VoiceOver no longer reads image descriptions

By Misty Dawn, 28 November, 2023

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

It appears that VoiceOver has randomly stopped giving me image descriptions. Disabling and enabling it didn’t fix the problem. Please help.

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Comments

By Jo on Thursday, November 23, 2023 - 08:27

I'm having the same issue. I turned image descriptions off and back on again as well as restarting my phone with no change. Any feedback would be welcome. It just started this again yesterday after working as it should for quite a while.

By OldBear on Thursday, November 23, 2023 - 08:27

This feature seems to be consistently unreliable on iOS. I'm guessing the descriptions rely on centralized Apple servers, and pouty machine learning code that found out it isn't actual AI, so refuses to describe images until an Apple tech pats it on its virtual head. Or the Internet is clogged, and the phone is waiting, and waiting, and waiting, so can't give a description.

By Mlth on Thursday, November 23, 2023 - 08:27

Hi
I believe image descriptions happen on-device, as VoiceOver asks to download the model the first time you use it.

Best
Malthe

By OldBear on Thursday, November 23, 2023 - 08:27

It does say it is onboard, and I'm pleasantly surprised. Here's what's happened. Go to the Voice Over section in Accessibility settings.. Go into Voice Over Recognition and turn it back on, then it should work everywhere. There are some additional settings to look through, like sensitivity, and I think that is why the feature got turned off in one of the last updates.

By blindpk on Saturday, November 25, 2023 - 08:27

Not working for me either since a while back. The UI also says that the feature takes up "0 kB", instead of the 30 or so MB it should, so something is definitely weird here.

By OldBear on Saturday, November 25, 2023 - 08:27

That's strange. Mine seems to still be working since I turned it back on in Accessibility Settings. I guess there's multiple reasons for it not working. I have a SE 2022, running the latest iOS. Could it be certain models/ iOS versions?

By blindpk on Saturday, November 25, 2023 - 08:27

I turned off image descriptions, restarted the phone while they were turned off, and when I started the phone again I could activate them again and they worked.