Again and again, braille issue with latest iOS

I thought I'd try it out yesterday and was reading along in Voice Dream when it just randomly jumped to a different place in the book.

I hate to say it, but thinking the mainstream was going to give us good accessibility for the same price everyone else pays was probably naive. Maybe they are forced to do something in the united States because of the Americans with Disabilities act, but that doesn't mean it will work well or not be buggy.

I highly recommend that all braille users just give it up. I have as of today, given up using braille on ios altogether for as long as I live. They just don’t give a flying pickle and they never will. So why even bother anymore? I wanted to start a journal and right some things down but I guess that will never never happen since apple won’t get there heads out of the clouds for a better choice of words. Just like everything else, I have completely lost all faith in apple and I will never hope for future fixes ever again! I will most definitely start a petition and see if that gives them a swift kick.

So far, 2 comments, both totally negative. Have either of you been a beta tester? What have the responses been to your constructive reports to Apple using the form for beta testers' feedback? Rather than gripe here, how about giving constructive criticism along with the venom toward Apple? Go get some cheese for your wines. I do not understand how people think that Apple does not care, given the facts that, number one, a good screen reader is provided with all iPhones, and, number two, bugs with such screen reader do! get! fixed! When the good is compared with the bad, you are far and away on the wrong end of the scale.

Here is my question. If you buy a Braille display right now from Humanware the editor crashes and you loose your work. Lol so its not like things made just for the blind work 100% either. No matter what the project is there always is going to be bugs. I'm not trying to be rude here but someone who speaks multiple languages and reads braille is going to be a minority within a minority. I'm guessing that a lot of folks test in this manner. Even within the blind population the folks who read braille and read it every day are probably a minority. I'm not trying to say this is right or wrong and I do think Apple should fix their issues but this over the top wining isn't constructive. As Charles said do you beta test are you providing feedback etc.?

The issue with voice dream are you sure that's even an issue with Apple? It could be an app issue as there's been issues with braille before and apps like the Kindle. However rather than constructively think about that let's just throw stones at the operating system.

I'm sure all the flame throwers will come out when I post this. But here it goes.

Apple is the largest company in the world that creates mainstream products for a mainstream audience. And yes, as mentioned above, they have a robust team of accessibility experts that build solutions to include as many users as possible. I happen to personally know many of the product specialists, designers, and engineers. They all deeply care about accessibility. However, they are not an assistive technology company and sometimes decisions are made that have downstream effects. Apple is focused on shareholder value and return of capital. Does that mean we should just accept what they "give" us and sit with our hands folded? Of course not. If you are experiencing braille issues, there are several things you can do to communicate with Apple including a free phone number and a dedicated email address. Please, make videos and send them to Apple. They have made it pretty clear that they do not read Applevis. Several Applevis contributors have even made guides on how to contact Apple and explain the issues. Yes, some bugs will persist and never be fixed. That happens in every single piece of software that has ever been created in the history of software. Though I am not a braille user, I have sent dozens of emails to Apple over the years.

And honestly, if one needs a dedicated braille device for mission critical work, one needs to evaluate specialized technology. I know that's not what you want to hear. Clearly there is a need for specialized equipment or Hims and HumanWare would be out of business. And please don't lecture me on how the rehab agencies keep those companies afloat.

We live in a capitalist economy and part of that is that everybody gets to make choices. Apple gets to choose its priorities. As a consumer, you make your choices with your wallet.

PLEASE, reach out to Apple because that's the only way this will be resolved.

Keep the flame throwing to yourself, I'm really not in the mood to hear it. This site has plenty of griping already and I haven't said a single disparaging word against anybody.

Let me start by saying this. I'm a very negative person in general. I ausually see the bad first. I've been a beta tester for about 5 years. I've been contacting apple via the feedback form. I've been as clear and consice as I can be. I have been completely ignored. I've tried emailing the accessibility department many times and have gotten a canned response. They say they'll look into it, but they did no such thing. Yall are right. I shouldn't take out my frustrations here. I should take them directly to apple. I still would like to petition them. Maybe that wouldn't be ignored just like my other attempts of contact.

Yes, I've been a beta tester. Yes, I've tried to get things fixed. Sometimes it works, and a lot of the time it doesn't. I think they listen about 25% of the time. I still run into bugs I'd consider major that have been around for several major versions. For smart phones, I believe Apple is really the best there is, unfortunately. I'm really glad I don't depend on braille.

To the person who knows the designers and engineers, do any of them have a disability? I say they do not. why, you ask? Because apple is to busy making the best of the best, that it tosses every IOS and iPad Os to the sighted internal team and says, test it. So Joe tester, closes eyes, puts on voice over, or zoom, screws around for five minutes, calls it good then passes it to the QC team. If you remember back when the watch came out, Apple had to cover it's ass because it was telling wheelchair users to stand and do other tasks which obviously needed to be adapted for them. apple doesn't think about anything but its' pockets. In addition to writing emails, go to the local apple store and show the person, hey here's what's wrong with this. They won't help but if a video and actual visual proof is submitted, you may have a leg to stand on.

I do not know anyone at Apple who is a tester but I do know they have some blind folks that work with them! I will say this testing is not easy. There's more facets than just user testing. A lot of quality assurance is scripted so if it passes the script it's going to pass the test. Ultimately the tricky part is developers can make tests that pass anything that's where the user testing comes i I don't necessarily want to blame the QA team e I'm not always sure that's the case as someone else mentioned here in the thread there's a lot of facets to Apple's strategy and blindness is just one of those things that really doesn't make them that much money. I've been parts of teams where to get a product out we had to send it out with bugs that we're going to impact the daily lives of folks it's just the way it is and ultimately those folks in testing aren't the ones who are saying hey let's release this! I guess what I'm trying to say is it's more difficult than folks think to get a product out the door and I think we should step back and think about that. As someone else mentioned if braille is your main thing and you depend on it then an alternative device is probably the best. That being said it's going to have bugs to you have to determine what you can live with.

As with every American company, Apple has people with disabilities making decisions, designing products, and writing code. And yes, there are even blind and visually impaired people working at Apple. Does the company make mistakes? Of course. Does the company make efforts to resolve their mistakes? Of course.

If a consumer is not happy with a particular product or service, they are always welcome to spend their hard-earned money someplace else. That is the beauty of capitalism.

I am not certain that your depiction of Apple's "Go To Market" strategy is quite accurate. But then again, I could very easily be mistaken as I am not a current or former employee.

Hi! I am using my phone with several languages: I use Russian, English, Spanish and polish braille tables and luckyly I don't experience the things you do. But I do have questions for apple which I will report both to apple accessibility email address and through feedback assistant. As non native English speaker I would really appreciate a possibility to see contracted words in computer braille when pressing on a routing button. I don't understand why such an important feature wasn't still implemented, but I guess why. Because the majority of braille users of apple products are users who know contracted braille and don't need to read it in a computer braille because they can always understand what words they are reading. Also I don't understand why LibLouis has such a poor support for iOS so you cannot use them for braille input and when entering the text you get spaces. I will send all that to apple accessibility team. I hoped to have a good braille support when purchasing my hims braille display but I have it only on windows and partially on Linux.