Send all your frustration courteously to Apple Accessibility.

People had reporter bugs and issues to accessibility and nothing happens. Asked those who nice people who are dealing with issues with Braille and their iPhone. I was hoping iOS 17 would just focus on stability and bugs.

I have had enough of iOS, I have been using iPhones since 2015 no 2016 or something, as a client this is how I get treated and respected, given a whole bunch of accessibility bugs that interfere with my usage of my Apple device. Once I get my Sim card out of my iPhone 6s Plus in my Galaxy, I’m not going back, . I will keep some my other Apple devices, but I’m done

There would be nothing stopping us from say, spreading this to the mainstream media, as an example. While I love my iPhone and mac, ongoing bugs still shouldn't be standed for.
However, I've noticed this ,is not just happening for blind people. As an example, if you use vmware fusion, every single time you launch the app, you get a, app added login items that can run in the background, you can manage this in system settings, notification. Given its a notification, this isn't just voiceover related and also gets displayed for sighted users. It has been roughly one year without any fix. Then again the ones who might have to actually fix this bug is vmware themselves... But I really don't think so. I cant think of any other app at the moment that does this, but yeah its not just blind users.

I've used vmware a bit so I know this could be annoying ... but an extra unneeded notification hardly breaks functionality in Vmware. Bugs are just a fact of life when people change code, as I'm sure you know from your own work. The issues people are having with braille displays not panning to the next page in a book, speech stopping, focus jumping around etc seem much more serious, people can't use their apps without a ton of extra time and effort. Yes, to be fair, this happens with talkback sometimes too, it's hardly an apple specific problem. Still, apple seems to be particularly struggling right now with voiceover.

The thing that annoys me about apple is I don't experience this bug. This tels me that some IPhones do and others don't.

This really shouldn't be the case but it is.

The only focus issue I've had is with dystopia and voiceover jumping around sometimes.

Which makes me wunder... it might be something as complex as app specific or pagespecific or voice specific. Part of the problem with these bugs is that they're so inconsistent that pinpointing them and fixing them is almost impossible. Apple should do a better job fixing bugs yes, but i'm sure its not as simple as we're thinking or making it out to be with some of these bugs.

This isn’t just a few people getting a little upset. This is a significant number of their VO users struggling and often giving up doing basic things. They must be starting to see the winds changing and good will being a thing of the past. What is required now is action. Either Apple sort it or they lose a whole bunch of incredibly loyal and let’s not forget, great for PR users. Either they act and take voiceover seriously or they carry on treating it as a promotional tool and lose the users they had. They act or we do. It’s their choice and I very much hope they are reading this. VO is not functional as is and I won’t continue playing this rediculous game of hoping the next one fixes things. What needs fixing isn’t the software, it’s the attitude, the resources and the respect for their paying customers. Apologies again if anything was all over the place. VO crashed well over 10 times

I am deeply proud to still have my M1 Mac Mini 2020, but on the phone side I'm back to Galaxy after 3 plus years.

Apple needs more competition anyways!

I will be beta testing iOS 17, and will report bugs in the beta cycle. see if I can get another year out of my n iPhone 12 Pro Max. in my experience, Apple fix bugs which are reported. it’s not Apple who are the problem, it’s the lack of beta testers for Apple platforms. if more people would beta test, and report the bugs, I’m sure they will be fixt. a statistic I got years ago from Apple Accessibility years ago, is that of all VoiceOver users, 5 percent are beta testers. that is aweful. comme on people, stop complaning on AppleVis, and put that enerty into beta testing and report bugs.

I will do it when beta 2 of iOS 17 comes up. Will do so in my iPad 9 not in my iPhone.

Do the big vo issues typically get resolved in stable releases? I gave up my good old reliable iPhone 8 a while ago and miss having a foot in both camps. It didn''t seem like this was happening so much with iOS 14 and 15, the last versions I actually experienced, and I'm trying to figure out if I should budget for another i Device in a few months. I'm particularly concerned about the speech stopping and focus jumping bugs which, from the admitedly small sample size here, make me thing I'd be better off buying a lot of scotch or something instead of getting an unusable pocket computer. How much are these issues breaking your day-to-day experience with your phones?

I think I've said this before, but I have honestly experienced very few problems since becoming a Mac user. I started out on OS X Mavericks at the end of 2013, actually the beginning of 2014. At that time I experienced constant speech crashes, but not anymore. Well sort of, but I can live with that. In addition, there was a short time when the low-battery announcement was broken. I believe that was in Yosemite but it got fixed right away. There's also the VO focus issue on both my devices, but that's not happened a lot and isn't a show-stopper for me. The "Safari not responding" issue seems to have gone away for the most part I think ever since I got my M1 MacBook Air last year. As has been stated numerous times before, Apple is a big company and they may not always have readily available resources or whatever. But if you ask me they're doing a fine job indeed.

As someone said, its not just apple's fault. We parcially carry blame as well, to a sirtain point. If only 5 percent of voiceover users beta test... i'm sorry, but how, exactly, do you expect bugs to be fixed with such a small margin of blind beta testers? Its not possible, plane and simple. Ferthemore, per experience, usually when the blind comunity says, oh we'll do x... it rarely happens. Its just empty words in most cases, and if we want things to change, we need to take action, not just... oh, we should talk to the mainstream media... Words won't acoplish nothing, action will. So if people are thinking of contacting the mainstream media... actually push through and lets do it if ios17 doesn't bring any bug fixes... Honestly, both sides share equal blame. While yes, apple should deliver a workable product, we should beta test, and no, not just the 5percent either. This is why things don't move forward, partially. Weas a comunity have to look at the bigger picture and recognise that yes, we're not blameless in this, either. As far as bugs... it doesn't help that some people experience them, and others don't, which leads me to wunder if it is something other than just voiceover at work, such as the voice you use, punctuation settings, apps, the layout your using... I mean, its the only thing that makes sence. There has to be a why some people experiense bugs while others do not, i'm pretty sure its more than just voiceover causing some of these bugs; its the configuration one has which mit contribute to these. While I nderstan people's frustration, I really do; we don't have a right to bitch and moan if we're not willing to do stuff and just hope things are fixed. If you report bugs, for those of us who do; report the bugs, and if they're not fixed say, within the next couple releases or in a sensible time manner? Report it again, and in the second report... cc the mainstream media, referencing if possible, your first report, as an example.
I haven't experienced many of the bugs some have, despite having the same ios and iphone as some... which, leads me to think its not as simple as a voiceover issue but rather it having to do with the configuration, layout of the app, etc, hnse the difficulty of reproducing the bug. As an example, someone mentioned that the focus bug was prevalent in both the stocks and news apps. I, as an example, do not use these apps, hense my probable not experiencing of these bugs, to give an example. However, there are bugs which are fully to do with voiceover such as it spontaneously crashing and not having any sound, but there are defenetly bugs which go deeper than just voiceover.

I don't have hard numbers but I can't imagine 5 percent of users, for any software other than a new exciting game or something, beta testing. This is especially true withmobile operating systems where you really shouldn't run a beta on your primary phone and how many people have two phones? I've read the posts here, I assume apple accessibility is getting solid feedback because, with beta testing, it's really a quality over quantity thing and they've got sharp testers. The problem runs deeper. I'll just close with a question, does apple have any blind employees working on voiceover? I'm talking an engineer or developer, not a tester.

Yes, Apple definitely has blind engineers.

I think I read that somewhere.

They are probably working on nice cool features that maybe 1 person uses. How many of us use the feature that came out last year? They need to put on solving bugs and making sure they hear about it. Also I thought that some in Apple would be checking AppleVis? If so, where are they? Where is Sara? She probably show up in June or July to talk to AppleVis about how cool and wonderful they are. Hope this time Thomas do not let her get away with it. It they are not interested in answering questions about bugs do not invite her.

As I have mentioned, This doesn't really matter until the people on websites like this begin unifying and speaking with one voice. A hundred people calling Apple, emailing apple, Tweating Apple, etc is more important than any one person doing it.

Don't get me wroong. One person can always make the effort. However, If there is a single petition, email template, call discussion template, list of case numbers that people can call about to add their boice, it would mean more.

Unfortunately, the blind community tends to be very fragmented. It doesn't always wfocus on working together. Everyone has a individual thought about what must happen. And if anyone disagrees or provides differing opinions, it turns into a debate instead of working to make it a consensus.

That's why I try doing stuff for myself as far as reporting and pestering, via email, as I cant call apple given my country, cellphone plan to be specific to the US, so I do it via email. I agree with what your saying though, and have noticed it as well, the blind comunity is quite, fragmented, and as long as we're not united, no major change will happen. As a comunity, we really don't have a right to, parden my French, bitch and moan about oh how this or that is broken, if we won't unite and woork as one to fix it. A few voices screaming into the void on their own won't help. For independent devs yes, but for something as large as apple... more effort is needed. Although we kind of saw that with the report card, this should continue, and a yearly report card made annually and forwarded to not only apple, but to the mainstream media and other places outside of applevis, maybe the report card is a good start, but that needs to continue, however I stand by my statement, as long as we don't unite as one to start making changes, we don't have a right to bitch and moan about how so and so isn't being fixed... because we're not putting in the effort to fix it.

Anyone who wants to join can have access and we can formulate a strategy, discuss approaches and hold one another accountable for putting in the effort. I’m happy to create it if you’d like. Maybe a good first move would be asking apple for a ticket when we submit a bug where we can check on the status of its resolution and not just take the we take accessibility very seriously and thats why you’ll never hear anything about this again email. If we could call and check on the progress of a bug report maybe that would make a difference. We let them get away with those meaningless emails and hope something is going to happen but it doesn’t so something has to change.

What about an iMessage group chat. And you can be the creator and we can just all give him our email addresses or phone numbers. I really want to be a part of that WhatsApp group but I can’t since WhatsApp‘s being a nuisance right now and won’t let me into my account because apparently I violated the terms and conditions which I didn’t even do, so yeah. What about an iMessage group or Facebook group or something I don’t know

It needs to be one or the other though. I find WhatsApp pretty good for keeping track. iMessage is a little more tricky and doesn’t really have voice notes that many use.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone being banned so I don’t know the process but there must be a way to appeal.

They are still holding the ban on my account though

To be completely frank whats app would be easier although I message might be better if someone is banned from whats app, so in that case a iMessage group might be the better choice.

It’s just easier with group messages. Either way, if people want to leave phone numbers who are interested in joining and doing something positive then feel free. I’ll create it in the next couple of days and we can get going.

Maybe you could make an iMessage groups of people who can’t or won’t access WhatsApp and WhatsApp group some people who don’t like iMessage or use android

I meean yeah, but thee problem then would be... how to get the info to both groups? Also, iMessage is only for iphone users, so not sure how would that go if someone had android. But still, how would it go about as far as sinking both groups? That's another thing to concider, it would be better if it was only the one group on the one platform, rather than two groups on two separate platforms as that will get chaotic really quickly in my opinion, plus both groups having the same info etc... I don't know how well would two platforms and two groups work.

The other Apple Steve, and put him in charge of accessibility. Now there's a true computer nerd among nerds.

if i could bring steve jobs back i would.
he would be quiet mad about the sitchuation.
he would throw his iphone 4s against a wall.
but i cant bring him back.

If only 5 percent of VO users test how the hell do you expect things to get fixed? It won't happen. Yes this year you have to pay for the dev betas. The public betas are still free. I'm thinking of paying for the betas. Why to get in front of bugs.

My M1 MacBook Air will be testing macOS 14. I to be honest can’t wait.

Quote:
> in my experience, Apple fix bugs which are reported. it’s not Apple who are the problem, it’s the lack of beta testers for Apple platforms. if more people would beta test, and report the bugs, I’m sure they will be fixt. a statistic I got years ago from Apple Accessibility years ago, is that of all VoiceOver users, 5 percent are beta testers. that is aweful. comme on people, stop complaning on AppleVis, and put that enerty into beta testing and report bugs.

So um, where are the people at Apple that test? Look, Apple is a 2 trillion dollar company. Probably 3 trillion by now. They have at least 2 totally blind people working for them, one of which I'm pretty damn sure still uses her Braille skills. And while yes, maybe there are only 5% of blind people that beta test, and maybe that was true when the questions was asked. But you know what? We don't get paid to find Apple's bugs. We are not obligated to test these beta versions of iOS. And when Apple accessibility PR comes on AppleVis and tells us to test test test, that's them saying "Well we don't have the resources so we're outsourcing free labor to you blind people, just please try to do this on a second device." And we all know what happens. People get this on their main device cause new stuff, and hell, sometimes the beta is more stable than the public release, especially if they've fixed Braille bugs a few months ago but weren't allowed to release such a major bug fix to a minor point release.

So these blind folks get it on their primary device, and then they really start complaining, cause oh no there's a bug in the phone app or VO speech stops working or some such. All that because oh well we have to test right? If I don't, who will, right? I mean hey I know this is my only device but my goodness Apple doesn't have the resources right?

No. We've got to stop blaming ourselves and each other. The whole "Well you didn't test so shut up" mentality has to stop. Apple is a big boy now, he can take care of himself. Apple accessibility is a part of that, and definitely has enough users of accessibility features to have quite a few Accessibility testers internally. And I hope they aren't putting out numbers like that anymore. It's a passive aggressive way to say "Well more people should be testing! We need more free labor! Please? For daddy Apple?"

I'll also remind you all, iOS 17 is pretty much done. When we public beta testers get this in July, we'll have about 2 months to test, report, test, report, test. And then before you know it, the final version is out, no matter how many bugs we've filed, no matter how many emails we've sent, it doesn't matter. Because the user with the feedback of "Hey look here Mister Apple Sir, this Send button is not horizontally aligned with this heading, please fix right now Mister Apple Sir please," will always get priority over our more complex, and more specialized, requests for fixing a Braille bug. This also means that we've got like 2 months for all this junk to be fixed. And you know what? It won't. It's too short of a time.

So, don't sit there and blame users for not testing. And honestly I think the AppleVis team should have a rule about this, that people are not required, and should not be compelled or obligated to test betas. It's not a status symbol. If one doesn't test, they have every right to still come on here, or contact Apple, and talk about bugs they face. Those that do test can confidently tell everyone that not every bug they submit gets fixed. I'd say very few of them do, in fact, but experiences may vary. And some people, even testers at time, grow tired of submitting feedback into the void. Why perform free labor when you don't even get a thank you and a "Hey this is fixed," or "Hey this'll be fixed in the next minor release," or something? Anything.

Really, this is all on Apple. They don't talk to us, yes just like they don't talk to anyone else. Google is the same way, but they've got their little ring of users that can talk to the people there that work on TalkBack. And no, it's very hard to get into that ring, probably easier than it would be to go work at Apple though. Still, Apple is silent when they should be assuring us, with evidence, that iOS 17 is gonna be a good bit better. Since they aren't, blind people are starting to look at Android. That's what happens. And if we keep blaming each other, telling non-testers that since they didn't test, they're the problem, or that they need to test and so on. And that's what Apple would rather happen, that a group blame each other rather than working together to figure out what's really going on here, and how this can be solved. Cause that would mean that Apple has to do some work. And they're a big corporation, set on their own momentum. They would rather not slow down to work on this one community.

But y'all know what? This one community is us. We're all we got. Apple ain't about to start advocating for us. Their accessibility team is, most likely, too small to make enough noise for us. And no that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them to task for this entire year of buggy software. Yes sighted people have bugs and issues. But they would sell their iPhones in a heartbeat if they had the issues we did. If their screens went black when they opened the notification center. If their screens went black, only having a mess of blurry shapes, like our VO sounds when we lose speech. No, they wouldn't deal with that junk, and neither should we. No, Android isn't perfect yet. But my goodness, there comes a point where reliability beats half-baked features, every time. And yes, Android has issues. But they're issues that can be worked around, not issues that you have to just hope doesn't happen to you in an important situation, like being at a meeting.

Also, some will say "Well Apple has like 3 speech systems going on, and we can't expect them to be able to handle them all." Yes, true. Vocalizer, Macintalk, and now Eloquence. And you know what? I don't have any sympathy for them. They should be waiting until features are good and ready, not releasing stuff for shareholder benefit. Is that sinical of me? Yeah. But I think, at this point, we have a right to be sinical towards them and their actions and lack of communication with us.

Many people who had done the beta and reported bugs, and later continue to see the sane issues in different bugs and sometimes in the main release. The issue is that between reporting bugs and apple acknowledging them and sending to the appropriate place is broken or not giving to the correct people. Blaming the consumer is not good and protecting defending a trillion dollar corporation is not helpful.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

yeah, it’s free laber. beta testers do not get any compinsation for testing. at least Google gives gift cards. but Apple should give some form of compinsation regularly. once, I got invited to the then privet betas of iOS 8.3 and 8.4. it was years ago now, but being invited made a worled of difference to beta testing retention! they need to do something to atract more testers. Eloquence last year, convinced people to beta test, as it is very popular and lots of us love it! hopefully iOS 17 will bring something like that, so more people would beta test. yeah, I always run betas on my primary devices, because you know what? doing that I find more peskey bugs.

its like that now with all big tech companies.all they are intersted in, is how much revenue per user is being generated for the company.That is what wall street cares about . no matter how good hte product or services does in the long run in the tech industry now a days .

totally agree. no tech company cares about accessibility now a days. all they care about how much revenue they are generating per user. that is all Wall Street cares about with the big tech companies.we are just slaves and sheep to the big tech companies.

maybe the barrier to entry is harder for apple betas compared to other betas, on different platforms , like windows , android , chrome OS and linux . I stil test betas on my non daily machines, from insider builds on the windows side to android public betas on the pixel side , to chrome OS dev builds on the chrome os side . as well wit htehse different platforms, its easier to revert back from a beta to the stock factory working release.