Latest Release Notes For BitLife Mention Accessibility

By Earle, 18 May, 2022

Forum
iOS and iPadOS Gaming

I have not had the chance to test the latest version of BitLife, but the release notes mention accessibility. They say that voice support has been added for their loyal visually impaired users. It would be nice if this game is accessible again. I'll comment further after testing.

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Comments

By Pax on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Hi.
it's even not working, after I choose male, and there is privacy policy, I could'nt close it, so I turned off vo then closed it thanks that I have a bit of vision, but stil, it did'nt worked either, sr did'nt read anything after that.

By Pax on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I managed to get it working after I restarted an app.
works fine, for now.
the rest of their games are accessible now too?

By DMNagel on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

However, even though the games accessibility is back, I do find it a bit more clunky. Oh well. Anything is better than nothing. If you have trouble, turn VoiceOver off and on again. Swiping through the elements should work.

By TheBlindDragon on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

just got the latest BitLife update. yes accessibility's back, but definitely more Clunky. but like @ DMNagel said, it's better than nothing. yay! I've been having a hard time looking for a replacement life simulator.

By Tristo on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Is there a way to go back to the upgrade that we previously baught when we could play it last time? I looked at buying it again and it's $17 now.

By Tristo on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

So! some more exciting news, the minygames are accessible now. I tried the military one

By DMNagel on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Find the mane menu and settings, then restore from there.

By Leela on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I like the changes to the accessibility. I only have one complaint. There's no way to see the spelling of the names of the characters in your life. Anyway, if you have trouble swiping through things, remember that the orientation of the game has changed. It's now in portrait mode. It seems like they are using the unity plug in, so if you have played crafting kingdom, then you should recognize the controls and sounds. Now you can quickly move between groups of items such as your stats, the toolbar which contains relationships your job, etc, etc. You can also move between the log and other parts of the app so no more getting stuck in the log. Swipe down with one finger to do this. That's all I know right now. I'm really enjoying this.

By DMNagel on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Yeah, unfortunately no spellchecks for us, but I really prefer this version 100 times over. Being able to break into houses and do other activities which normally would require mini games is now a joy. Speaking of mini games, I see that they can even be turned off in settings. I guess some sighted players also would want to take advantage of the situation, should they be in the mood.

By kool_turk on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

It's playable, but maybe it's just me, because I spend more time trying to find items in the game, plus some of the ads aren't easy to close, so I end up having to re-launch the app each time an ad pops up.

And there is no way I'm paying $17 AUD to remove ads.

It's still an improvement to the older version that was playable.

By Zoe Victoria on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

We haven't gotten any news yet, but hopefully they will be updated soon.

By Moopie Curran on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I'm really enjoying the new update, but I don't like the new implementation of how you have to type, you have to do the whole double tap to type when you want to type something. So you can't use touch typing or BSI, I used to create song titles and the character's baby names with BSI all of the time. But I think that's the way direct touch and unity code are implemented with voiceover, so it really has nothing to do with the game itself. Also, another shortcoming, and it has to do with the same thing, is I don't think I'll be able to copy a journal entry from a bitlife after the character dies. When a bitlife was particularly entertaining, I'd go back into the journal after they died, and do a four finger double tap, which in voiceover copies the last spoken phrase to the clipboard. Then I'd paste it in notes or something, now, because of the clunky way voiceover interacts with direct touch, I don't think i'll be able to do that now. :( I guess if I want to keep the journal for posterity, I could have voiceover read it and do a screen recording, and convert to audio, but that takes up a lot more room than a note. Anyway, that's my take.

By kool_turk on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I suppose you could wait for live captioning to become a reality, let voiceover read the text, then if it will let you copy what was captioned, copy the text that way.

we'll just have to wait and see how Apple implements live captions.

By Moopie Curran on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Hi,
What is live captioning, is it coming in iOS 16 or something?

By treky fan on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Hi all! When I found out that bit life was once again accessible, to say I was excited would be a serious understatement. Having said that, here are my thoughts on the newest update to bit life. Overall, I love the new update, especially being able to pick your appearance when setting up the person you will play from scratch. I also like how you don't have to be constantly looking around the screen for some of the buttons, like when you want to spend time with each of your relationships all at once. And I do have one person in the military, I've actually gotten a few metals for completing missions, and even died when a mine blew up. The only thing I don't like, and this may just be me, is the sounds you hear when swiping around or double tapping on an action. I wish there was a way you could shut those off. I've turned off sound effects in the main settings screen for the app, but the sound effects when using voiceover are still there.

By Paige on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I am super excited that accessibility is back for this game! I honestly like this new version better, since it is easier to navigate between groups of items. The only drawback is that I can't use a Braille display with it, but I think it's worth it and am just glad to be able to play one of my favorite games again.

By Moopie Curran on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I wrote to the developers, mainly to thank them for the accessibility mode. But I also mentioned the shortcomings with scrolling long lists, ie custom cities and people.
Here's what I wrote, in case you're curious. In hindsight, I should have mentioned incompatibility with a Braille display, but I had never played Bitlife with my Braille display, so didn't know it had even been possible in the past.

Start of email to Bitlife:
"Hi,
I would like to start by saying THANK YOU so much for implementing accessibility mode into BitLife Version 3. It’s wonderful to be able to play the latest version of the game again, and not have to tiptoe around updates. I do have a suggestion, and I’m not sure how easily, or even if it would be possible to add this to accessibility mode at some point. I notice when entering text into an edit field, ie customizing cities, people, characters, etc, any area where I would have to enter text. I notice I have to navigate to each letter, lift my finger, then double tap it. When I’m typing in a normal text field, (a text message, a document, etc.), I have my typing mode set to where I can navigate to the letter, then just lift my finger, then the letter comes up. I used to be able to do this in bitlife, but I think because Bitlife operates in a “direct touch area”, I’m not sure this would even be possible anymore. So may I suggest implementing the ability to interact with the game, especially text fields with a bluetooth keyboard? Other games I’ve come across have implemented keyboard compatibility into their games. It would sure speed up customization of the game, which that’s something I take advantage of a lot.

Also, because the game now operates in that “direct touch” environment, I find it takes a really long time to scroll through long lists, mainly my custom people list (I’ve got over 700 people in mine). So do you think you could MAYBe put the add custom person button and the import contact button at the top, instead of where it is now on the bottom? It took me about 5 minutes to scroll through last night to add a custom person. In a regular, “non-direct touch) environment, a voiceover user can quickly jump to the bottom of a list by touching once with three fingers. But that’s more of a shortcoming of Apple’s implementation of direct touch for games and stuff, so I don’t think you could fix that per say, so the only work-around I can think of would be to relocate the add person button and the import contact button to the top.

And one more suggestion, which has nothing to do with accessibility, do you think you could maybe have an export or share button that would maybe copy the text of a WHOLE life journal to the clipboard, or even generate a .txt document to save to dropbox, iCloud drive, email, etc.? I’ve found reviewing old bitlife journals to be rather amusing. I used to be able to do a four finger double-tap within the journal, which that’s a voiceover command to copy last spoken text to clipboard. But again, that’s another shortcoming of the direct touch area.

I hope you will implement these improvements into a future version, I’d find them super helpful.

--
Moop"

By Matt92Machine on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

They finally fixed it. Apparently it's supposed to work on Android now too, but it doesn't work at all with talk back on my samsung phone. Another reason I am switching back to iPhone soon

By DMNagel on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

I mean, it's not like we can do it in crafting kingdom either, or any other game using this plug-in for that matter. Still, I am extremely grateful and it feels nice being able to do the things you couldn't do, because of the stupid mini games.

By Moopie Curran on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 22:26

Hi,
I don't necessarily care about spell check, but use of a bluetooth keyboard would be nice. It takes me at least twice as long, maybe more, to customize my character's name and stuff, simply because I have to hunt, peck, and lift, and double tap to type each letter. I understand since they're using unity plugin for accessibility, and that involves direct touch, that BSI can't be used. But if we could use a BT keyboard, or even somehow use touch typing as opposed to the really slow way of "standard typing", that would make it 100 percent for me. It's close to 100 percent for me now, but it stinks we can't even dictate text. When my character is a singer, I like to customize their album and song names with stuff related to who they are in real life, it just makes it fun, lol.