Apple has today released iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 to the public.
Based on our testing, below are the key changes and issues for blind and low vision users in these updates.
We are currently aware of two potential fixes in these releases:
- Thee WPM Minimum and Maximum values are once again spoken properly by VoiceOver in Per Voice settings for all voices.
- When focused on the status bar, VoiceOver no longer speaks in the primary voice when you have set it to speak in a different voice from the language rotor.
We are currently unaware of any additional fixes or new bugs for blind or low vision users in these releases.
With our small team, it's impossible to test every device, configuration, app, and use case. We can't claim our lists of new and resolved bugs are comprehensive or that our assessments are infallible. Some issues may manifest only under specific conditions. You likely won't experience every bug. Also, expect to encounter problems not listed that we missed in our testing. Please let us know in the comments if you encounter any other improvements or new bugs introduced in these updates. Community feedback is invaluable in helping us keep this page up-to-date and accurate.
iOS 17.5 Release Notes
This update introduces a new Pride Radiance wallpaper for the Lock Screen, Apple News enhancements, and other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your iPhone.
Apple News
- Offline mode in Apple News+ gives you access to the Today feed and News+ tab, even when you don't have an internet connection
- Quartiles is a new and original daily word game that is now available in Apple News+
- Scoreboard in News+ Puzzles gives you access to new player data for Crossword, Mini Crossword and Quartiles, including stats and streaks
Tracking Notifications
- Cross-Platform Tracking Detection delivers notifications to users if a compatible Bluetooth tracker they do not own is moving with them, regardless of what operating system the device is paired with
Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices. For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222
The iPadOS 17.5 release notes are identical.
How to Update
iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 are available via Over-the-Air Update (Settings > General > Software Update) via Finder on a Mac with macOS Catalina or later, or via iTunes on a PC or Mac with macOS Mojave or earlier.
Before updating, we strongly recommend making a full and complete backup of your device (either locally or in iCloud, depending on personal preference). This will ensure that, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong during the update process, you will have a current backup on hand in case a device restore becomes necessary. Also, if using OTA update, we recommend plugging your device into a power source for the duration of the download/installation process, so as to prevent the unlikely event of your battery going dead during the update.
More information on how to update the software on your device is available on this Apple Support page.
We'd love to hear your thoughts after you've had a chance to install the updates. What new features do you find most useful? Are there any changes you don't like? Please share your feedback in the comments below. Let us know what Apple got right with each release and where you think there's still room for improvement.
Comments
Downloading now...
If I am not heard from again, then I bricked my iPhone.
. . . or aliens aberducted me. π
Here's hoping that aria liveβ¦
Here's hoping that aria live regions are fixed. Guess I'll find out when I download.
Aria Live
I'd say no. Aria Live announcement isn't fixed. I'm not an expert on the subject, and I haven't seen the code for Wordle's announcement of the status of the individual letters after hitting enter, but since iOS 17 speech rudely interrupts itself so only the status of the last letter can be heard. I'm assuming this is because of the bug of Aria Live not respecting the polite setting. I started Wordle before updating to iOS 17.5 and finished after updating. It behaved in the same bad way for both.
When testing on my old iPhone 8 running iOS 16 something--whatever the very most recent security fix version is... Wordle speech output was perfect. It said the status of each letter in the word without interruption.
VoiceOver is also still saying description inappropriately on some buttons and dialogs on the web. I don't understand what that bad behavior is about, but it also only started with iOS 17.
As far as I can tell so far, nothing else is wrong. No inappropriate voice switching or loss has occurred this afternoon after updating my iPhone13 Mini.
vo shifts to the primary voice when focus changes to the status
Unless I will see a late update to 17.5 this is not fixed here unfortunately.
Using eloquence on a danish iOS 17.5 it changes to the danish deafult voice. This has a lot to do with the host of problems ios has if you use voices other languages than the iOS main language you are using.
My focus 40 5G display often will not show up ready for connecti
Over the last few betas I have had problems with my focus not being recognized when I want to use it.
Other bluetooth devices earphones and external qwerty keybaords, works fine and the display is shown in accessibility, voiceover, braille,.
I have to go in and double tap the visible display name in the braille settings and then it works. Until disconnected.Removing and adding the display has not solved the issue.
Language switching bug on status bar
For me, after update and two reboots, the bug of when vo go back to the primary voice on status bar is still there. When I select eloquence fr-fr or ameli fr-ca in the rotor language, vo will switch back to alison us when viewing the time or battery for example, unless I have the rc build from public beta and this correction is in the actual stable? In which case I am curious to know how to update. Iphone 14.
Same here.
Also, we now have a new bug released to make the VoiceOver cursore even more unstable, so we should thank Apple for making each iOS release more bug-rich and the VoiceOver experience more inconvenient! This version is no exception, so Apple is quite stable in that sense. So much so that such stability would make VoiceOver practically unrivaled. And what is the bug, you may ask. It is the VoiceOver cursor randomly jumping to somewhere else some time after I execute the read from cursor command and VoiceOver reads out some content. When, why, and under what circumstances this bug occurs, is something that doesn't even make me curious after all the futile attempts to have Apple at least do something to fix some of the bugs. I am posting about it just in case someone else is having the same issue and can offer a possible workaround. FYI, the strange behavior started occurring on two different devices soon after I updated their software to iOS 17.5.
Wait for it...
Any moment now, someone is going to post how, they, have never heard of this bug. how, they, have no problems, whatsoever, with VO focus, and how, they, think everyone should just buy an iPhone 15x. π€£
Brian
OK. No focus issues. No will not suggest someone get iPhone 15. Happy! Using 13 pro.
Interested
Guys,
Does anyone know if they have picked up the VO focus issue since it was first introduced? What I mean is I've never had this issue but it seems that those that do have this may hve always had this irrispective of what phone/upgrade they make. In other words if you had the bug you always have the bug. If that is the case then something very odd is going on. Would be interested to know if someone didn't have it and suddenly after a new phone or software upgrade suddenly got it.
@Holger
You are my hero.
I never had any focus issue on ios
Even on my iphone xs voiceover has been generally very very stable and reliable but for unexpected speech interruption forcing me to restart vo. Like on my xs I had a bug where the 3 finger swipe left in bsi won't send a message or whatever the default action is, in imessage, messenger and whatsapp. When I got my iphone 14 first I just migrated the settings by putting both phone in a close date together. Then I reset the new iphone and reconfigured it from scratch, and that bug plus some other suttle ones were gone altogether from my new device. I started my ios jurney on an old iphone 4, then ipod touch 6 in 2016, then iphone xs (mine) in 2019 and iphone 14 end 2023, and my device, especially compared to the hell of macos, have always been very usable for what *I* do on them. Food for your thoughts.
I am not defending apple at all, they have a lot to answer on macos. The os might be stable but the accessibility and screen is not compared to windows and especially for text editing and web/pdf navigation and the terminal and so on. (off topic).
@Enes Deniz what is this apparently new update of that bug?
notification and time
The only bug I deal is whenever I get a notification VO tells the time. No issue in iOS 16. Hope iOS 18 will fix this bug. I heard some do not have this issue.
Sorry, didn't quite get the question.
I don't know if this is the same as the one others have been posting about, but don't think so. The new bug I've been having ever since updating to iOS 17.5 is the VoiceOver cursor/focus suddenly jumping to some random item on the screen within a few seconds after I perform the "read from cursor" gesture/command.
@Enes
This would be (by default) the 2 finger swipe down gesture to read from current position? If I remember right, you are running iOS 17.5 on an SE3?
Only thing I can think of would be to test out making a new gesture for that function, just to see if you get any different results.
I am on an SE3 with this new update, and am using a different gesture, as my 2 finger swipes are reserved these days for previous and next headings and controls on web pages. As I tend to use those often while web surfing.
HTH.
One-Finger Quadruple Tap
The "read from current position" command or whatever it is called, already has a different gesture assigned to it on my device. I also use the two-finger swipe up and down gestures for something other than the default (vertical navigation).
Fair enough
Only thing I can think of, in your unique situation, is that, perhaps, VO is stuttering on those taps vs how VO would normally react to a single tap on the screen.
Just a thought. π€·
No ARIA live regions fix
Unfortunately, iOS 17.5 does not fix the bug with ARIA live regions. This bug was introduced in 17.4 and makes the lives of web developers unnecessarily difficult. It's probably a safe bet to assume we'll have to wait for iOS 18...
Re: Fair enough
You're not actually referring to stuttering in the literal sense, are you? What I'm trying to explain is something wholely different. It's just like performing the gesture to read from cursor position and leaving the device on a desk and walking away, and then someone else breaking in and tapping on the screen to immediately move the VoiceOver focus to whatever's under his/her finger, making VoiceOver stop reading and speak the newly-landed item in the process. Was that explanatory enough? This thing annoys me, just as if someone else touches the screen and interrupts VoiceOver while I am lying on my bed, listening to an article or something with the device left on a desk or something. It literally happens without me ever touching the screen after performing the read from cursor command. The only difference is that I wouldn't even have time to leave the device on a desk and walk up to my bed before VoiceOver was interrupted by that invisible hand. Oh, this reminds me of Adam Smith.
Re: No ARIA live regions fix
Yep seen it hasn't been fixed when I downloaded. Guess I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. I'm a web dev myself and this is particularly frustrating to see this is still there!
I am learning dev but
@Nikola Jovic and all the other webdev here, from what I understood in almost one year with my mac and all the posts out there about it, voiceover (platform agnostic) is very bad at queuing items and announcing them one by one as it jumps through big chunk of text in the terminal on mac as well. This aria live region is a serious one especially in context like live document editing on gdocs or others. Are you sure it's only an ios bug or it's also there on mac? Because from what I'm noticing it's there too. Just an opinion of course I am just learning django currently and my knowledge of front end dev doesn't go beyond aria-role, label and etc :) never got the patience to try things like aria alert or alertdialog with some js to actually make it real...
@Enes
No. Just a poor word choice on my part. π³
Got it, I guess.
So if what you mean is something like some of the taps taking more time to be detected or processed, I don't think that's it, because VoiceOver does detect all of the four taps in rapid succession and begin reading out whatever is under the cursor. The random jump thing occurs a few seconds after that.
@TheBllindGuy07
Hello,
yes, VoiceOver on the Mac is completely broken when it comes to queueing speech utterances, that's a lost case.
However, on iOS, it was perfect until 17.4, at which point this regressed. Hopefully it returns back in 18.
re: @TheBllindGuy07
VO on mac as always been terrible when it comes to queuing speech, however, with that being said, I can't test latest mac OS so I don't know how completely broken it's gotten. It's why VO has an issue with the terminal app as there is no queuing of speech what so ever when you got a bunch of output coming through. It's also why applescript is broken when it comes to speech output also. I do recall Vo does have a speech queue when notifications are coming through so I don't know. If you really wanna test aria, use the polite parameter on some stuff and you'll see how broken it is both on mac and now, IOS. I do realize this is off topic somewhat so I'll say no more.
@Enes, part deux
So, what I was trying to say was that, perhaps, when you tap the screen 4 times, that maybe, that on that last tap your finger was maybe touching the screen a fraction of a second longer as you lifted your finger off of the screen, or possibly, instead maybe you were inadvertently tapping the screen a 5th time as you moved your finger away from the screen.
It was just a suggestion, but yeah, using the term stutter on this site was silly of me. π³π