Apple Releases iOS 17.4 and iPadOS 17.4 With New Emoji, Podcast Transcripts, and Major Changes in the EU

Hi,
I'll be reporting this to Apple, but as of the official version of iOS17.4, which was released today, it is still impossible for a Voiceover user to select text from within a podcast transcript.
To attempt to reproduce this bug:
1. open the podcasts app & find a show you'd like to read the transcript for.
2. Triple-tap the item
3. From the context menu, choose, "View Transcript"
4. Using your voiceover rotor, navigate to "text selection"
5. try using your normal "selection" commands?

What result do you get?

For me, it appears to work but then focus jumps.

Will see. I just downloading it for iPhone and next iPad.

According to an article I read this morning, Apple is warning users about vulnerabilities to privacy and security once users have installed sidebar apps. Banks were also concerned.

Hello,
I have an important report to make, and I would appreciate if AppleVis could pass it along/track it on the Website.

This is an important regression on the Web, particularly for accessible games, or chat applications that want to automatically read incoming messages.

Essentially, to make screen readers automatically read incoming texts, we use what is known as an ARIA live region. This will be familiar for Web developers, but for anybody else who isn't, they essentially allow you to tell the screen reader to automatically speak any changes made to a part of the Web page.

Live regions can be of two types, polite and assertive. For this bug report, only polite regions are important.
In theory, when a region is marked as polite, the screen reader is not supposed to interrupt what you are doing, and should speak the incoming text only after whatever was previously spoken has finished speaking.

On iOS, until iOS 17.4, this worked perfectly. Even if you for example tried to speak multiple messages at the same time, for instance one message arrived and then a second one right after that one, VoiceOver would correctly queue messages and speak them one after another.

On iOS 17.4, this is completely ignored. Any live region automatically interrupts whatever you are reading, and speaks any changes as soon as they happen.

This is very unpleasant, not only for developers who genuinely want to make a good user experience, but also because sometimes Web developers mark a zone as a live region by mistake.
In practical terms, this means that in some cases, when you are reading articles in Safari, your reading might be interrupted by unwanted announcements such as "Close", or an advertisement.

In the past, your reading wasn't interrupted in the middle of the text.

I have reported this via the Feedback app under FB13636851.

Finally, to help test the behaviour, I also have a demo page at https://nidza07.github.io/web/ARIA-live-demo

When you open the page, you have an edit box to choose the rate at which the messages will be sent to the screen reader, but this is not so important and you can leave it at the default. After clicking the "Start" button, you will start a simulation of incoming chat messages, which will on iOS 17.4 interrupt each other constantly, while on earlier versions, they will correctly speak one after another.

Thanks for any help and for understanding the significance of the issue. Hopefully we can see a fix sooner rather than later, as this basically broke a lot of complex Web applications that rely on speaking something automatically.

Hi all. So far so good on my end, with the exception of one minor thing. During the update process, it seems that the progress bar somehow reported the incorrect percentage some of the time. But my iPhone 14 eventually restarted and I'm good to go. I'm still figuring things out on this phone, but I am impressed thus far. The chimes for power on/off are a nice addition.

How does the searching within podcast transcripts work?
Because when I try doing it, it doesn't read the results with voiceover.
I do like the transcripts, because you can find what you're looking for and triple tap, then hit play, and it'll jump you within that section of the podcast.
It also means you can bypass alot of the waffle.
No one likes a podcast where they talk about nonsense for about 10 minutes, at least, I don't.
Well, it depends on what they're going on about.

1. All models should have startup and shutdown sounds and/or vibration/haptics. This is an easy-to-implement accessibility feature rather than some model-specific upgrade to show off or brag about, so I don't really like the fact that I have to upgrade to some newer model to have those features that I suggested to Apple earlier myself. I don't really know if it's because I suggested them that they are now available, albeit for a select number of models, but I am sorry to know that I can't use those very things I suggested to Apple myself. I miss how my Nokia devices would vibrate so that I would know when to release the power button and whether the device had actually powered up. Same for battery stats like cycle count and first use, and the feature to limit charging to 80%. If these were implemented to help save power and battery life, and protect the environment, then all models should have them. I urge everyone to push Apple for that.
2. The increment and decrement buttons have been replaced with sliders for Eloquence parameters, but it's still the case that they do not work as they should. One example I can recall is that you can't change the pitch base parameter for Rocko. You can't change most parameters for Grandma and Grandpa, and Shelley, possibly as well as other voices, either. The higher sample rate thing is still a mess, so Eloquence still lacks front teeth. One more thing is, the rate multiplier parameter, even if set to 200, does not actually increase the speed as much as setting the rate value itself from 50% to 100% would. So it's either that one of them (setting the speaking rate to 100%) increases the speech rate more than twofold, or vice versa. Another thing is that Eloquence does not handle punctuation and capital letters like Windows versions. I have this app called WeWALK installed on my iPhone, which lets you pair your smart cane (WeWALK) with your device, and control certain features. Eloquence reads it out as "Wewalk". As for punctuation, certain punctuation marks affect Eloquence' inflection and pitch in a way that does not happen on Windows.

I can wwrite and read in Hebrew with 8 dots Braille table.
I had bin waitiing for it many years.

My understanding of startup and shutdown sounds is that because they indicate when the device, rather than the operating system, has begun starting or has fully shut down, they are facilitated by the device's boot rom, and thus cannot be added to older devices via an iOS update.

Greetings. After performing the update to iOS 17.4 on my 12 Mini, I was prompted to get started by swiping up. This is what VoieOver asked me to do anyway. I could not swipe up. Flicking up with one finger while VoiceOver was running had no effect. It was necessary to focus n the prompt, stop VoiceOver, flick up with one finger, and then restart VoiceOver. I am wondering if anybody else has experienced this besides me.

No, I didn't get this prompt for ios 17.4. Iphone 14.

I got the "Swipe up to get started" prompt, but was able to perform the standard home gesture and proceed through the post-update flow as expected.

Since updating to iOS 17.4, when I type in the edit field to respond to an email, then flick left out of the edit field and flick right to listen to what I've written, Voiceover is only reading the text from the email I'm responding to. It won't immediately read what I've written even though I know it's there. Double tapping to re-enter the edit field only continues showing the text from the email I already received. If I wait several minutes and then try this same scenario again, it does eventually read what I've written. But it literally takes several minutes and multiple swiping attempts.

A friend who has the exact same phone as I do, had texted to say she got the swipe up prompt when she updated. I updated my phone and then my mom's and neither got the prompt. It's odd why some people do, and others don't, coming from the same version and updating the same way.

In part, I disagree with you, friend Tyler. You remember that, in one of the versions of iOS 16 which I don't remember what it is, All iPhones started to play the shutdown sound of the device. This suggests that it is indeed impossible to make these sounds play via software, for example, as soon as the iOS loading begins, the sound could play. I think Apple really doesn't want this to happen...

The shutdown sound may be different, but I believe the purpose of the startup chime is to let the user know when to release the Side button, the equivalent of the Apple logo appearing on the screen for sighted users. This suggests to me that it plays immediately when hardware and firmware initialization starts, at a point in the boot process prior to the loading of the operating system.

What you are describing in this bbug as I see it is not entirely correct.
What is happening is that if or when you use a voice that is not the same language as the iOS language, VO will change tto the default language when you go to the status line. This means that you can use all the languages in the rotor for your iOS language, but as soon as you select another language the bug appears. This is a new addition to my long list of bugs when you work with more than one VO and/or iOS language.

I have asked for this, and have now discovered that they are here.
For any Eloquence voices in the per voice settings I see two options I have not seen before.
Abbreviations dictionary and community dictionary. What the last is I have no idea at all is. However the first abbreviation dictionary is what you would expect the list of builtin annoying abbreviations like SD, ND, CA, NY DR and many others. Disabling this dictionary makes eloquence behave as you would expect just speaking the text not altering it.

From what I've observed, image descriptions still occasionally fail. I am using iPhone 13 Pro and the language I use is Simplified Chinese. In the two days I've been using 17.4, the image description still crashed once, and the fix was to restart the iPhone. So according to my understanding, this bug has not been fixed in my case.

Every time I think the focus issues with Voiceover can't possibly get worse I am proved wrong. Not only is the issue with the cursor jumping back to the top of any given page or app still running rampant, but now there's a new level of crappy to it. When opening a menu such as the one to open a new Safari page in the background, if you tap on something in the menu the cursor will quickly leap back to the very first option without saying anything. I've opened so many pages when what I wanted to do was open in the background. And of course this means losing my place in the page I was on because the damn cursor jumps to the top whenever something happens in the background. Arg! I want to throw my phone out a window, preferably at whoever at Apple has been ignoring this massive problem for years now!

Although this dynamic island feature is not a lifesaver and not something I really like, it has a lot of problems with voiceover. When swiping through the screen, voiceover somehow goes to the dynamic island, which is really annoying. This frequently happens when you want to go to the top of the screen with a 2-finger swipe up or a 4-finger tap. In order to come back to the main screen, you have to tap somewhere in the middle.
Also, voiceover and the Shortcuts app have major issues. I don't know when Apple is going to fix them. Another issue that drives me crazy is that when you type using Braille screen input, voiceover sometimes randomly says "Braille input is stopping". I cannot even express how annoying that is as a really fast phone-braille user.

In the comments for iOS 17.3 there was discussion of a bug where voiceover stuttered badly, making many things, including webpages, difficult to use. It did not appear on all devices, but it appeared on the iPhone SE third GEN in particular. has this been fixed on iPhone SE third GEN? I use the default voice, Samantha, I think. i’m staying on iOS 17.2.1 until I find out that this is fixed.
Thanks.

I have the 14, and my phone has been stuttering since the initial release of iOS 17. It's obnoxious, and I continue to be surprised the issue hasn't gotten more attention.

Voiceover gets stuck all the time still
It moastly happens on the lock screen or after I dismiss a notification it will just get stuck, it’s so annoying and has bin happening for years at this point

Siri does not work again when you ask her to send a message and she read it back. She stops in the middle and starts allover again. Is more regularly. Bug.

Is it just me or has the focus jumping to the first item on the screen issue gotten a bit worse again? It’s not a new bug of course, it’s been around for years, but I felt it had improved in recent versions. Now I think it might have gone backwards again. TBC.
I too always found it odd that my Nokia phones from 20+ years ago and Android phones 10 years ago could vibrate when I start them up, whereas only the iPhone 14 onwards can. Perhaps there is a reason, I don’t know.
I also wish I could remove the start up and shut down sounds, and only have a vibration.

There’s a bug introduced in iOS 16. To reproduce it just:
Get a message, i used whatsapp, but I guess any app should do.
Swipe down and double tap when you hear More. The keyboard should appear.
Tap any volume button. The keyboard disappears? forcing you to return to the home or Lock Screen and start over.

The dynamic island bug (that requires you feel around until you're no longer in the dynamic island, even though you did nothing to end up there, typically four fingers at top to go to top) and the weird switching languages bug (that reverts to your default language when you touch the status area to e.g. get the time). Bonus points for the disjointed rates bug, which gives you wildly different rates across synthesisers and doesn't allow you to finely tune rates for each synthesiser and/or rotor language setting, despite that there are options to do so. It's all a bit shit, really. I do wish things got better, instead of getting worse. And I was on the beta, too!

I've noticed that since the 17.4 update, that voiceover doesn't always say the time when I press the side button. I have to wait about two seconds. Then voiceover will say the time along with the unlock sound. This issue was fixed some time ago but no longer.

I also face the same problem. Using the home button instead of the side button, provided that the device does have one, might help. Well, it may not either. I'm not sure and just guessing.

I am one of those who has a Home button on their iPhone, and both it and the side button announce the time when pressed from a locked state.

Every time.

I am wondering if this bug has to do with a lock screen widget? For those experiencing their devices not always announcing time, that is.

I don't use those things and haven't quite figured out how to add them either.

Sorry if I did it wrong, but I decided to replicate this comment also in the iOS 17.4 post, because I believed it was relevant

Look, After the update I made to iOS 17.4, somewhat reluctant because of this problem, I realized that maybe it's not a bug. As reported by another user here in the forum, the Default language is only used in the status bar when the language in the rotor is set to Some other than the default language. For example, I'm Brazilian and I'm using a British voice on the rotor, so my iPhone will speak in Portuguese when I focus on the status bar. This seems normal to me, since the status bar remains in the Original language, as well as the entire system, not to mention that this already happened in other areas of the system and previous versions.

Complementing: the language is not effectively changed, only in the Status bar This behavior occurs, when the focus is changed everything becomes normal again

Why would you want an English voice to try to say "energia da bateria"? I haven't quite got why this is considered by some to be a bug.

Please can someone help find a podcast by Thomas on how to change gesture command. I am able to use current command for rotor and in the past I use 2 finger left and right. Want to change it. Thanks.

Is this what you're looking for? https://www.applevis.com/podcasts/how-customize-voiceover-gestures-ios-ipados

From what I noticed during the use of this new system, the focus returned to problematize as it did before iOS 17. That is, when we are interacting with an item in focus and quickly switch to another item, VoiceOver waits about 1 second to return to the first item. I hope you report this problem to Apple again, as I did, although it is extremely difficult to describe and execute the problem

I agree. The focus jumping to the first item had improved significantly in iOS 17, but seems to have regressed again in 17.4

I think it must be a bug.
If I’ve chosen a particular language and voice to use throughout the interface, why would I want a different language or voice only on the status bar?

Yes, friend Dave, because you only changed the VoiceOver language, not the iPhone interface