Hello, I'm here to share an experience with latest JetPack mobile app, version 23.0. It's the one used to blog on WordPress sites, both self-hosted and WordPress dot com blogs.
Released between 20th and 21st August 2023, it has introduced this bug:
till 22.x, when inside a new article's editor, you could double-tapp on the "add paragraph block" or "post title" and the standard edit box appeared, so that with Input Braille Screen or your preferred editing mode you could easily write what you needed.
Now, double-tapping on the post title (or the block editor), it actually shows up the keyboard but the text field is treated as closed - saying "double tap to edit" instead of "is editing". The consequences are the following:
- you can't use Input Braille Screen to type content;
- you can't use the "select text" by character, word, line, page or select all, from VoiceOver rotor, to manage text selection;
- you can't paste the text written in another editor (such as a MarkDown editor) to work the issue around, as being the edit field closed, the copy-paste-cut... menu on the rotor, does not appear.
- Bluetooth keyboard is the solution? No, it's the illusion because, yes. It lets you write whatever you want in the field but, together with being uncomfortable to take a keyboard everywhere to write some content just in one app, when you press Enter to create a new paragraph after writing one, the focus randomly jumps where it wants, even a dozen blocks before the one involved in your editing, so it slows the job down. Let's say the JetPack app has become unusable by blind people from this version and I hope it's just a temporary issue which is going to be fixed.
I just reported it to the JetPack "happiness engineer" how customer service calls itself, and to do it you have to go to the "me" page, that's on right top corner of the main JetPack screen, then "help and support", and tickets. Create a ticket in there.
But, meanwhile, please tell me if you encountered the same experience and managed to work it around properly.
Thanks.
By Elena Brescacin, 22 August, 2023
Forum
Accessibility Advocacy
Comments
Did you happen to be given a…
Did you happen to be given a ticket number? I may know a guy. I may also be able to test this further over here.
I haven't seen this yet, but…
I haven't seen this yet, but I don't do much editting in the app. I have a plugin that pulls rss feeds and then creats posts from each article. I have them set to save as drafts, so I often just use the app to go in and approve the ones I want, trash the ones I don't. But, I hope they fix it, because you never know when you might need to edit and not have a laptop nearby.
No ticket numbers, sorry
Unfurtonately they did not give me a ticket number, I just wrote the message by the support system into the app and, despite the messages are logged, I received no ticket number - just the automatic answer regarding the ticket correctly submitted.
The first keywords anyway, are "JetPack 23.0 and VoiceOver".
re: JetPack and WordPress mobile app: accessibility issue introd
Hello, Elaina. You may also wish to go over to the accessibility forum at wordpress.org & report the problem there as well.
No worries - I found you. I…
No worries - I found you. I'll keep an eye on this and do any testing they need me to do.
I can confirm this bug
I can confirm I'm experiencing this bug as well. In my case, the keyboard is showing up, but I cannot type using braille screen input at all, definitely seems like something weird with that edit field. I have not filed a ticket, but could definitely do so if having multiple reports would help.
Please do also open a ticket…
Please do also open a ticket about this issue. The more people who use this app report the bug, the better they can gage its impact.
I've seeen this bug as well.
Good Wonderful Wednesday Morning,
I've seen this bug as well.
I was trying to update a post on my website, which contained a typo.
I tried using the app, but ultimately, just ended up going over to my laptop & fixing it there.
I'll certainly report this bug.
The question I have is:
How, as a Voiceover user, do I reorder pages, using the app?
It used to be possible to do this, but now I'm not seeing the option.
Ticket numbers for James
Hi James, I wasn't sure whether to use the option for opening a ticket or for priority support, so I did both which probably wound up just creating two tickets that are going to the same place anyway. Regardless, the two ticket numbers I now have for this issue are:
Reported on github
Contacted WordPress accessibility on their Slack channel -that accessibility team is the wrong place anyway- but they gave me a link
https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/wordpress-ios/issues
A person opened the issue reporting the bug and I added a comment below with a personal link with a video attached.
They say they're going to fix, this will force me to reschedule all my blog plans but I hope they manage to release a version without this error making the app unusable.