Apple Releases macOS Big Sur 11.3, watchOS 7.4, and tvOS 14.5; Bringing Accessibility Fixes, Support for AirTag, Enhancements, and More

Hi,
unfortunately, the new designed podcasts app introduces some new bugs while navigate the show pages with VoiceOver. First, the back button no longer appears reliably when the page was scrolled down a bit. Also, the focus jumps a little bit around so it makes more sense to navigate the show page not with the swipe gestures. In addition to that, if you are navigating through all episodes of a show, the focus sometimes jumps to the vertical scroll bar and the page scrolls down so you lose the point where you were before that focus jump. In my opinion, these bugs are really annoying and I hope that the'll get fixed very soon with the next iOS update (i.e. 14.6 or so).

Best,
Hexagon

When using any of the US English Siri voices, any of the 4 which are available in Big Sur 11.3, you may have noticed in the past that sometimes totally at random, you'd get 3 or sometimes if really unlucky, up to 5 voices speaking at the same time. Oh I'm becoming schizophrenic, no, just kidding, but in all seriousness, this would happen maybe once every couple of days if I was lucky, or maybe once a day if unlucky. Now however, in 11.3, it's so bad that it's practically nearly impossible for me to even use Voiceover at all. I'm even finding with my macbook air cilicon 13 inch 2020 machine, it's happening almost constantly. Even with Alex or the other more widely used voices, it's still happening. It's not even just a diolect thing with the US english voices. I'vew tried with the brittish voices, even with things like Daniel, I've tried with things like Lee austrailian, Tesla, etc. Even those voices now are doing this crap. I called Apple Accessibility, and they gave me the same motif they always do: "Oh, yeah, we're aware of it, we're working to fix it." I'm sorry to say, they've been saying this to all of us who've reported it ever since the beginning of Big Sur 11.2. Forget 11.2.1, 11.2.2, 11.3.4, and never mind 11.3. I get that things can't always be fixed from one version to the next, but ok, let's be realistic here. I know this isn't what a lot of you like hearing, but I don't sugarcote things... you all by now should know that. The truth is, at least for me, and for many others, it's getting way way way worse. It would be one thing, with all due respect to Apple, if the issues just stayed at their current broken status, it would be annoying, but whatever. I'd deal with it. But when every subsequent build seems to not just be getting worse, despite us all reporting things, but actually gets, way worse, key word here, way, worse, that's where I'm drawing the line.

After downloading and installing, the setup process prompts for your AppleID password. There is no audio feedback while entering that password, even though VoiceOver is enabled and otherwise functioning normally. This has been an issue for multiple recent Mac OS updates.

You're not going to see this issue at all if you're using Alex. The only time it'll occur is when using the Siri voices as your default voice for Voiceover. As long as you intend to keep using Alex as your voice, you'll be just fine.

If you navigate over a text area with links and continue navigating after the last link, only the area before the link is displayed on the Braille display. Using the Mac with a braille display is therefore almost impossible if you want to work productively.

I've encountered this several times since upgrading to Big Sur 11.3.

Go to some news article in Safari, such as the first article at news.google.com or any new York Times article. Press Command+Shift+R to enter reader view. Begin reading a paragraph at a time with VO+Right Arrow.

After about a minute of reading, and typically when VoiceOver is in the middle of reading the current paragraph, suddenly VoiceOver focus jumps back to the top of the article.

Hello. I don't think I posted this here yet but here goes. A rather interesting thing happened with the new voices. I did get additional ones, but most of them are compact and none of them are the 2 newest ones that I now have on my iPhone. I signed out of iCloud on my phone and then signed back in, but they're still not present. Not a big deal at all as I like it the way it is, but has this happened to anyone else on here? I'll have to help my sister check her Mac, as she and her tutor updated it last week. I'm also noticing VO speaking over itself but find it rather amusing, lol. I haven't had much time to play around with the other new stuff yet, but so far so good.

I sent the following message to Apple accessibility to report two bugs that I am experiencing. The first bug involves Voiceover randomly stopping speaking. The second involves incorrect reporting of text alignment in TextEdit. My email to Apple was as follows:

Since upgrading to Big Sir 11.3, I have noticed the re-appearance of an old bug, and the introduction of anew one.
First, Voiceover sometimes stops speaking but remains active. Only the voice stops but the sound effects remain. This happens randomly, and the only way to fix it is to turn VoiceOver off and on again with command F5. I used to have this problem on my 2013 MacBook Air, but it had not appeared on my new M1 MacBook Air, until I updated to 11.3. I am using the Alex full voice.
Secondly, I noticed a strange bug with TextEdit. When I try to centre align text using the Format menu or shortcut key (command vertical line), VoiceOver announces centred, but when I check the text with VoiceOver T, it is announced as right aligned. The opposite occurs with right alignment, where the text seems to be centred. Left alignment seems to work OK.
I hope I have explained these bugs sufficiently.
Please let me know if this is a known bug.

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing this.
Thanks

I could not reproduce the alignment issue after upgrading to 11.3.1. I tried both Textedit and Scrivener, and both apps report the correct font, size, and alignment with VO+T.

I thought that the upgrade to 11.3.1 fixed the VO bug where it randomly stops speaking. However, I was mistaken and it is happening regularly now. I contacted Apple Accessibility and sent them a system log. I am using a M1 MacBook Air with the Alex voice. Hopefully, Apple can diagnose this annoying problem.

It's a shame that apple doesn't do something about the decline in accessibility for the apple tv. Oh well that's why I don't use apple tv anymore. I don't have time for these complicated gestures that you have to do to make it accessible. quad tap this, turn that, tripple tap this, etc. who has time for that? it use to be simple like the IPhone and IPad, not sure what happened

Did anyone else discover that the 11.3 upgrade disabled SIRI voice feedback? Ask SIRI "Can you hear me?", and the SIRI notification windows opens in the upper right corner of the screen, but SIRI does not speak by default.

To enable it, go to System Preferences, SIRI, and press the Voice Feedback On radio button.

The original release of Big Sur included a change to Invert Colors. A window now briefly appears, and VoiceOver announces the window, resulting in audible feedback whether screen colors are black on white or vice versa.

The presence of this window has several side effects for VoiceOver users. Though I immediately reported these issues to Apple accessibility, now that we're on 11.3.1 and nothing has changed, I thought I should summarize the issues here for posterity.

First, after the invert colors window goes away, VoiceOver announces the current app window. It is doing this only because the window stack has changed. Prior to Big Sur, invert colors did not change the window stack, so there was no need for VoiceOver to redundantly announce the current app after changing colors.

Second, while the invert colors window is present, it is impossible to interact with the current app. Granted, the window is present for a brief period of time. But consider if Safari is active, and you invert colors, and immediately want to jump to next heading. VoiceOver will announce "heading not found" until the invert colors window goes away. Remember, the current app hasn't changed. It's still Safari, and there are still headings to navigate to. You simply can't get to them until the invert colors window goes away.

The third situation is more complicated to explain, but is really the bigger issue. If you go to a web page and manually scroll down so that the VO focus element is no longer visible, then change the invert colors setting, the web page automatically scrolls back so that the VO focus element is visible, causing you to lose your place. This is a problem for low vision users who require color inversion for visual cues while searching for content, but then switch back to normal colors to view that content.

When I say invert colors, I mean classic invert. Smart invert is not a viable option because it will not invert images or videos of black text on a white background. Note that dark mode isn't an option either, as Safari and many other apps don't support dark mode.

As a fix, a simple checkbox in Settings that would allow me to disable this problematic window and restore pre-Big Sur behavior would be ideal.

I've seen this enough now that I think I can finally describe what's happening and how to reproduce it.

In Safari, go to any page containing an article and switch to reader view using Command+Shift+R. Next, go to the address and search bar using Command+L, enter a question or search keyword, and press enter.

I expect the reader view article to go away and be replaced with the results of the search (I use google as my search engine, if this makes a difference). And, in fact, sometimes this does work.

However, occasionally, the search results to not appear. The reader view article is still displayed. In order to see the search results, do a refresh (Command+R).

This is not a simple matter of the search results taking abnormally long to load. Rather, it seems to be a bug or issue caused directly by the use of reader view.

I am having an issue when I search PDFs in Preview. They all include text and this worked in previous OS versions. I can still read the PDFs using VoiceOver if I don't search, but here's what happens when I try entering a search term:
1. Enter search term. This usually causes a massive slowdown
2. Move VO cursor over to sidebar. Results are displayed correcctly and I can move from one to the next using up and down arrow keyes.
3. Navigate to document. Use VO+Shift+Down to enter PDF and then the selected page.
4. After a long period of "Preview busy," it says "content empty." It also stops responding and I have to force quit.

I've sent it in to Apple, but can anyone else chekc if this happens to them too? I am on Big Sur 11.3.1, by the way.

Thanks!