iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 Accessibility: A Summary of VoiceOver and braille issues and improvements

Navigating through the Apple News app using Voiceover seems to have gotten broken in iOS 18.

After I flick to my "Favorites", the next flick brings me to something totally bizarre (can't figure out where). In iOS 17.7, the next flick from Favorites brings me to a "More" button, and then subsequent flicks bring me to each of my Favorites in turn. That is not happening with iOS 18. Somehow flicking past Favorites gets me totally lost.

Also, I can't seem to flick down to the heading that used to say something like "Recommendations for You" where the News app used to compile articles based on my reading history.

Hope they can fix the navigation problems introduced in the News app because the behavior with Voiceover in iOS 18 is pretty unuseable as is.

--Pete

I have an iPhone 13 and I updated to iOS 18 last night so that I could also update my watch series 9 to the watchOS 11. Today, my phone has crashed six times as of this morning. I work in digital accessibility as a product manager so I have tried to trigger it and tested a few different ways; have texted a few of my colleagues in the industry who are iPhone users, and the ones who do not use voiceover have not been having any issues. I am wondering if it is related; I have tried closing apps, shutting the phone off and turning it back on, there doesn't seem to be anything clear as to why it is crashing other than I noticed it seems to happen when I am navigating very quickly with voiceover. I typically have the speed rate at 100% and I use the rotor all day to navigate besides the standard left and right flick. Not sure what else to do; I do not want to back up to my iCloud in case somehow that copies the issue. Hoping that there is a fix for this in the next update and wondering if any other voice users are experiencing this today. Wish I could revert to 17. Happy to chat with Apple developers if interested.

Try uninstalling and reinstalling, whichever voice you currently use for voiceover. I have noticed that some of the voices have undergone significant changes, and the voice data had become corrupt during the update.

Just a suggestion. 😎

iPad mini 6 on iPadOS 18, whenever I open or close BSI it makes a horrible noise which is sort of reminiscent (to me) of a car skidding. Good thing I haven't updated my phone as it’s my primary device and I rely quite a bit on BSI. Anyone else notice BSI sound and know any way to turn it off?

Which voice are you using? Perhaps you can try a different voiceOver voice or a default version if available?

Hi! I've heard a lot of talk about some voices working poorly on iOS 18, is anyone here using the English US Nicky voice and can tell me their experience? I'd like to know before I update my phone with that voice installed.

Thanks, I figured it out. My fingers weren't quite on the edge so that was why it didn't work. So much to learn!

13 pro and iOS 18. How do I add an app on the lock screen. Steps by steps be helpful. Tried but did not see anything about it. Thanks.

While I do not currently use the Nicky voice, I can tell you that there is now a Nicky enhanced version.

I will attempt to upload some samples of each voice, so you can hear the difference. No promises though…

You can turn off the sounds you hear when choosing Braille Screen Input modes. Just go into the Braille Screen input settings and find the mode announcements heading. It is set to speak and play sounds by default. You can just choose the speak option to stop using the sounds.

I already use Nicky enhanced its the only one available for use with VO. Thank you for telling me though, maybe it's better! The one I currently have installed has some crazy weird inflection issues.

For anyone interested, I have made a couple of simple Nicky demos, showcasing the standard and enhanced voices. These are at a speech rate of 55, and are just reading my default home screen.
Should at least give an idea of how they sound. Enjoy. 🙂

Nicky:
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0b7Mxw7PNBQcQQpblwZ_DxhCw
Nicky enhanced:
https://share.icloud.com/photos/01dM070G022pU2HH5jlC3GQaQ

Thank you! I've been using Nicky enhanced for a long time now and it's the only one available for use with VO, my guess is on iOS 18 the default became available as well.

So I've updated my main phone, the iPhone 15 ProMax that I mentioned in my last comment, and turns out the control center bug is present, though I did not experience it consistently.
So far, I've noticed that when you try to use VO's rotor to move a control center item from one position to a neighboring position, the drop action works as expected. But if you try to, say, move a control center item from one position to any further positions, say from the far left side to the far right side, then the drop action won't work.
In addition, in the photos app, it seems that the only unlabeled buttons are all items under the pinned collections heading
Regarding notifications, the "collapsed stack" announcement is indeed true, but this only occurs if I get a notification on the lock screen. Viewing notifications from the notification center doesn't result in this behavior. Also for some reason when there are multiple notifications on the lock screen, only the most recent one can be accessed with VoiceOver.

Thank you so much!

This is one of those times I am grateful to (not) have a flagship smartphone. Aside from the weird issue I had yesterday with Siri voice 4 (US), I have not had many of the aforementioned issues others have reported. I have, however, noticed a few quirks on my SE3. For example, the Siri voices 3 & 4 (UK) do, not, have an action assigned to them. In other words, the only thing I can do on those 2 voices is double tap to install. No flicking up/down to Listen to Sample.

An odd quirk, but hardly game breaking. 🤷
I also am not experiencing any issues with the Weather app, but the T9 contact search from the Phone app's keypad is present, that is to say that instead of speaking the names of contacts as you type, you get unlabeled buttons. If you have a gesture setup for Image Recognition, though, you can utilize it to have VO identify said buttons. Though it is a small annoyance.

I will report more issues, or quirks, as I discover them. 😇

thanks, got it working! will make sure it's set when i'm on a phone call or facetime call.

I noticed that earlier too, when I was adding different voices. It's really weird that there are a handful of voices we aren't able to preview.

Also forgot to mention this earlier, but deleting and reinstalling Siri voice 4 (US) fixed the numbers issue.

Hooray for tenacity! 🥳

Using an iPhone 12, type to Siri still has to be done through the settings, so unless there's something you need to do to switch it on, I'm not getting that particular feature.

A fourth vibration for type to siri is not working on my iPhone 15 Pro Max... Any suggestion/ideas?

Hi there!

Unfortunately, the bluetooth-speaker-bug, where VO goes to max-volume when connected to a bt-speaker still persists. My Workaround is an activity that lowers the VO-volume to 2%, but it still is annoying.

Best regards,
Daniel

I noticed this under iOS 17 as well, Strange indeed.

Installed the update yesterday on my iPhone 13. Thoughts as follows:

1. I am also getting the T9 keypad issue, which i hope will be fixed in 18.1 as I can see myself wanting to use that sometimes.
2. In certain situations e.g. entering a passcode after a restart, if I'm using a Siri voice it ennunciates what I type much louder and slower than my speaking rate/volume settings. same thing if I dial a number in the phone app. I think someone's mentioned this already but have forgotten. anyone else getting this?
3. Wow what a game-changer BSI is! I use it a huge amount and have already changed my settings so that it doesn't dismiss automatically when launching an app as I found that was annoying me. Does anyone know if there is a gesture for double tap and hold, as in recording a voice message on whatsapp? If there is, how do you release that gesture?
4. I was very surprised to see door detection and so on be available to me as part of live recognition. I thought you needed a pro model for live recognition. Am I wrong?

Loving this update. Hopefully, the different styles such as narration and so on will come to UK Siri voices in due course.

Braille Screen Commander, while useful, still has commands missing.

Either that, or I simply don't know them.

I've never used a Braille Display after all.

First one, how to get out of the status bar after brailling an S, and second one, how to do a long press.

You can do these with a Braille Display surely, yet when it comes to the command mode, they're missing?

I'll keep an eye on this new feature to be sure, but right now, I think you're still going to need things like explore by touch.

Hello everyone, the Notification Center issue listed with the bug is not a bug. In fact it is the way you choose the Notification to be displayed to you or in this case spoken by VoiceOver. We have three options.

1. Count. This option is Self explanatory, it’ll basically count the number of Notifications.

2. List. This options doesn't count the notifications, but lists them similar to iOS 17.

3. Finally, we have Stacks which will stack up your notifications especially if and when you receive a notification from one app or different app. What happens here is that instead of grouping the notification, it'll be on top of one another. It’ll have a collapsed element and you can expand. It is similar to groups, but it might be a little different. So when you update from iOS 17 to iOS 18, it changes the notification settings by default to the stacked version of Notifications. You can find this in notification settings.

If you open a note, and turn the rotor to read by line, Voiceover only reads the first line and won't go any further. Has anyone else noticed this?

Yes but that is the issue even when set to list or count it stacks the notifications. No idea how it looks visually but for me I always had it as list which no longer works.

List view works fine here on my iPhone SE3 running iOS 18.0. ✌️

I find that I can flick down to Favorites, but if I flick right again to presumably go to my first Favorite, focus is in an entirely unexpected place. Then if I flick left again I am not back at Favorites.

Something is very strange when trying to flick through topics in iOS 18.

I am using an iPhone 15 Pro.

Anyone else experiencing problems navigating in the News app?

--Pete

Can you describe in detail, exactly what you do in the News app? When I open the News app on my SE3, I am able to navigate through headlines with no problem. This is only the front page that opens though, so I’m not quite sure what you are doing different, if anything?

If you create an automation you can’t double tap on actions to add them, you have to double tap and hold

also when going through the folders on the left side of the screen vo will say a random number after my shortcuts, it said 23, I have no idea what that means

@kool_turk to get out of the status bar in BSC, just type another s. I do find, though, that the s command doesn't always work. I've noticed this too when using a Braille display too since the later releases of iOS 17.

Perform long press: dots 2-5-6. I use this one mostly on the tabs button in the Safari toolbar to close all open tabs.

As great as BSC is, there are a lot of commands that don't do anything, like a dots 2-6 or 3-5. I wish these would switch between open apps which is what I've assigned them to with my Focus 4th gen. There doesn't seem to be a way to assign your own commands to Braille screen commander. Hope this will be added later.

Hello everyone,
I have updated iOS 18 on my iPhone XR. I don’t know if this is due to my phone’s age, but I noticed a few things when updating, particularly with the premium Zoe voice. Prior to this update release, I used Zoe enhanced. When I learned that there was a premium version, I was excited to see what she was all about. Needless to say, I am incredibly annoyed by this bug. From the get-go, even before switching voices, I noticed that my phone was laggy. No big deal I thought, it may just take some time to get used to. After downloading the premium Zoe voice however, I noticed two things. First, my speaking rate went from 60%, which is the primary rate I use to about 50. I didn’t even switch it to 50%, since I do not have speaking rate set on my rotor. Second, and most annoying of all, Seemingly randomly, the premium Zoe voice would switch to the default Samantha voice. Again, I don’t know if this is due to my phone’s age, but I am warning others who may possibly have the iPhone XR or older that this may be an issue. I hope this gets fixed soon.

Hi there,

Unfortunately, every time you switch to a new voice, it will default to 50% speech rate. As each voice now has its own speech rate, you will have to manually switch it back to 60% from within the voice settings, not the default speech rate on the main voiceover settings page.

Regarding speech rate, I hope you find this information useful.

As for the voice switching back to Samantha, that is unfortunately a bug from iOS 17 launch that has carried over.

Hello,
Does anyone have an issue where even when you set Voiceover to not read notifications automatically on lock screen, it does so when phone is on ring mode?

Has anyone using voiceover been able to figure out how to use the send later feature in Messages? I’ve read the instructions, but cannot find anywhere a send later that gives you a choice of times. I’m using iOS 18 on a iPhone 12 mini.

Voiceover still gets stuck all over for me, mostly on the home screen and in a notification after clearing it from Notification Centre, i did a fresh install of iPadOS 18 Monday but this problem is still hear

It’s bin around since iOS 15, maby earlier, it’s so annoying and apple isn’t fixing it

The send Later can be found on the apps section on messages. Using VoiceOver, just expand it and you should see it.

Hi all,

What I have noticed since upgrading my iPhone to iOS 18 is that Siri doesn’t respond properly when trying to open certain apps. For example, when I ask Siri to open WhatsApp, it keeps asking, “Which app?” The same thing happens with Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, but it works with some other apps. This is the latest issue I’ve observed since upgrading to iOS 18.

Here is what I do:

I am starting from the "Today" tab (bottom leftmost tab".

From the top of the News app , I flick right through each article.

After flicking through the top most articles, I finally come to the Favorites Heading.

With iOS 17, if I continue flicking right, I would first hear a "More" button. Then subsequent flick right actions would bring me to each of the 5 or so categories I have under Favorites. Thus I could flick to Science, Artificial Intelligence, Politics, etc. These are the topics that I added to my favorites.

In iOS 18, however, when focus is on the Favorites heading, the next flick seems to skip past all of the topics I can generally flick through under my favorites. It brings me to a totally bizarre place. Also, If I flick right from Favorites and then flick left again, I am not brought back to Favorites as I should be.

So, to get the usual suspects out of the way; have you tried...:
1. Switching voices (including reinstalling voices)?
2. Switching to landscape, not sure if it works in the news app, but give it a try?
3. Resetting your settings (not factory resetting the entire iPhone, just your settings)?

I am genuinely curious as to why you are experiencing this, because in iOS 17, I did (not) like the news app. However, in iOS 18 (on my iPhone SE3) it is beautiful.

Anyway, I hope my suggestions are helpful for you. 🙂

I like it so far. The Live Recognition sounds interesting, and I wonder how it compares to all the other recognition we now have on-board and with the 3rd-party apps? The new volume booster is going to come in especially handy for me, as my hearing aids aren't working properly. My father made a follow-up appointment for us to go see the audiologist at Costco. The last time we were there the audiologist took a close-up picture of both my ears and displayed it on the big screen in the sound booth. He and my father reported a tiny bit of healing in my ear canals. But I think I will keep these hearing aids, and hopefully this is a simple fix. In any case, I want to thank Apple once again for a wonderful update. I'm sure I'll check out more of the new stuff in the coming days.

HI,

Like others my activity that tells vo to use US reed for voice in a few apps have stopped working. Usually I use Reed so I did not discover this bug. Since they changed something with voices at least they think they did this could be the reason. I wonder if I can send the activity to apple so they can test it.

Nothing new here, the new thing is that we see more and more of these bugs. If testers did not live in single voice single language US dreamland several would be classified as serious bugs. I will have to see if my old ar
ticle still is alive because I do not need to update it with iOS 18.
The old classics is:
Default voice does not respect detect language off.
This setting is now placed in the voices screen so should stick for all voices. But still this does not work with the default voice.
If you use a voice in another language than the iOS language, vo will change to the default voice when you type braille screen input, and vo will change voice according to the keyboard layout in use. Some will like these automated override of your own decisions, others like myself really do not like it. I want to be in control of my own settings!
We miss the ability to disable dictionaries on all other voices than Eloquence.
If you use a voice in another language than the iOS language when you move to the status bar Vo changes to the default voice.
This was wrongly reported fixed in 17.5 but not in these situations.

Claus

Hi, I'm having trouble replying to threads, so adding new comment. While I don't have any problem with sound effect used when starting BSI, there is a setting in vo then Braille then bsi to use sounds, or sounds and speech or just speech when changing modes. So one could just choose speech and avoid the sounds this way. Again, I have no issues with any of the sounds and have turned speech off.

I'm such a fan of BSI that I've set it to toggle on automatically when activating a text control. The situation where that doesn't work so well is when I have my Brailliant connected. When I do, BSI seems to override the brailliant. any ideas, apart from dismissing BSI, which I can do but which isn't always convenient?

Today when I was exploring the audio section in the voice over setting using the air pods, I came across a option which read: ""speech channel left selected , right selected."" Sound channel: ""left selected, right selected."" I understand that now we can separate the voice over speech and sound between the left and the right air pods. Is this a new feature?

No, we have had this ability for a few versions of iOS now. 🙂

Hi all,
When I go back a screen, I don't get the usual sound to tell me I've gone back a screen. This varies between apps, in some apps I get this, others I don't. I've noticed this in the native calendar app, Reddit and settings. I've checked VoiceOver settings and all the sounds are enabled. I'm on an iPhone 12 mini on iOS 18.0. Has anybody else experienced this?
Edit: I've reported this to apple, and I've tested this some more and it doesn't happen in every app. It happens in Reddit but not outlook. It always happens in settings and calendar.