What new accessibility features would you like to see in iOS 7?

By AJ Roxas, 8 April, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

hi! guys good day! just like to know if what accessibility features you want to see in the up coming iOS 7? just post your suggestions here so i can forward to apple accessibility team and hopfully we can see even 1 of the suggestions here thanks.

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Comments

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Good day. Thanks for your great efforts. It would be great to have a feature that enables the user to download premium boices manually same as the Mac. Another feature I'd love to have is adding the multitasking gestures in the iPhone, for example: flicking up with 4 fingers opens the app switcher. I'm not sure if any one agrees on this one: changing voiceover's pich Would be a great feature to have.

By Bobbi on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

I've noticed that when listening to music or using Skype, anything that uses audio really, if I go into an app that has a keyboard, Voiceover is really slow in speaking the names of the keys I put my finger on. I'm not sure if it has to do with the way the audio is faded, but typing while listening to music happens to be amazingly slow what with Voiceover's unresponsiveness in that regard.

By Tangela on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

As has already been mentioned here, the ability to customize the voices, delete voices of other languages you don't plan to use and add higher quality voices from the languages or accents you would like would be a great improvement.

By Siobhan on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hello. Thanks for asking us what we want out of IOS seven.First and foremost, increase responsiveness in edit fields of voiceover especially in slightly older devices, i.e. iPhone4A speciffic experience withthis, is texting. When entering the person's name from one's contacts, we are very slow to hear the name such as Jen, John BJ. Even after that is selected, the responsiveness is very slow when texting in the message itself. However upon receipt of a response, the voice issomewhat faster. It's the initial contact which is frustratingly slow.

Why is everyone so concerned with a better voice? Is that much better then a real constructive comment? I'm not trying to be rude or harsh here, but I haven't seen anything besides one other comment about adjusting the volume of the alerts and the Voiceover. Nice idea. Is it really necessary to worry about deleting languages, and putting on better voices with accents? I just don't understand is all.

By Toonhead on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hi. In iOS7 I would like nothing more than to shorten what iOS says when we receive a notification. Let's take this little by little and you'll see what I mean. Lets take facebook for example, it's something everyone knows. So someone posts something on your wall. If this happens, VoiceOver reads the notification as, new notification from facebook, facebook, john posted on your wall. What I'd like to hear is, facebook notification, john posted on your wall. Seems much faster, and says the exact same thing. I already know it's a new notification, and there's no need to say the name of the thing twice in a row. This might seem small but if you get a lot of notifications all day long it can get rather repetative.

By AnonyMouse on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Personally, I would like to see the ability of the developers have the options to add whatever Keyboard mapping that may help us. For example, would love the ability of the people of Fleksy and BrailleTouch can be able to embed their own Keyboard for us Thanks for asking!

By Mike Fulton on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

When I get a notification on the lock screen, like for a text message, I would like for VO not to read the time when the screen turns on.

By Mike Fulton on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

When I get a notification on the lock screen, like for a text message, I would like for VO not to read the time when the screen turns on.

This has also been mentioned earlier here on the forum, but I think to have an option to always stop VoiceOver from speaking during phone calls would be a great feature. And then you could just do a double tap with three fingers to turn it back on if you need it for inputing numbers or another reason. I always get frustrated of all the VoiceOver speaking in the space between when I take the phone from my ear and until I've managed to double tap to end the call. And by the way, there seems to be a bug now that causes the VoiceOver volume to explode just before the call ends. It's also very annoying when you get a long text message while in a phone call, and VoiceOver starts reading up the whole thing. And you would have to tell the person you are talking to to wait for a moment, while you're trying to get the thing to shut up... Hate it when that happens...

By Felix on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Go to VO settings and activate announcing of the lock screen notifications.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Thursday, May 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hello. I guess I understood what feature you're talking about. You'd like to change the default input keyboard. For example: you got both fleksy and BrailleTouch apps and want to have the ability to switch between the default input keyboard. Yes, it's an amazing feature. I was able to switch between 2 different input keyboards on an android phone.

By Jordan Moon on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Most of these ideas are great. Especially the ones about the notifications, as there's nothing more annoying about VO as when I'm talking on the phone and a notification interrupts my conversation. If there was a way to disable this that'd be great. Having Flexy or a different interface to be able to type with would also be amazing. Thirdly, When listening to audio, it is indeed hard to type, as the VO voice lags. I would also add that I want to thank you for allowing us to share.

I hear you. I'd rather have long standing bugs like the non-preservation of VO volume when toggling off and on, or the random total reset of VO settings after a reset squashed, than new voices or the ability to remove languages. The separation of sounds and VO is a great idea. Don't get me wrong, more TTS options would be nice, but it wouldn't make my short list of desired improvements.

By Mike Fulton on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

I would also like for the VO volume to be increased while trying to use the keypad while on a phone call.

By Mike Taylor on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hi, I think this has been posted in another forum, but I am thinking it would be good to have the option to switch off the sounds that are heard when an app is opened or closed, and the click that can be heard when navigating between items on the iPhone's screen. Don't get me wrong I still use this function some times, and especially during an iOS update so I know when the phone restarts, and it is great to get new users up and running with VO. I am thinking though it would be great to be able to turn off such sounds, but still have the ring, alerts, and text tones on to save switching from loud to silent. As a default option though this should be left on, and users should switch it off if they wanted to, this way it would still mean that users would be able to get the best regards accessibility. Thanks. Mike

By Tangela on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Thanks for asking what features would be recommended. The ability to switch to a custom keyboard, such as fleksy or brailleTouch would be fantastic, as would the ability to mute VO sound affects without muting the phone. Any and all improvements to accessibility are always greatly appreciated.

First, the abillity to download other premium voices would be great, as sound is very important to some, to the point of effecting emotions and stress level. Being able to delete voices would potentially increase the amount of storage available on the phone. Even the few MB a voice takes up could make the difference between getting that app you want and having to delete something first. Finally, I would like to see Voice Over stop interfeering with other audio. For example, the bookShare app and other skip when using VO. Also, the latest updates have caused a bug where vVO will stops and the phone be semi-frozen at random.

By Joseph Westhouse on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

I agree with the earlier comment about VO being extremely slow when composing a new message (to someone you don't have an existing conversation with); that's a major pain. Other than that, I'd love to have gesture-based controls for skipping tracks (forward and backward). When I'm listening to music in the car with my wife, it'd be nice to turn speech off and just skip an unwanted song with gestures, so that VO wouldn't keep dimming the audio.

By Aaron Linson on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Nothing will be known until the announcement. Nobody knows a thing.

By AJ Roxas on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

hi! guys thanks for giving your suggestions i will document all your suggested features and post it here after so you can add

By Big Davy on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

The only improvement I feel is required is for Apple to fix the loss of focus issue when flicking down by Headings in Safari, Music, Contacts etc etc. Prior to IOS 6, this bug was not there. Other than that, the Iphone etc etc are fantastic devices and have revolutionised life for Blind People. We no-longer have to buy expensive pieces of equipment to help us get around, to tell us the colour of items, scan/read documents etc etc - Even now with the BrailleTouch app, we can use our IDevice to input notes/texts via Braille commands.

By Thomas Byskov … on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Just a few thoughts: 1. Adding a small vibration when the phone is turned on or shuts down. THis was a very nice thing when I used Windows mobile 6 on my HTC S-710. 2. Add some keystrokes to the braille commands. I would love to have the double tab and hold which can be done with VO-shift-M on a wireless keyboard... Not a braille display. I do agree on the Voiceover sounds enable/disable setting and the option to replace the keyboard with e.g. braille touch. Just my thoughts.

By Joe on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

I guess I'm confused if you don't want voiceover talking during a call just tripple click home while on the call. Lol maybe I just don't get it.

By ming on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

hi all, the braille support in non english is terible. such as Chinese. so, hope the IOS 7 can be have more languages in braille table...

By Brooke on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

This is coming from a fairly new iOS user, so I'm sorry if a few of these things are already possible and I'm just not aware of it. The addition of new voices would be nice, but that's not at the top of my list. I'd love for some sort of vibration feedback when the phone shuts down or starts up. When I first got my phone, I got into a situation where VO's volume somehow got turned down the whole way. My first thought was to reboot the phone, but I got to the point where I didn't know if the phone was on or off. It may not be a big deal for those who are used to the iPhone, but for a person who'd only had the phone less than 24 hours, it was intimidating. The option to disable VO during a call would be helpful! For some reason, VO's volume seems to double when in a call, and so when I get a notification, VO is practically yelling its contents, to the point where I have to ask the other person to hold on for a second.

By Bill Freeman on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hi Brooke, This happens to me sometimes as well. One trick I've found to tell if the phone is on is to flip the mute switch on and back off. the phone vibrates when it goes into mute mote if it is on. HTH

Hi everyone. This topic really seems to be quite popular, and in the end it will be great to find out what is finally released. I do however, have one question. What does the original poster of this discussion want out of the accessibility? As it is, they are submitting our "feedback" to Apple, so i was curious. Are they in the we want voices camp, or are they trying to facilitate a truly better bug lessening release then in past updates? We all will have bugs, that's simply par for the course. I'm simply curious what this person wants, and curiously why they are doing this.

You can't do a triple click to turn VoiceOver off while holding the phone to your ear. You would have to take the phone away from your ear first, then wait for it to go on speaker mode, then triple click and put the phone up to your ear again. After you've hung up, which by the way could be a real pain to do with VoiceOver turned off, you would then have to triple click the home button again to turn VoiceOver back on. If I ought to do that every time I'm on the phone, it would probably turn me crazy after an hour, and after three hours I would be ready for a mental institution. And if you don't do it in the beginning of every phone call after first having to ask the guy on the other end to wait for a second, you could be damn sure that somebody decides to send you a message during that phone call that is longer than one of the books of the Pentateuch that VoiceOver so kindly wants to read out to you before you finally get it to stop talking again... So you see, if you had an option that would let you set voice to be muted in every phone calls as a standard setting, you wouldn't have to deal with all this, and you would probably don't have to read this far too long comment either ;) Just my experience with this issue...

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Important: Switching from the phone's speaker to the loud speaker is a VoiceOver function, not an iPhone feature. If you turnd VoiceOver off, you'll have to tap on the speaker button to switch between handset and speaker. Those who are facing any issues when having a phone call can easily triple click the home button while the device is on speaker mode to talk comfortably. If you'd like to use VoiceOver during the conversation the best option is to use headset to easily operate the device.

For me, the top priority is for us to have more voices in IOS. This is because of my hearing impairment if we could have espeak or elquance I would be such a happy bunny! Also to have these on the Mac would be wonderful too! Finally if Apple can get the heading bug fixed in Safari in IOS7 then that would be an extra bonus because at the moment since purchaseing my Iphone in December of last year I am perfectly happy with the way the phone works wit the exception of Voiceover jumping here there and everywhere in Safari! Apart from the fact that it drives me mad! It also stops say the new comers to IOS having a good web browsing experience. I could go on but these are the items I would choose for the next addition of the IOS opparating system.

By vallim on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

It would be good to able to paste telephone numbers into the keypad on the phone app. Simple but very useful

By jay on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hello. I would also like the valume of vo to be incresed while on a call, just in case you need to use the keypad to select an option. I would like to see voice over repeat a call when the ringer is off. As of now, when you get a call, when the ringer is on, you would hear vo say john mobile. When the ringer is off, you hear nothing. Would like to see this feature.

Hi J. Unfortunately if you have voice over speaking when the mute switch is flipped, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the silent mode? I mean you feel it vibrate if you have it on, youhit the home button, swipe and hear Voice over speak John Mobile. I'm really hoping that Apple finally nixes support for the iPhone 3GS I'm glad I had one. The other person I forget who this was, wanted Espeak, and Eloquence for voices. I had thought when someone had requested new synthesizers, that there was no way to incorporate those voices. for one I don't think Eloquence is available anymore and two, I don't think there is an Apple version. but as stated before, I am not on the more voices bandwagon at all. I am enjoying however the bugs that I and others with to fix. Though I haven't had all of them, I am still thriled others see this is better then just a glorofied way to get other frills instead of an innovative, stable, functional release.

By Bo on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

How about giving us verbocity settings? Customizable, with beginner, intermediate and advanced settings, with customizations. Additionally, make it customizable by app. Let us set verbocity settings, as well as volume and rate settings for different apps on our device. So, let us set volume for calls vs. Safari, etc. Default verbocity vs. custom.

hi! to ancer your question about this topic its to compile or the ideas from voiceover users to send to apple because even we can send our suggestions to them they will just ignor your ideas so it is better if the suggestions is compiled for them to understand that many voiceover users are in need of more accessibility features like on nuance talks and mobile speak because the features you want are in talks and mobile speak

By Simone Dal Maso on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hello, I'm quite surprise that most of the comments are about the voice. I think it is the last problem! Voiceover should allow users to define a custom dictionary, in which people can decide how voiceover should announce a word. think for example that in italian, if voiceover find the word "set", it reads "settembre", that is september for english user. I am a tennis fan, so Voiceover for example tell me that Roger Federer wins the first settembre... it is really annoying! So I'd like to define that the word "set", must remain set. Other ting, really important, users absolutely should choice what keyboard to use. I for example use braillepad for writing, and I'd like to have it always in all text edit fields. but other people will prefer to use flexy... or brailletouch... so please, this is a must one!

By Luca on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Did anyone notice this bug? some times, not always, difficult to tell the exact situation, but when you press home to go back from an app to the home screen vo is not responsive for 2-3 seconds or so. This bug should be absolutely be fixed!

By LaBoheme on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

what i really, really want is a gesture to invoke the find command, just like when you press vo-f on the mac. obviously, you can do this when you are using a bluetooth keyboard, but not on the ios device itself. best of all, this benefits everybody, not just visually challenged users. imagine how productive you can be when reading or editing a very long document, or when you just want to get something done very quickly on a website that you are already familiar with. you could just search for the link or button and tap on it. for example, i can search on amazon and complete an order in 30 seconds on my mac using this method, same thing can't be done with my iphone.

By Cliff on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

You can do that already. Just tripple tap with two fingers to bring up the item chooser and you're good to go! ;)

didn't realize it contains a search box. i thought it was the same "item chooser" on the mac, which i never used anyway.

By Cliff on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Happy to help out!

By Siobhan on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 11:01

Hi. I'm aware of your wishes to submit a ton of suggestions at once to Apple, however you must've been unclear in my attempt to communicate what I was asking. I simply requested, your, imput, as in, what do you want out of this? As with others some things i think would be an asset to Apple's accessibility team, others I shrug off. I was merely curious why you'd put together such an indever when as far as i understood, we had not known your own views. After all, you are the one whom is going to submit these suggestions, correct?