will still not announce the current time very reliably.
Fifth, image description and text recognition cannot be used normally in the simplified Chinese language environment.
Sixth, when you use the full-text reading function to read an article, you will obviously feel that the pause time between paragraphs in VoiceOver has increased. I have reported this to Apple by recording a video. Of course this is also a problem in the Chinese language.

Ehh :(

We have 8 fix bugs.
Moderate and minor bugs until 19

Does it only happen when navigating by heading? What if you switch to links, then switch back to headings? Does it alsohappen if you're using single-letter quicknav on a bluetooth keyboard of a braille display?

Hello,

I think this bug is not on this list:

Sometimes when I load a webpage in safari on my iPhone XS, the page load sound repeats even when the page is already at 100%.

I need to restart VO to fix this problem.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just something I am missing, but when using Voiceover, the process for moving an app from the app library to the home screen is a bit inconsistent. Under the accessibility settings, I turned on the Magnifier. This placed a magnifier app in my app library. I wanted to move this app to one of my home screens. After locating the app in the Library, I turned the rotor to actions, flicked down to drag item and performed a double tapped. This put me on the last page of apps. When I performed a single finger flick down, there was not an option to add magnifier before or after the current apps. After trying this a couple of times, I found that magnifier had appeared on my last page of apps, but I'm not quite sure how I did this. To me, dragging an app from the library should be similar to moving apps around the home screen.
Anyone else encountered this odd behavior?
Jim

Hi, i installed ios Gold master and i usis the Polaris braille display from Hims. It's heppands in Voice Over settings, but it's not consistent and sometimes it's heppands random. Somebuddy can conferm this with other braille displays? Thnks.

thought ios 14 is going to take my unlucky 13 away, now i won't even attempt. so disappointed about this 2 trillion dollar company.

voiceover lag is a very serious issue, it is comparable to a non synchronized display, it is a no-no in my book.

Hello,
If you are experiencing the focus jumping bug in Google search results, I would recommend going into your Safari settings and setting your search engine to DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo does not have this issue at the moment.

Using Samantha compact voice on an iPhone 11, and VO is extremely sluggish. I can swipe through elements on the screen fast enough that there is absolutely 0 spoken content because of the delay. Not good.

My philosophy is it could be loads worse. At least I am not gettig the annoying $$ issue like I was in iOS 13.0 and 13.1. I'm just glad it worked and am not encountering any showstoppers, minus the slightly annoying focus issues. It's not that big of an annoyance. Some might find the lagginess a annoying and I can understand. However, we could have far worse things to complain about. Things are not always perfect, and truely I don't understand some of us sometimes. Anyway, waffle over. Enjoy iOS 14 and it's new features if supported.

Hi,

I have no issues here, accept when navigating around sites such as youtube. sometimes, it jumps around to another area of the site, but their’s a workaround: use explore by touch to find an element you want to go to, such as the search field, then you’ll be OK from their. other than that, no other issues.

Hi.

I bit the bullet and installed the iOS 14 release on my iPhone 7 Plus. On a scale of 1 to 10, my regret factor scale would be set at a 7 for now. What do I like about the update? Well, the app library now affords me the choice to remove some of those useless home screen apps I don't open at all, like Wallet and Health. Another great feature is the incoming call screen, with the decline button a swipe to the left away. There are others, but I'm eager to jump to the bugs that are making me regret upgrading now.
1. Image recognition: Now, you may say to me right away that this is not available for the iPhones below XS or XR or whatever, but remember in iOS 13 there was preliminary support for this feature. There used to be a toggle to turn it off, but it's gone from these older models, probably because the other recognition features are not supported. What I'm left with, and I imagine others are too, is a very sloppy mandatory experience, that would announce stuff like "wood processed", "adult", "screenshot", "shoes" and other superfluous and incorrect descriptions. There's no way to turn it off, so what do I do?
2. Repeated notifications: When a new notification comes in, I find that it is repeating the notification more than once, probably due to the fact that I have banners turned on. However, this was not the case in iOS 13.7.
3. Slower than before VoiceOver: This is discussed above, with the workaround involving the language item in the rotor working, all be it only slightly better. However, my rotor is cluttered now. Never mind that I had to put containers in there because of an unusual way of organising the app library.
I'd like to hear others' feedback on these issues, especially the image description issue. It's honestly frustrating, and I thought Apple would've tested this more on older models, seeing as though they still support them.

hi
I have an IPhone 6s. haven't updated it right now.
weighting for someone to reply to the last comment posted here. cause if that's the case, sadly, I won't update.
I'd love to enjoy new features. I know some are not supported on my IPhone but I'd love to enjoy the others which are supported.

The major issue reported and discussed is obviously that of Slow Voiceover. VO was indeed slow after updating with ava enhanced voice. Did couple of voice changes, restarted a few times, and now this appears working perfectly even with default voice. So maybe it's something that should be back on track after a few hours usage?

Hi.

Firstly, I'll agree with the previous post. Some fooling around with the voice (Alex) including uninstalling it, the language rotor option and switching to a different voice has done the trick with the default voice. Secondly, there is a way to turn off the beep made when VoiceOver reports detected text and images in the Audio > Sounds settings. However, it will still report what it thinks is the detected text and images, with no way of turning it off. Of course, I'm once again talking about persons with iPhones released before September 2018. One example of where this flops is in the Contacts app. When you arrive at the "V" heading, VoiceOver will say "down arrow" for some reason. I've never used a screen reader that would provide me with extra information that was not even there and so inaccurate. I dare ask you if it's artificial intelligence or human incompetence.

I just updated a few hours ago. So I haven’t really played with it much. I figured I’d get some sleep. And then play around with it more the next couple days. Knock on wood, I haven’t really noticed too much of a lag. I didn’t just jinx myself and her. Hopefully not.
And I’m using Ava in Hanst as well.

But if there’s anyone who is still on the fence about updating, jump in! The water is lovely! LOL

I think you can try turning off the image description feature? I believe there was an option to do that, but I haven't updated yet.. it's updating.

iPhone Xr here.
I also had the sluggish VO bug but resolved it by loading a second voice in the router.

something else which I initially thought was a bug, but then got it with sited help, so just a heads up. The position of the slider to move between pages on the home screen changed, it is now in the middle of the screen rather than on the far right. This had me puzzled for a while since I don't move between pages with the 3 finger left or right swipe, I usually place my finger on that slider out of memory.

I haven't encountered any major issue so far, not even the lag, but I haven't played around with it that much yet. I thought it would get super sluggish since my device is an iPhone 8, but for now is as snappy as it can be.
I do have a question though. How does one go about using the widgets? I tried adding one to my home screen, but I can't get this feature to work. I was successful in adding it, but I can't swipe to it (VoiceOver simply behaves as if there is no widget at all and skips it entirely); when trying to access it by touch, VoiceOver does say for example "Fitness widget", but then all I get is the "no items detected" sound, as if that area is completely blank. I tried using the rotor on it and performing a double tap, but nothing seems to be working. So my question is: is this a bug, or am I missing something?

hi
I'm using Siri female US and thankfully I do not notice any lag for now. except when I navigate things in Safari and close tabs, somehow VO has now started saying toolbar toolbar again and again. like when we tap at the bottem right to close tabs, if I'm able to describe it properly.
and VO has a bit lag in the today view. so far, nothing except all this. I'm using IPhone 6s. I was annoid at the audio feedback.. the text and images one so I went and turned off the setting from the sounds in VO. I liked how easy it was to organize home screen. finally I got rid of some apps like home and tips so I moved them to app library after listening to the podcast on applevis.
will report back if I notice any bugs :)
HTH

After upgrading on iOS 14 on my iPhone 7, I noticed the following... When you go to the Phone app, then switch to the Contacts tab and add a new contact, while typing the first and the last name of the contact being added you constantly hear VO repeating the label of the current text field. For example, when you type in the First Name field, after pressing any letter Voiceover announces "First name".
Has anyone experience this?

I already experienced similar issue after upgrading to one of the previous iOS version. When you are on the Home screen (or in the App Library screen) and press Space with dots 4-5-6 to get to the last element on the screen, nothing happens. The keystroke (Space+dots 1-2-3) to go to the first element of the screen is working as expected. As before, when you try to jump to the bottom of screen within any app, this works as before.

Hi,
the jumping bug in HTML content
is so noticeable in the pocket app, when you open an article it will jump around crazily especially if there are multiple headings, starting with the title heading. the only work around this is that to move with touch until you find first line then read with swipe.
if there are more than one heading then you may have to use scroll as well with 3 fingers.
Arabic Vocalizer voice is a mess, throughout the beta even English dictionary received some changes but got fixed in the following updates, but Arabic they completely messed it up from numbers to everything, then left untouched.
regarding screen recognition, keep it in the router and use it only when you need it,
I found it so useful for instance in the telegram app the settings tab is completely inaccessible but using screen recognition i managed to access it.
as well as reading some images in MS teams when there are images of class timings for example.
I hope Arabic voice receive some fixes and as mentioned the speed when using voiceover there are noticeable lag in certain apps such as whatsapp.
I haven't tried the secondary voice thing yet, but it is clear to me that my iPad Pro has much much less lag than my iPhone 10S Max.
good luck.

Did somebody notice, that Audio destination feature doesn't work? since ios 13. I have Bluetooth speaker „Dockin define +2“ and once i connect it i hear voiceover, when i switch router to audio destination and set to „default audio root“ and! No changes. With airpods pro the same situation. I announced this bug to Apple accsessibility, but they didn't fix that.

For some strange reason today, voiceover is not reading my twitts within notification. I make sure mute is off and yet VO is not reading. I am able to get news so far but message and witters no.

Using my beats wireless headphones, I find that my voiceover keeps cutting out in different apps. When this happens, the only way to fix it is to turn voiceover off and back on. it happens in the Facebook app’s newsfeed quite often and also in the Podbean app. it’s definitely the worst bug that’s been introduced for me and makes the Podbean app unuseable.

I noticed most of the bugs listed here during the beta, but they're just annoyances that I can live with and not showstoppers, like the nasty losing VO bug after a call that happened last year.

I love the home screen widgets and the app library. Since I've used BSI to open apps for so long, I forgot where I put most of my apps. So I just moved them to the app library which removed all my home screen folders, and I set new apps to go to the app library. Then I put the siri suggestions and battery widgets on my home screen. That lets me see the battery life of all my connected devices, and kind of makes my home screen dynamic based on the apps that siri thinks I'll use at different parts of the day.

I was most excited about screen recognition after listening to the apple vis extra podcast. After playing with it though, I'm not sure if it's quite ready for prime time. The apps I tried it with gave me a little more information than I got without it, but not enough to make them useable. IMHO Apple should just go all out and require all apps to meet a certain level of accessibility within reason. (Looking at you, Pizza Hut app.)

I've turned off all VO recognition for now as I don't find them useful enough yet. As others have said though, they may get better over time. I find the image recognition most useful on the web, but if you focus on an image and VO describes it, you can't flick down to get to the next rotor option till you flick right or left passed it. This doesn't hapen with image recognition off. Also, I find it really annoying in the music app with it trying to describe every album cover. Even the minimal descriptions that we got in 13 are annoying for me in the music app. There needs to be a verbosity option to turn things like that on and off on a per app basis.

An unlabeled button in the Translate app while listening indicates dictation is active. Activating will stop listening. I could not start listening in Translate using the Magic Tap, but I could use Magic Tap to stop the listening. If you use the VO gesture two-finger tap and hold and give the item a label, it will be spoken in addition to the other items spoken. This is unlike typical dictation in other areas where you only get sound effects and no speech.

For options like Add to favorites, Dictionary, or Speak Translation, those are found in the Actions.

While checking on the above mentioned options, I noticed a few times where I used Magic Tap to stop or start dictation and it did that, but sometimes it also started recently played audio, which was not expected. I’ll keep checking on that one, maybe I accidentally magic tapped twice.

The haptic feedback when swiping up for App Switcher and Home on my iPhone 11 Pro Max when using VoiceOver feels more prominent than before the update and that is helpful to me.

I unexpectedly ended up in the status bar after dismissing a banner notification. Keeping a watch on that one, too.

I no longer can navigate the Safari with my Braille display. Navigation hotkeys are no longer working. For example, I use H to navigate to headings, B to buttons etc. In previous releases, it was working fine.

Hi! I encounter most of the voice over problems that was stated in this post, and its way back ios13. 1. Half take feedback, sometimes stop when typing or navigating also when swiping up or down the screen.
2. Keyboard, is inconsistent sometimes become unresponsive when typing, or it enters wrong letters when you lift your finger, additional keyboard problem voice over sometimes stop speaking the entered character or words even the deleted word or character.
3. Voice over slow response, when swiping it take 1/2 seconds before to move from 1 item to another.

BSI also doesn't appear to work in the app library search field.

It switches to the keyboard, but when you go to type, it's as if it doesn't exist.

I know you can just use BSI to go directly to the app on the home screen, but what if you want to find an app so you can delete it?

That also doesn't work.

Searching for an app in the library so you can delete it doesn't work, you either have to move the app to a page or find what category apple placed it in, then delete it that way.

On iPhone 11 on ios 14 even after turning on and off and on dictation, the dictation button from the on screen keyboard keeps saying ... Possibly Smile... no joke. It’ is totally strange. The only way I can do dictation is to go to the edit field and double tap to dictate. Anyone else having this issue? Hard reset and toggling dictation off and on does nothing. On my older iPhone 8 dictation works just fine. Bewildered in Sacramento.

I have also noticed that voiceover randomly stops speaking. It still works, because I can hear the clicks as I navigate around the screen. I restart it, which solves the problem, but it started this in IOS 14.
Kim