The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 16 for Blind and Low Vision Users

I figured out, that appswitcher doesn't work if you use invert colors, or you use only specific apps, which you invert colors. Otherwise it works correctly.

I won’t make a long comment as I’m not reporting bugs which is the purpose of this page but I just wanted to say I was extremely hesitant to update after previous nightmare years but this release has actually been a slight improvement for me with no notable new bugs. Plenty of old ones hanging around but nothing new. For anyone wondering if they should update early this year, unless you are unfortunate enough to get the app switcher bug, this is a good update. It’s even significantly quicker than iOS15 on my 11 Pro Max. Thanks to Apple accessibility team and beta testers reporting bugs and working with Apple, it looks like your hard work paid off.

I am unable to open notifications on the lock screen and the notification center. When I double tap the notification it does nothing. I've tried it multiple times. I have reported the bug to apple. Is anyone else having this issue? Have you found a work around?
Thank you,

Andy is the focus jumping around bug in Safari still around? Other major box hanging around? Thank you

Yes. I've had this issue, but it seemed as if I were alone in it.

Here are a few bugs I have found in iOS 16.
When trying to drag an action up and down in a short cut, voiceover does not give audible feedback as to where the action is.
For example, if you had a short cut with the actions speak text, sho notification, and show alert, dragging up on the show alert action and trying to move it will act as if it isn’t moving, but will still give haptic feedback as the action is moved up and down.

Another bug I found is that when using headphones , the navigational sounds are a bit laggy and aren’t conveyed properly. For example, VoiceOver makes a sound to let you know when you move down or up a row. for example, when swiping right and you go down a row, you hear a tone pan from left to right that gets higher in pitch. When you swipe left and go up a row, the tone goes from right to left and goes lower in pitch. With this bug, you just hear the lower side, but pand in the center. With headphones, you just hear one of those clicks, and it might be hard for some people to tell whether it’s been moved up or down. Also, sounds are especially laggy and sometimes don’t play right away if you flick really fast. This is probably the most annoying bug in iOS 16 yet.
There is a workaround to fix the issue of not being able to tell which way the navigational sounds are going, and that is to go to settings, accessibility, voiceover, audio, and toggle off and on one of the sound channels for the device you’re using in the very bottom of the screen. That does not fix the lagging of the sounds, but it fixes The ability to hear all sounds as they normally should sound in headphones.

Another bug I have found regarding the app switcher is if I open the app switcher and don’t touch an app with explore by touch, it won’t say that the app is active, and sometimes it will move you to the top of the app switcher And then behave as normal. There is no workaround, but when this happens, you can just use a four finger tap at the bottom of the screen to return to the most recent app.

If I find any more bugs, which I probably will or will not, I will be sure to post them here.

I'm using an iPhone 13 pro max & have found a bug:

Please test the following:
1. enable voiceover if it isn't already & lock your screen
2. Wait until you have multiple notifications. Once you do,post here, exactly what voiceover says.

Note: You'll need to enable "speak notifications" for this test, if you haven't already done so.

On my device, voiceover always reads the top notification, which is from a few days ago, despite the number of how ever many other notifications, there are, that have come in after it. What it should be doing, is reading those.

IOS 16 seems to have broken the books app. The page switcher in an individual book. is no longer visible. Is anyone else having this problem? I've encountered it since the first public beta

Apologies, I can’t be definitive about focus bugs as I’ve only had the update a couple of days. I have to say though it seems more stable. I’d wait for others with more experience to give more valuable opinions though. Thats a cunning plan.

Thank you to @Egle for the comment at the top regarding the app switcher.
For me the bug was only kicking in after I opened the Files app, while others are experiencing it much more frequently. I never made the connection until I read your comment, but under the Per App accessibility settings, I had the Files app set to smart invert. I have now removed that setting and indeed the bug no longer occurs.
Can others experiencing the bug verify?
It’s still a bad situation of course for those who really rely on inverted colours, but, particularly if it proves to be the sole cause, means we have a much better chance of getting a quick resolution from Apple.
I can also confirm that it is only the invert colours accessibility settings that are triggering this for me; the standard dark mode setting is fine.
Dave

I can still use the Books app in iOS 16. It isn't as intuitive as it used to be. If you are reading a book and you wan to use the page selector you need to double-tap the menu button at the bottom of the screen. Once in the menu you will see the page selector It's clunkier than it used to be, but it still works.

they still have not resolved the editing of apps. You can accidently create a folder if you click "drag after" or "drag before" re apps. It is as though focus jumps after you click those option in the actions rotor. the sound also does not play if dragging by hand. I have reported both; so far no fix.

Thank you very much

Hi,

I installed the iOS 16 Public Beta last evening. A bug I seem to have found is when invoking the 2-finger double-tap to pause media, and switch apps, I am then unable to resume playing content. for instance, if I stop music playing with the magic tap, check email, then attempt to resume said music, nothing happens. I need to head back to the app I was using, (such as Spotify or Voicedream Reader), to resume manually. I have tried tapping on the screen, and through the control on the Apple earbuds. If simply playing/pausing content, and not switching to another app, the function works as intended.

Sorry but I find braille bugs serious not minor! I mean no offense, but wondering why you classified them as minor! I can not perform edit commands using my braille display? That's major bug for me.

Does anyone know if the cursor focus issue has been fixed in this update? If I click on any link on a webpage I'm yanked back to the top, if I leave the page to look at anything else for a second it's back to the top, if I try to search for anything in Voice Dream the cursor jumps around like a fly with a sugar high, and on and on. It's getting so bad and this is an issue in every app and has been for most of iOS 15. Please tell me they fixed it again. It seems like this is one of the most basic functions that is constantly being broken.

Ok Guys The above has fixed app switcher. Once invert colours was turned off I had to reboot the phone but then it worked fine. Lord knows why that option should cause such an issue. Anyway it seems fixed.

In app switcher I do have what appears to be more than one version of apps. However, some don't seem to be real. The actual app you want to close/activate says actions available after reading it out where as the rogue apps don't.

Hi Maldalain.
First, these editing command bugs appear to be only impacting SE 2 and SE 3 users, so if you're not on one of those phones, you may not experience them. ON an SE 2 or SE 3, Yes, you still can perform editing commands, it just must be done through the edit rotor. For example,if you wish to select all while in a document, you can press space with 2-3 or 5-6 to move to the edit rotor. Now, press dot 3 or 6 to get to select all. You can use the same process to activate the copy, cut, paste and other functions. Is it convenient? No it is not, I can assure you of that since I've been having to do this myself.
This paragraph is purely a perspective on this, and maybe I don't have the right one. I'm open to dialog about it for sure. Anyway, I usually have the ratings in my head broken down based on whether the bug in question cuts off access to a portion of the operating system's functionality beyond the bug itself. Since there are workarounds for these editing bugs, I marked them as minor. Should they be moderate? It could be argued that if a braille display user doesn't understand how to utilize the edit rotor that it cuts off access because they don't know of the way to work around it. Or you could argue that since it involves pressing several more keyboard commands to achieve what you could have done in one command, that this makes it moderate. I'm not sure what I think of that to be honest. As for the Command key emulation, I put that as moderate because it does cut off access for things in applications which do not have a work around. Some do, of course, like you can press space with 4-5-6 in notes to get to the "New Note" button, but others do not.
I know you were referring to the editing commands, but I will also expand on one of the other bugs. Pressing enter seems to launch a menu instead of inserting a new line. Coincidentally, that menu also contains options like copy, paste and so forth. You can still also insert a new line in a text field by pressing space with 2-7 to emulate the Option key followed by dot 8. Again, I flagged it as minor since there is a workaround. I hope this helps explain why I categorized these bugs, and should you experience them, that the above info helps.

This isn't a bug, but it's a very bad feature change for me and probably anyone else that sends audio iMessages like myself, so I wanted to mention it since I haven't seen it brought up anywhere yet. Now, instead of being able to touch the bottom right, double-tap and hole, then slide up to lock your recording, it's been shoved under the Apps button and called simply "Audio." Most frustratingly for me, however, is that you can no longer lock your recording! You can now only slide one direction to send your message, another direction to cancel it. This of course means they've taken away the ability to play or delete your audio message after recording. It just gets attached as any other App does and you send the message. I probably won't be updating my SE3 because of this for a while.

I decided to leave the Beta program, because in IOS 16 Beta RC is a matter of what you see is what you going to experience after installing the stable version on Monday. Well! Well! The App Switcher is now working on my iPhone 13Pro

The record button can be oocked in iOS 16. Just double-tap the record button and it will be locked.

I'm not brave enough to install pre-release operating systems but am really excited for the release of this. I was a bit worried about the app switcher bug, so I hope Eglė has found the culprit. I'd forgotten I had smart invert enabled for a number of apps, which is a bit redundant now I use screen curtain.

I've not seen the rogue apps and I'm running ios 16 rc on an older iPhone 10r. Interesting. The folders bug is still there however, and I did report that, again, this year.

@ James Dean the action still works, you simply tap on the audio after making the apps visable and then you double tap on the center bottom, that will lock the audio message and allow you to record your message hands free, then you double tap on it again and then you tap on the send button located in the righ corner, just where the send button for Imessages usually is.

1. In watch app, in language rotor, can't add certain languages, like catalan or valencian. it just doesn't add them when I tap on them and brings me back to settings page.
2. Same screen: Serbo-Croatian is listed as mainland china. sx and sz languages also exist, no idea what they are
3. When in App Store on watch itself, can't find search button to type.
All these bugs have been reported to apple through feedback app.

In health if you add medications there is issue with focus. Check the podcast from Mosen at large. He did a demo and talk about the issues with iOS 16.

I found a bug. When nathan default encounters a sentence beginning with a B, it makes a click, glitch, beep combination that sounds like an over compressed mp3.Read the following with Nathan default, and it will be apparent. I submitted this, and the bugs with music to apple, and they're still there. Because of the nathan bug, I can't use his default voice. Before, I was hesitant to try the beta. Betas aren't really something I do on my only iphone anymore. Books also has a bug with audiobooks, where it doesn't say which chapter is selected in table of contents. Before, in IOS 15, whichever chapter was currently playing said "selected" as you'd expect. But now, you have to wait until the title of a chapter is finished being read by voiceover, and it will say something like currently playing. That's rather annoying if your book has long chapter titles. I wasn't sure if I should report that one. It might be seen as just a simple change rather than something that needs to be fixed. I'm not seeing the issue with the track position slider not moving through a track either when books or music are playing and I'm using the lock screen. Speaking of music, there's one I found, where after you finally locate the more button that would take you to things like add to library or add to playlist, it bounces. What I mean, is that if you've flicked forward to some element beyond the first, it will randomly keep jumping back to the first element. If I want to add something to a playlist, rather than staying on the add to playlist element, it will go back to the add to library element. That's REALLY annoying. There is one thing I love that they did with lock screen track display though, they took out the name of whatever it's playing through. Before, it would say something like, iphone name of track, )tist, album. Now the name "iphone" out. I'm not really happy with them removing the volume slider though, as I like to keep an eye, or rather, ear I guess, on where the percentage is.

to get your model number, tap the model number, it should switch to a shorter model abbreviation, or is this a different issue?

Thanks for letting me know that the recording can still be locked just by double-tapping the record button. I still don't like that it's in the Apps now, but I'll just have to get used to it. I updated to the latest Beta yesterday and noticed that the bug where using "Clear" in the actions roter on the lock screen wouldn't actually get rid of the notification until you went back and swiped through the actions until you got to "dismiss" has finally been fixed! So I guess I can safely update on Monday!

Are the edit bugs, such as dot 8 with space, copy and paste, etc. are present with the Mantis Q40?
I also found a bug in Safari, even though I'm not sure if this is a bug. When navigating a web page, you can't have always access to the the toolbar that contains the buttons back, bookmarks, tabs, etc. The fixe for that is to perform a four fingers touch at the top of the screen to go back to the first page.

Sometimes in iOS 15, some characters were not spoken when using braille screen input. This seems to be fixed.

I don't know why this isn't classified as a bug but it should be and also it should be under serious but this is just my oppinion I guess. I know I've seen this on other threads as well. When setting up a phone, when you restart the phone there's no voiceover. This is also true in ios16. I dug out my old IPhone8 so that I could try the beta on it to decide if I want to update on my primary phone tomorrow. Everything went smoothly. Voiceover came back after the phone itself restarted after the install. However when I manually restarted the phone disaster struck. I couldn't even get siri to engage. I also tried the suggested options that other people have posted about when running into this problem. Unfortunately like a few others who have ran into this problem I'm having to restore my phone as a last rezort. Luckily it's not my primary device. Someone needs to get this on the bug report thread.

I think this is a bug when using a siri voice as your VoiceOver voice. If you change your voiceOver to a non-siri voice (such as Samantha or Alex) this shouldn't be a problem. This is what I think this is just what I read on these other forums that it is a siri issue and i can restart my device using a Non-Siri voice and it works just fine.

If I'm not mistaken the Mantis has a QWERTY keyboard? If you use that it shouldn't be a problem since it's not necesarrily a braille command.

I've actually had this happen twice with Samantha as well.

I've not had this happen at all. I've ehard of i this happening if the voice has to download which is why I use a default voice that ships woth voiceover at set up.

Has anyone else seen this, it is driving me mad. In the native music app, in IOS 15, my playlist always went in order of oldest added at the top, newest recently added on the bottom, in other words it went in oldest to newest order. In IOS 16, that is gone, the thing is a mess, and their new sorting control is very unreliable. It looks like the files you add today will show up in chronological order, but the next day it's all messy again. The "sort by" option under "more" at the very top has 5 options under it, title, artist, album, release date, and playlist order. The only ones that work properly are title, artist, and album. The other two only partially work. With release date, some songs will show up in order and some won't. It's like there are clusters of songs that work and ones that are just scattered here and there. This often ends up breaking albums apart, causing songs from an album not to be together in the list. If you use playlist order, it will show up as I said before, but if you haven't added anything in the last day, it will show up in alphabetical order. I don't understand why it's so disorganized. It's not just the playlists that you create that do this either, they all do except for the ones like "new music mix" and such under "made for you". I don't think this is an accessibility bug, but I'm not really sure. Either way it's frustrating me to death.

Hello,

Yes, that is write. The mantis has a qwerty keyboard instead of a braille one.

in IOS 16, i will be dictating into an edit field and a female voice will from time to time start reading some gibberish. Dictation seems to continue but I can't figure out what this is. Has anyone else experienced this?

I know this might be an irrelevant comment on this post but I am witnessing some very strange bugs with my iPhone SE 2020 that is on IOS 15.6.1 and not sure if I am going to dare to update to 16 on this phone.

I don't use the app. switcher instead use the spotlight search feature to find and open apps. Three fingers swipe down on home screen will get you an edit box where you can type in the app. name, this gesture can also help you search contacts quickly. Try it out really handy and time saving.

Here are the bugs: (anyone experiencing the same; oblige and reply - much appreciated)
1. accessibility/ voiceover/ rotar - cannot drag and drop the items in the list; have to use the rearrange button to move up/ down and it's really time consuming if you want to rearrange the order of the items.
2. Shortcuts app.: automation; When trigger is leave, action is to turn WiFi off; there is no toggle to turn off ask before running. Not sure if this is a bug or the automation is limited; same issue with turning data off when joining a WiFi network
3. YouTube app.: Recently happening so not sure if voiceover bug or app. bug cannot scroll homepage of the app. using the 3 finger swipe up to the next page of videos.
Siri: Ask it to play todays news; which is to play the latest podcast of the news show but it starts to play a radio station. Asked it to play the song Boulevard Of Broken Dreams and it plays another track that isn't even close!

Thanks to aging, these are the ones I can remember but honestly there are a lot more; reset the phone i.e. erase all settings and data and then restored using iCloud but this did not help fix anything!

Hi, can anyone confirm whether we will be able to use the Blindfold Games apps on iOS16? These apps and some others use direct touch and one user has reported that direct touch is buggy and doesn't work. If this is the case, I will hold off from updating later. Thanks.

Hello,

On my iPhone SE 3, Hear Clues and Blindfold Doggy seem to work. I don't know if it is true for the other games though.

Did anyone have this? VoiceOver completely crashes. The only way to fixe this is to hard reboot the phone. I had this bug two or three times this summer nd I had it on my SE 3 yesterday. I'll keep my 13 on 15 for now. This is happening rendomly. I don't have steps to reproduce. When you try to unlock the phone, you have no speech at all.

as I say in the subject line eloquence sounds absolutely dreadful! It really is a bit of a disappointment. I know some of you were testing the beta and might be used to it now, but goodness me as far as I'm concerned, it's not really usable, not the end of the world—as someone else has said on here, Jamie is a top knotch Uk English voice. I'm trying to decide whether I prefer him or Siri female, which happily appears to be fixed after she developed a curious eccentricity on my phone with the last IOS version. Back to Eloquence though, it sounds like it's talking into a cup. Anyone else take the same view? Was it always like this?

PS: I've done a bit of this comment using the dictation feature and that does seem to have got quite a lot better.

Hello, thank you for adding Dariush
But there is a problem with using Dariush and eloquence
I can't use two tts
For example, I cannot choose to read English by Eloquence and Persian by Dariush
I have to switch between tts
Please read Farsi with tts Dariush

When I restart my phone, Voiceover doesn't work. No amount of pressing the side button 3 times, or trying to activate Siri, has brought it back. I actually had to go next door to ask my neighbor to enter my password. As soon as she did this, speech was back.

@0mohammad, this was reported to Apple in June with the feedback number FB10079436. However, it hasn't been fixed and, as you rightly mentioned, VoiceOver either doesn't detect Persian or uses the low-quality built-in Arabic voice to read Persian which is obviously incomprehensible. The manual voice selection via the Rotor is a headache.
I suggest that you also report this to Apple using the feedback number FB10079436.

I had this exact same problem yesterday with the rc beta on an old IPhone8.

@Bingo Little, Unfortunately, IMO at least, that's indeed the case. And, of course, switching back and forth among VO voices does more harm to Eloquence which sounds muffled or boxy. That has been mostly the case over the beta-testing period though Apple once tried upsampling Eloquence which made it more problematic! So back to the status quo it went.