For most users these issue will never show up, but for people using other languages than English or using more than one language on a regular basis many of these anoyances may be known. Over the years I have reported them to apple accessibility and until now nothing has happened. So after discussing the first issue on a Danish mailing list I will post tem all here and also repost them to Apple Accessibility in the hope that either Apple will start to listen or more complains will get them to listen.
This is the list.
When using the default voiceover language and disabling detect language, Nuance and eloquence voices will still change to other languages.
When using Eloquence and nuance voices the user cannot disable abbreviations in the synthesizer.
With more than one language installed for some unknown reason typing text in apps may cause the language to change again probably based on the keyboard language or regional settings but we did not ask for that.
this is a new one, when using braille screen input the synthesizer is changed to another language for no known reason but like above probably based on keyboard language or other rregional settings. again I did not ask for a change in speech when I changed the input from regular typing to braille screen input.
This one seems to happen when you use another voice than the default voice e.g. eloquence with the default voice/language being Danish in my case. When I change to eloquence and activate the rotor suddenly the default voice here Nuance Sara Danish starts to talk. This also happens when I use braille screen input regardless of any keyboard language in use.
And to split up these two bugs.
When using TTS in another language than the default voice voiceover switches to the default voice when you go into the rotor.
Comments
Sad but true
I have the same problems, told Apple about it and they seem to not really care. I am still working better with the iPhone than with Android which is annoying in itself.
sad buttrue
I am trying to be systematic and reporting everything and there i are many issues most of them plain bugs. I will post all the caseId I managed to get from Apple and hope that more users will help out here.
When using the default voice, unchecking detect language bug
Apple has asked for more information withc I have send to them and assigned this to
Case-ID: 4707743
My describtion to Apple Accessibility:
The default for voiceover is that the first language you install is the default language. When installing other languages or voices this default language will show up as language X default.
If you do not want your voiceover language to change not even if you encounter text in another language, you can go into setttings, accessibility, voiceover, speech, and turn off detect languages. According to the text under the control this:
Voiceover will always speak with the current voice”
This would for normal users mean that the voice and the language of the voice is retained no matter what happens in an app or with text in html.
Cannot disable speech synthesizer abbreviations request/bug
Case-ID: 4721491
Explanation of the problem/request:
Unlike almost any other screen reader voiceover does not control if a speech synthesizer uses it’s builtin abbreviations. This is the case both for Eloquence and the Nuance voices in iOS.
Since these abbreiviations is not used in context but only when a given string of characters is used. There is a good chance that speaking the word in the list of abbreviations in the chosen speech language will change the meaning of the text.
This morning I read the following something like this.
If you are interesting send me a decimeter.
Of course this was not what was on my screen. It was just that dm. in eloquence triggered the decimeter abbreviation in a text where the meaning was direct message.
No speech synthesizer should force it’s own very simple list of abbreviations on blind users. At least we should have the ability to disable these disturbing annoying abbreviations. With the addition of per voice settings this should as a minimum be added here. Of course it would be even better if you manually had to enable these abreviations for each voice you are using, so the user can decide if the person wants the screen reader to tell lies about what is actually on the screen, but if that is not possible at least let the user decide to kill these anoying abbreviations.
I'm right there with you
I wish we could at least toggle on/off the shorthand abbreviations built into whichever voice we use.
I struggle a lot with a certain grocery shopping app I use, where it announces the letters 'c' and 't' as 'court' which sounds like 'quart'.
Can be frustrating at times... 😶
Mail Apple and include the case-id
I am not sure this will solve it but the more people who ask this the better. I also really believe that examples from our daily use makes a diffrence. With eloquence I have so many examples, of course the fact that I use it on Danish text just makes it even worse. Abbreviations for American states can mean totally different things but very seldom I am reading text about whatever state happens to match a string. The best or worst example is NY meaning new in Danish but if you are unfortunate enough to have both characters capitalized you r hear new york. Of cause there are even worse examples with Nuance they have decided that capitalized letters of course means roman numbers. Really smart why would I use an ancient numbering system when I can just as well type the numbers currently used in the most of the world and available on almost all keyboards. But Getting anything changed from Nuance is impossible, but at least disable this madness on all synthesizers!
Voiceover matches keyboard language and vo language without aski
Again a voice/language issue in iOS 17.
If you have more than one language/voice installed in voiceover, and you have the same languages added in the list of software keyboards, voiceover will change to the voice that matches the keyboard language in use.
I tested this with the Audible app, on my iphone with Eloquence Reed as the default voice, and Danish voice Sara installed in the rotor. My default keyboard elanguage is Danish. So as you can see in the video when Activating the keyboard the voice is changed to sara because the Danish keyboard is shown. Changing the keyboard language to English solves the problem Reed is back both in the keyboard and in the announcement of the text you type.
Fortunately Apple accessibility agrees on this one here is the answer from Apple:
Thank you for your email. We appreciate you taking the time to provide this report, and wanted to let you know that we are aware of this issue. We hope to provide a solution in a future software update.
Sincerely,
Apple Accessibility
Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Case-ID: 4825879
It’s aggravating
I have a simmaler problam. My native language is english, but I've been teaching myself german. I have the English and german keyboards on my phone, and I was using one of the Siri voice for both languages. I still have the English voice I use, but I seem to have lost the German one. Now, when I switch to German on the rotor, it uses a voice that I don’t recognize. And sometimes, even though I have the right settings turned on, when I’m scrolling through text on the Internet. If it comes across german text, my phone attempts to read it with English Siri. It doesn’t work that well. I don’t think it does anyway.
It’s aggravating
HI Tifanni,
Please tel it to accessibility@apple.com so they know that many people are affected by these bugs. Regarding automatic unwanted change of text install another English language in the rotor, you can install the voice you use for default anyway. Changing to the new not default voice will minimize these unwanted autochange of language. The disappearing of voices/languages is strange this is something I have not experienced yet. I seem to remember other people complaining about the siri voices but I am not sure since I never use them, or I have not been using them until now.
Claus
SIRI voices bug
Yes, there is a bug where all SIRI voices suddenly disappear.
In fact they are auto-deleted.
The only SIRI voice not auto-deleting is the voice also used by SIRI itself.
So, at the moment I have both VoiceOver and SIRI set up to speak with the same voice.
My native language is Norwegian and Norwegian SIRI 1 and 2 is much better than the other available Norwegian voices.
This means I currently can't use SIRI voices for English since they auto-delete and I'm very tired of re-downloading SIRI voices.
UK Jamie Premium and U.S. Ava Premium is good but I prefer UK SIRI 1 and recently voice 3 and for U.S. SIRI 4.
Here's hoping that Apple fixes the the SIRI voices bug and all the bugs mentioned in this thread.
Siri voices deleting
I would be glad to add this to my long list! So you are saying if you set your default voice to siri norwegian iin your case Danish in mine,. And we then add smore siri voices e.g. and English siri voice. This second voice at some time will disappear? Do you see any pattern in the disappearing?
Correct!
The only pattern I see is that all SIRI voices auto-deletes except the voice also used by SIRI itself.
So, if I use SIRI to use Norwegian SIRI voice 2 (the default SIRI voice for Norwegian) and Norwegian SIRI voice 1 with VoiceOver, my VoiceOver voice (SIRI 1) will be automatically deleted and VoiceOver will revert back to the default compact voice named Nora.
To avoid auto-deletion I use the same voice with both SIRI and VoiceOver.
This bug appeared in 17.1 and Apple is aware of it I believe but it won't hurt letting them know again.
Prior to iOS 17.1 I used VO with voice 1 and just left SIRI with voice 2.
In addition I had UK English SIRI 3 and U.S. English SIRI 4 in my language rotor.
Suddenly all voices were deleted and replaced with their compact counterparts Nora (NO), Daniel (UK) and Samantha (U.S.).
I re-downloaded all voices but after a while all were deleted.
I re-downloaded the voices yet again and they were auto-deleted.
I re-downloaded the darn voices three times until I gave up.
I also downloaded all 4 UK English SIRI voices and all 5 U.S. English voices and tried to use different setups but with the same result - all auto-deleted.
So, now I use VO with Norwegian SIRI 1 and SIRI itself with SIRI voice 1 and all good.
Jamie and Ava for UK and US English.
New Siri voice 4 issue
Although I love the smaller size Siri voice 4 using it with VoiceOver, I discovered that the VoiceOver volume is much much louder. I set the rotor volume to 1, but still the voice is to loud. ,
Siri voices auto deleting
Oh the siri voices auto deleting is so annoying!
At first i was annoyed by Us siri voice’s small file size’s sounding,because it sounds awful!
Then auto deleting problems started and as the Norvegian person said i’v downloaded them 3 times,but…
since voiceover does not support my language i use Turkish as my default language. Other than Turkish i can speak Russian,English and i’v learned a little bit of Finnish,because i love it.
Anyways,i’v downloaded siri voices in 3 languages other than Turkish and they are all gone!!!
I’v reported the issue to apple accessibility already. They said that they are aware of this issue and they are investigating it.
I hope they’ll resolve it soon☺️
Keyboard matching and rotor bugs
I’m not sure that either the switching to match the keyboard language issue, or the return to default voice for rotor issues are bugs.
It is surely the most obvious designed to have VoiceOver match the keyboard language where possible. You can always choose another language keyboard if you want to.
On the rotor, I imagine this is by design, so that if you accidentally go to another language that you don’t understand, you can use the default language to cycle back to the relevant rotor item to change it. The assumption here would be that the default language is your native language or one in which you are fluent.
No need to explain all bugs away
You are totally wrong. First of all there is no need to explain all bugs away by thinking up what surely in your mind must be, could be, or should be the reason for bugs. If you work with more than one language with braille and speech it is obvious read the comments here that Voiceover needs to grow up. You do not solve these problems by deciding how users should use brailleand/or speech, you give options and let the user decide on what is the most personal part of using voiceover. Just because these bugs has not been solved yet means that new functionality makes them worse and therefore they need to be fixed.
Siri voice
I know other's have mentioned the siri voice bug, how it auto deletes. I am having the same issue, and it seems to only delete the siri voices when I am charging my phone. I use a UK Siri voice for Siri, and the American english Siri voice for voiceover.
Voiceover changing language based on the keyboard language used
This bug is close to voiceover changing language as soon as you activate an ed edit field that Apple admit is a bug, but this one they see as a feature, but fortunately offers to create an enhancement request to make it configurable I guess.
Thank you for taking the time to provide the feedback. The behavior that you described is intentional, and is intended to help ensure correct pronunciation of text while typing in different keyboard languages. Would you like for us to submit an enhancement request on your behalf for the ability to keep the voice the same regardless of which keyboard language is in use?
Sincerely,
Apple Accessibility
Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Case-ID: 4825971
Not explaining all bugs away
I did not offer a theoretical explanation for every bug, just why I think 2 of the ones you mentioned might be by design. I have found that in the past, things I thought were bugs are actually meant to be that way.
Ultimately, we are all just ordinary users, so we are all throwing around ideas to see if we can work these things out. If you think I’m wrong, you can always ask Apple, as I’m sure you have.
voiceover switching voice in the rotor
Subjec lines are too short for these problems.
Here is the answer from Apple about voiceover changing voice in the rotor if you are using another language than the default voice/language.
Answer from Apple:
We have reproduced the unwanted behavior and submitted a report for engineering to investigate the concern further.
Sincerely,
Apple Accessibility
Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Case-ID: 4820227
Not explaining all bugs away
The problem is that one users bug is the other users loved behavior. Fortunately this is solved by giving the user options to control the behavior not arguing over what is and what is not a bug. And again braille and speech are so important and sensitive for the users that changing behavior without asking first or giving options will anoy at least a group of userw, and this group may be bigger than the developper can imagine.
Dictionaries added or found in 17.4
Not all is bad on this front. In 17.4 in the per voice settings for eloquence voices, you can turn off the local rules in the abbreviation dictionary, and also turn off what is called a community dictionary. What that means I do not know and disabling it seems to make no difference. However disabling the abbreviation dictionary does what you would hope and expect.