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

Experiencing that on my iPhone SE3 as well.

I tried to delete flashlight from lock screen. Follow instruction by tapping on the time and hold on the lock screen, face ID opens it, go to customize and tap on it, slide to customize wallpaper, slide and select delete flashlight. Do not see any done button.If there such an animal, VO does not see it. Help.

I've got an iPhone 15 with two rotor voices selected. Seemingly randomly, the voice switches to the other rotor voice. Is anyone else seeing this?

It's worth noting that this issue appears to be new with the final release. I followed all the betas closely and never saw this issue until upgrading to the released version.

Hi Holger.

After you select the button to remove the flashlight, four-finger double-tap at top of screen. This takes you to a cancel button. Swipe right once, and this takes you to the done button.

This returns you to the customize screen. Perform a home gesture (or press the home button) to turn off customizing. Your flashlight should be gone.

Just thinking out loud, which I probably shouldn't do. I know that we all use our phones differently. Still, after the relative stability of the betas, I'm surprised at the instability of the final public release.

I didn't include this in the article I wrote since I wasn't able to get it to work. The only workaround I know of would be to set up Type TO Siri under Settings>Accessibility>Siri. You won't be able to speak to Siri then, though.

What you should consider is that there are more people using the live release, then there ever were in beta. On top of that, everyone’s phone is set up a little differently. Furthermore, and as we all know, odd quirks and glitches seem to happen which require resetting the phone settings, or sometimes doing a full factory reset. I realize doing those resets can be a hassle, and not many people want to take the time required to perform those tasks, but this is what I did prior to the update, reset my settings that is, and my phone is working very solidly as a result.

Worth it? I think so.

Finally, and as unfortunate as it is, it really is no surprise that so many people are having different issues with their install of iOS 18. I can only offer a reset of your settings, not necessarily a full factory restore, but definitely consider taking the time to reset your settings. Here, the benefits outweigh the cost.

Hi, to those experiencing issues with the News app, I am as well. On iPhone 15 Pro for me I can swipe through Top Stories, then the list of Favorites choices. After the last Favorite, focus returns to the top of the News app and Top Stories again. I can scroll by screen to get past it, but it will often focus somewhere random as well, like 90% to the bottom of all of the articles. Very disappointing experience at the moment.

Do see cansel button but not the done button.

I believe it is a bug, or at the very least, very poor UX.
Notifications are set to Stacked.
Focus on a notification. VoiceOver says for example “facebook, Collapsed stack, blah blah blah”.
Double tap to select it.
On some occasions you will find there were more notifications, which were hidden, now revealed. All good.
On other occasions however, it won’t expand a stack, it will simply open the facebook app, assumably because it was a solo notification.
When you hear “facebook, Collapsed stack, blah blah blah” therefore, you don’t know which of the two scenarios it’s going to be.
If it’s only one notification, it should not say that it’s a collapsed stack.
On top of this, you don’t always get the “collapsed stack” thing, and sometimes you even get “grouped”, making it all the more unclear.
Telling someone they should be using the List option is fine, and I may try it, thanks, but does not make this less of an issue for those who want to use the Stacked option.

As far as I can gather, the new easier access to type to Siri was intentionally left out of iOS 18.0.
I think we can expect it in 18.1 with the new Siri interface.

It doesn't say stacked, and there is no option to expand or collapse. I tap on the notification and I have no idea what it is about. This is particularly true in Discord. So far, Facebook and Discord are the only ones behaving like this, and other third-party apps have notifications turned off so I can't speak to them. The standard calendar, weather and reminders notifications read as they should.

I agree with Dave Mason. A late beta pulled the new swipe up gesture that had been available in earlier betas to access type to SIRI.

I opened this issue early in the beta cycle but never received a response.

1.Open the clock app. From the row of tabs, select Stopwatch.
2. Find the Start button and double-tap it.
expected behavior: With focus on the start button, the stopwatch should increment silently. This is the way it has always worked up until the first iOS 18 beta.
Observed behavior: After double-tapping Start, VoiceOver focus jumps to the time display and VoiceOver periodically announces the time as it increments.

The same behavior occurs if you place focus on the Laps button and use a two-finger double-tap / magic tap to start the timer. Mysteriously, this issue does not occur if you place focus on any of the tabs at the bottom and start the timer with magic tap.

Some people might think it's useful to have VoiceOver announce the timer as it increments. Of course it is, and this functionality as been available for several past releases, simply by placing focus on the time display and starting the timer with a magic tap. If this change was made intentionally, as a feature, then 1) it wasn't necessary, and 2) at the very least it's confusing, as focus jumps to the time display in some cases but not others.

hello hello
i've an IPhone 13. is it advisable to upgrade? i've been following this forum topic since quite a while now and the experiences are just so varried. i was convinced its a stable release hehe

the numbers getting red in a slower speech rate issue has gone away seemingly on it's own after 2 days on IOS 18. I didn't change any settings, didn't remove/add my primary voice, nothing of that sort. I did add lot of secondary voices though.
One thing was intriguing to me was other people reporting random voice changes. I am observing a very reliable automatic voice switching on IOS 18. So, may be, these people who have randum voice changes, I was thinking, what is their phone language, and what's the voice they have selected? For example, say you set phone language to English UK, and, then, set Siri US 4 as primary voice for VO, wouldn't VO based on it's automatic language switching try to match voice based on the language declaration in the app code?
This issue is very much present on talkback on Android side currently, so, may be it's coming to IOS as well.
@Khushi, I don't think iPhone 13 is that old. Most of IOS 18 accessibility features should be coming to it. May be in initial days it would be a bit unstable, but I am sure Apple would be stabilizing it in due course of time. You would be only missing out on Apple inteligence, which is bound to be in it's initial phase this year. I would suggest wait it out this year, let Apple inteligence evolve, and consider an upgrade next year if you see a good progress with AI.

Hi everyone,

I believe I’ve found a significant bug in VoiceOver on iOS 18 when managing two SIMs, including an eSIM. When double-tapping the cellular data switch in the Control Center, it doesn’t turn off the data. Instead, it opens the menu where you can choose your active SIM for cellular data. I still didn’t find the way to toggle the cellular data switch quickly.

yeah am not planning to buy a new phone. as except apple inteligence most features are there. was just wondering about the updates incase it has any performince impact on the device.

Hi in the control center when voice over says celular data swipe down when voice over says open controls double tap. Now you will be able to toggle the mobile data.

I am facing an issue when I am trying to share a image attachment received in the mail in the IOS mail app.
Earlier I use to open the attachment and touch the left bottom corner, the voice over will read share and I will share to the app I want.
After updating to IOS 18 when I touch the left bottom corner the voice over is not able to identify the share button.
Work around:
Do a triple press at the bottom and the share button will be read by voice over after 2 or 3 attempts.
Is there any other better way do do this?

Hey Arya, I tried that with an iPhone that only has one SIM, and it worked fine. But when you have two or more SIMs, it doesn’t. By the way, why do we have to go through multiple touch gestures now for tasks that used to be done with just a double tap? Feels like a step backward, don’t you think?

Vo still gets stuck in places randomly

This is after a restore after iOS 18 came out

This bug has bin around for years and apple doesn’t care enough to fix it clearly, I reported it as best I can many times

Hi guys, I have noted two main problems for me in this topic, the second one was the spotlight gesture which wasn't bringing down the searching box, which in fact was resolved by magic, don't know how, but after 2 days it was normal without doing anything different.

The first one I stated here was the volume of voiceover in rotor, which seems to be somehow different than in iOS 17, but haven't understand how it works.

I have read that now the volume could be rased more than the remaning sounds of the operative system or something like that, but now my rotor volume element doesn't do anything when I rase or lower it, the voice remains the same as I set it inside the accessibility settings options, so it is a borring thing to have to return to VO settings each time I try to loweror rase VO.

Any advice on how to use this? what am I doing wrong?

I know that an option could be to restore my phone but I would like to try other options before that.

Thanks in advance.

Volume rotor is working ok here on my SE3. Do not know if this is significant or not, but I do not have the Speech volume matched to my Sounds volume.

HTH.

(Editedd/updated for clarity.)

In the native Podcasts app, on the Home tab, podcasts are incorrectly listed under the Recently Played heading when they have not yet been played.

Steps to reproduce: If you have two unplayed podcasts under the Up Next heading, go to the second one and mark it as played. Expected result: the second podcast will move under Recently Played, and the first podcast will remain under Up Next. Actual behavior: Both podcasts move under Recently Played.

This issue was introduced late in the beta cycle. I have not opened a Feedback issue.

I too am experiencing a bug with apple news. If I open the news app and start swiping right, I can swipe through the first 3 or 4 articles. I think it's when there should be a new heading like favourites, I am sent back to the top of the screen. If I try to navigate by heading I get sent to the magazines.

For people who are having a problem with the News app, I am just curious if you guys happen to be news plus subscribers? I asked because I am wondering if the news is displayed differently for plus subscribers.

Hi Omar ,
Yes, as you said it is an extra step to toggle the mobile data.
One work around I use is automations.
I set the automation to turn the mobile data off when joining my Wifi and turn on when it leave my WIFI.

The new volume control in VO rotor will let us go over 100% when audio ducking is turned on. Adjusting the volume over 100% will allow to adjust the ducking level. Now, it seems that if we try lowering down the volume below 100%, nothing happens. Sounds like a bug. The speech volume remains at the same level of the system volume. So, to lower the speech volume, the only way I found was to change the voice related setting.

Thanks. Now I understand why I am not having issues with the volume rotor. I have not used audio docking since probably iOS 14 or 15.

I use voiceover in English, however while reading text in Arabic voiceover does not read numbers.

Hi, it is great to report things you are finding on applevis.com
However please report them to apple and include the following:
Note turn screen curtain off first!!!!
1 a screen recording turn on the microphone and say what you are expecting to happen. Also include what the current behavior is and why you think it is incorrect. Screen recordings help developers see what you are getting. Note if you have screen curtain on please disable it prior to starting the screen recording.
To turn on the microphone option when you go into control center, and find screen recording swipe up with one finger you will see open controls. Double tap. Microphone is at the bottom. It will say Microphone Off turn it to on.

I am using an iPhone 15 Pro. I am in China and need to use text reading and writing. When I upgraded to iOS 18, Chinese characters could not be interpreted, but English was OK. I tried switching to the developer beta and installed the latest 18.1 beta 4, but the problem still could not be solved. After writing a text message, the rotor switched to characters, and when browsing the characters, no Chinese characters could be interpreted, but this problem does not seem to exist in the settings. At present, I also found that the characters in the communication center and control center cannot be interpreted. This problem has caused great trouble to me and my friends.

Have you tried reinstalling Chinese language pack and/or reinstalling Chinese voiceover voices?

hello,
I updated my phone yesterday.
post updating for a few minutes voiceover didn't read the numbers on the passcode screen making it difficult for me to enter my passcode.
however, I left it for a while and after 5-10 minutes I was able to successfully add my passcode and the issue hasn't occured ever since.
photos app does have unlabled buttons. since i've only one primary voice (siri voice 4 US) i haven't faced random voice issues for now. however, I've noticed that now it says unpronounceable in some emojis and some other symbols. Since it says that, I haven’t been able to figure out what they are. But it wasn’t the case earlier.
Am not sure whether it is a bug or not.
I have also experienced the notification centre bug where voiceover says collapse stack even when there is a single notification present.
I haven’t explored trying to customize yet or explored the new homescreen and things like that as of now.
My battery I think seems to be fine. I’ve not noticed any issues however it hasn’t been even 24 hours since I upgraded.

Hey everyone,

I’m experiencing an issue with the Siri voices when entering my passcode. This is using Australian Siri voice 2
Speaking rate Is at 100%. I switched over to Siri voice too, and try to enter in my passcode. However, it didn’t use the speaking rate that I chose, but however once I enter in my passcode, it returned back to the 100% speed rate. Karen is not affectid

Vote I just tried using Siri voice to in this very same text box I’m using to type in. It uses the 100% speech rate.

This only seems to work on passcode fields.

So I downloaded American Siri voice 4 earlier, and tried to use it as a voice on my voice Wroter voice My primary voice is Kathryn, a.k.a. Australian voice. When switching over to the American Siri voice for, what I can only describe as an extremely distorted, white noise, Extremely high-pitched version of the Siri 4 voice was heard. I don’t know how, what, when who all why it happened, but wow, that was very scary to hear. I have never heard anything from a text to speech voice like that. I didn’t even know iPhones could produce such a sound.

I've also noticed Siri Voice 4 is producing static on 18.0, though I can't seem to get it to happen on my 11. Someone else I was talking to had it happen. This is yet another issue that should have been caught during QA testing. We can only hope 18.1 fixes it. In the meantime, don't set it as your primary voice.

Is it just this voice that has the issue, or is the other American voices?

It’s not affecting Australian voices, that’s for sure.

No, I had no plans on setting that voice as my primary voice.

I have never had this issue, but knew someone with an iPhone 11 who had this same issue; loud white noise, and distortion. I’m currently using 18.1 beta four, and have no issues here.
Other people may have said this already, but if you are facing this issue, have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Siri voices? Also, have you tried different speaking styles to see if maybe one of them is the culprit? just spitballing ideas. Hope one of them will fix this issue.

So I went back to using the voice. I was able to use it for about 30 seconds of going back to static, white noise ways of earlier. I tried different speaking styles and I actually really liked the narration one. If only that was supported on Australian and British English.

Anyway I went and looked at the equaliser of options. Big mistake, as soon as I double tapped on the equaliser button, I didn’t even change any settings in the equaliser, immediately went back towards white noise.

I’m downloading another American series voice to see if that voice is affected by the White Noise glitch.

It must just be an iPhone 11 issue. I have no idea why, anybody else having this issue.

Does anyone know how to get the Podcasts app to display chapters? I managed to do it in version 17, where it was called "Add to Queue," which was a bit misleading. Now, that option works as intended, but I can't find a way to see the list of chapters in podcasts that support them.

For reference, the podcast I'm testing this on does support chapters because I can view them on Windows using Grover.

Any help would be appreciated!

I just found a siri bug. When telling siri to turn something on or off, the voice will indicate that the requested feature is already turned on or off, rather than saying it was turned on or off. To reproduce, tell siri an action like turn on Do Not Disturb . She will say, Do Not Disturb is already turned on. I hope I explained this clearly enough

yep, just tried it.

It still does what it's suppose to, but what it says is misleading.

I can confirm the Siri issue. It does what it’s supposed to do, so I’m not sure if this is just a bug or something. Hopefully it gets resolved in 18.0.1 or 18.1.

I thought it was fixed, but that was because I was editing a note and it appeared to work. If you just want to read a note by line, turn your rotor to line and you will find that it only reads the first line of the note

I sent a note to Apple Accessibility about the very strange issues with focus while navigating through articles in the News app. They said that they were aware of the issue, so I hope it will be fixed soon.

--Pete

The Walmart App no longers shows all the items in the search or shop part of the app. It shows the first one, and when swiping the remaining items are silent.

The health app does not show your step count or the miles you have went for the day. It shows previous days, but not the current day.
Both apps were very accessible before IOS 18.

I can replicate the bug with the Health app, but I'm not confident that it's an accessibility bug.

You can still access information for the current day by selecting the health metric of interest, then scrolling down and activating the Show All Data button.

This may be a Walmart issue contact them and report it.