Apple Accessibility Thanks You All

I wonder if it would be possible to build a more collaborative partnership between users and Apple accessibility. If you’ve monitored this site for any length of time it can’t have escaped your notice that there’s frequent frustration with a lack of engagement from apple which I think most understand is just Apples style and its worked well for them but in the case of accessibility it may be worth considering the benefits to both of a more collaborative approach. We all very much appreciate apples commitment to accessibility and what its allowed us all to do with our devices but you’ll obviously know that the situation is far from perfect and that gap of far from perfect can have a significant affect on users quality of life. For example an action that should take a second can very often end up taking most of the day, I’m sure you can understand thats a less than optimal experience. Tapping a button on a web page in my example doesn’t need to be an action that ends our day, mental health and ability to be independent. Do you think Apple would be open to exploring such an arrangement or at least commissioning someone to investigate its potential? Again thank you for your efforts and reaching out to this community.

Under your profile it seems you've been here for quite some time. I agree with Andy Lane have you considered that?

Many thanks back at you for the wonderful accessibility ecosystem you contribute to, and for the great follow-ups on Apple A11y queries! Your work is much appreciated😊

Best
Malthe

I echo the first comment. Apple has done incredible work with accessibility and it has changed my life in many positive ways. However, there are many issues, particularly on macOS that should be fixed and it seems like Apple hasn't been listening to us as far as that platform is concerned. Either that, or there isn't enough staff to cover both adequately, so iOS is prioritized. I'd love more direct communication regarding accessibility features and hope Apple's commitment continues long into the future. I'm encouraged by the developments in Ventura, so hopefully we'll return to the fantastic experience from the Snow Leopard days if VoiceOver is once again prioritized.

It sounded so much like fluff, I thought i still was in Boston where they are having snow at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I saw tidbits of genuine sincerity, however it just seemed like a genuine thanks, not admittance of hey yes we are liable for our own mistakes. Before I get blacklisted, yes i realize the young woman was off work and of course I do not old her personally responsible. It just seemed like a canned response in general. If i am wrong, I'll eat my house, stone, wood, doors and all. If apple is stopping innovating as they did with the wireless charging pad which I had been slightly now hoping for quite a bit as I have four things to charge, I'd rather that then what comes out for IOS and Mac OS which i have experience with. I haven't had an iPad forever so I won't comment. The TV, I have not updated but again, Apple's so focused on innovation, they forget the consumer. I wish them well.

Same; thanks.

For some of us, having VoiceOver work responsively on the Mac is a game changer. It often makes the difference between living in poverty and living with dignity and independence. These are tools and not toys to many of us and we really do appreciate the effort from the entire team at Apple. I have met Sarah Herrlinger and others personally and I can definitely say every person there is the real deal when it comes to caring about accessibility.

Having said that, I agree with comments about VoiceOver's performance on the Mac of late. I get that Apple has priorities that are internally decided and that time and resources are always limited especially with so many product lines and projects in the pipeline.

We know you're working hard, but if the teams could look at Safari, Music, Podcasts and Messages on the Mac and how responsive and intuitive they are in VoiceOver, the entire Applevis community would throw a party in your honour.

1. Eloquence voices sound rather muffled and low-sampled on my 13 Pro and iPhone SE 3 especially compared with Alex and other US English high-quality voices. It seems
that a bit of upsampling can take care of this issue because, as things stand right now, it reads text with a so-called low-sampled quality as if it were
speaking from behind a wall or over the phone. 2. "Mixed-case processing" is currently disabled in Eloquence for iOS, and that
results in words such as "iPhone," "iTunes" and "iMessage" being mispronounced. As such, "mixed-case processing" should be enabled for Eloquence - its
Windows and non-iOS counterparts do support this. 3. As things stand right now, Eloquence has serious pronunciation issues and this stands in sharp contrast
with other voices provided by iOS. To handle this, would it be possible to integrate the following comprehensive dictionary set into Eloquence for iOS?

https://github.com/thunderdrop/IBMTTSDictionaries
VoiceOver's built-in pronunciation dictionary is quite limited compared with this dictionary set, and even if one manages to add a fraction of these words
to it, sharing them with other Eloquence users wouldn't be feasible.--

There is a question mark, in case you aren't aware. Eloquence is 30 plus years old, they bought the code from whomever has it now. So in my limited understanding, not sure they can update it as it were. I'd rather see Apple fix their in house screen reader, voices or pronunciation rather then asking antiquated tech to do it for them. Before you get pissed, Apple bought the code seeing as it has languages they do not support, I can't think of an example at the moment. The more they let third party synthes in, which solves 25% of their problems, they have created 75% or more of their own. Again, Stop making new shiny things, work in house. Yes I have an iPhone however some eloquence issues such as pronouncing iTunes as itunes without the inflection if I remember right was always that way.

Since IOS16, the vocalizer voices have become a lot more inflectional, and so have been increasingly sounding unnatural. Compare, for instance, the Ava enhanced voice of IOS15 to its enhanced and premium version in IOS16.

With respect to you and Apple. Please check what is going on between us reporting bugs and getting to the correct people. Some bugs take forever to address them. All those of us who use the web page in here would agree that if Apple focus on dealing with bugs ASAPwould be helpful. Thanks.

I thought I was going crazy!
I cannot believe it cannot read something as necessary as $$$$ if you see $35.50, it will not read it as 35 dollars and 50 cents, but as dollar 35.50 and it drives me insane, especially when shopping on the Walmart app.
But this is only for the Eloquence on the iPhone, jaws reads it just fine.
Also, when trying to correct something on the dictionary for eloquence only, for example the
pronunciation of my name, it seams to save just fine, but it will not work. its as if I had never done the pronunciation in the first place.
Anyway, thank you to the Apple accessibility team from an Apple user and an Applevis user!
Too bad the team cannot look at this website during working hours.
I would have used it as a solving or unraveling problem resource/place to get new ideas from.

Siobhan may be right here in terms of this being purely a PR statement, but I sincerely hope not. The people working on accessibility features need to have a candid conversation with all the executives at Apple to get this policy changed, at least so far as allowing the team to have open dialogue with the users they serve. If Apple truly cares about accessibility, this is a no-brainer. We pay just as much money for these products as everyone else, and to receive generic canned responses to our serious concerns regarding many bugs that go unresolved for years is unacceptable! If VoiceOver was a mainstream feature, you'd better believe the execs would have things fixed pronto. Why are Apple employees prevented from looking at this website while working, when one of the purposes of this website is to document issues, and the accessibility team's primary job is to improve said features? Yeah, it's time to have a serious far overdue conversation with management concerning this counterproductive policy.

Do you know why I got so upset last year regarding that ridiculous Mac Studio mouse issue? It didn't need to happen if Apple is as committed to accessibility features as they say they are. The reason I get upset is because I know Apple can do far better, and they aren't. Hiding behind PR and refusing to communicate openly doesn't solve the problem, it just makes you look good in the larger public space of users that don't care about these features because they don't have to use them personally.

Thought i'd have to kill you, Chris. Lol, seriously though, I can see a reason apple doesn't want their employees looking at things during work hours. For one thing, I could write a ton of beta bugs which you, the insider could know in the final release, nine out of ten are fixed. Plus, to be brutally honest, there's such a language barrier on this site that I may not have the capability to get the correct person to identify and solve the issue say a Hebrew language issuer is having, or a Chinese or other language issue. I am suspicious until proven otherwise. as I've spoken of before, I grilled a team supervisor and they essentially said, they have absolutely no one with a disability working beneath them confirming my Joe Q Sighted tester turns on voice over, yep, print it.

I completely agree with you. all I can suggest is keep reporting hopefully it will get improved soon.

While i'm thankful for the work that has been and still is beeing done accessibility wise at apple, things could be way better, particularly on the mac. There are bugs which literarly go back years in reporting, and still are present to this day, or months in reporting and nothing is done. In mac os ventura to give an example, you get notifications each time a program adds items that can run in the background, which is fine... if it only happened once, that is. However, with apps such as vmware fusion, every single time I launch the app, no matter if its once per day, twice per day, 6 times... 10... every single time I get the notification that x app has added items in the background. You may review this in system settings. I reported this back in the beta when it first showed up... and still to this day... it persists, which is really annoying and affects the user experience as I have to clear out the notification over and over again, despite already doing it the one time, which you should only get this notification once. Not over and over.
The safari not responding is really frustrating as well.
Look, you do a great job in accessibility, but you could do way, way better than what we're seeing on the mac most of all, the experience on the mac isn't what it could be, and its not on-par with the experience on ios, which... it should and its disappointing to say the least that the same comitment to accessibility we have come to know on ios, is neglected to such an extent on the mac. I really, really hope this gets back to apple and things start moving in the right direction regarding accessibility bugs not just on ios, but on mac, ipad os, and watch os, and tv os. Apple needs to take their commitment to accessibility more seriously. Actions speak louder than words, and at the moment... those actions are showing that they don't hold accessibility to the standard they say they do, or that its a priority and is one of the core values at apple, as they say.
I don't mean to sound ungrateful with this post, but there is a lot of room for improvement regarding accessibility. For many of the bugs, which, in some cases are things we have to deal daily with, its a frustrating experience, to say the least, and to see new versions of x os rolling out without said bugs still beeing addressed despite reporting... it its frustrating and disappointing that we still have to deal with long-standing bugs, some of which as previous posts mention, can make a task that if said bug wasn't present, would take seconds or minutes to do, into something that can take up to 5 or more minutes, if not longer, do to a bug, safari not responding comes to mind.
Anyway, I hope these responces get back to where they should and that bugs get addressed.