HI,
This started back in iOS 17, but has not been solved. I send the following to Appple over the weekend and received an answer that they are looking into this. If other Focus users see the same please follow up mentioning the case-id so the problem gains more attention and hopefully a sollution.
This problem surfaced first during the iOS 17 cycle, and has unfortunately not being solved until now, where I am on iOS 18.1.1
I use a Focus 40 5G display with the latest firmware 5.28-60
This display can connect with up to 5 different bluetooth devices. I have a pc with JAWS connected, my Iphone 16 pro, and my Samsung Galaxy a35.
Most of the time I use braille with jaws, but often I change to either the iphone or more seldom the Galaxy phone.
With the iphone this will work for a period of time, but often when I get back to my display in the morning, the iphone connection cannot be established. The Galaxy phone and jaws usually just connects as expected.
To get the iphone connected again I can do 2 things.
1. restart the phone, this will always make the display connect.
2. Or go to settings, accessibility, voiceover, braille, Select display. Here I see the focus as the connected display but the display does nnot connect. As soon as I double tap the name of the display the connection is established.
3. The connection will work fine again until a day or 2 or if I am lucky maybe 3 days later then without warning the same will happen the conection has to be restarted in the ways described above.
Resetting network settings will hhelp for a few days but eventually I will get back to the same situation the connection is lost over a few days of use, most likely after the display has been out of reach of the phone for some time, but I cannot find the pattern here.
Enabling or disabling the activate bluetooth when voiceover starts makes no difference. A restart of voiceover will never solve the problem, only a restart of the phone and iOS or the other described solution does that.
I am in contact with one other user that has exactly the same problem.
I am also in contact with Freedom Scientific and the people that are developping the braille support. They say that they see the same behavior and expect it to be caused by security requirements when a display is using a serial bluetooth connection in iOS, but that they have not yet been able to solve the problem on their end, and expect the problem must be solved by Apple.
Is this a known problem and if so do you have any ideas if it can or will be fixed.
Regards
Claus
I got the following short answer from apple:
Thank you for your email. We appreciate you taking the time to provide this feedback, and wanted to let you know that Apple is aware of this issue, and is currently investigating.
Sincerely,
Apple Accessibility
Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Case-ID: 10406825
Comments
Do you have a case on your…
Do you have a case on your phone? I'm having some slight bluetooth issues and I'm wondering if my case is to blame. This applies to my brail display that has disconnected suddenly before, but also AirPods max that have had a crackling and disconnect. My connection to mac seems solid so it's either IOS and bluetooth in general, or it could be the case I've got somehow shielding the bluetooth signal.
ecaused by my case
I doubt it very much. Firstly my headphones do not disconnect and also this is not the disconnect or freeze issue. Freezing still happens too often but this is an issue where the display cannot reconnect. If the acase was to blame my various earphones and bluetooth display would have the same problem, and it would also happen while in use. this always happens after a period of inactivity.
Lucky you
Mine does not connect at all. It is shown as connected in VoiceOver Braille displays but it shows nothing. The display itself shows to the right of the cells BT, which means that it is really connected but there is also no braille.
I can confirm this
I can confirm this on both my iPad Pro M4 and the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Sometimes, it helps to use the new "Reconnect braille displays" command which can be assigned to either a touch gesture or a keyboard shortcut.
If this does not help, I have to restart VoiceOver or even restart the devices to make the braille display work again.
I use multiple connections too and very often switch between them. At the minimum, I have connected 3 devices at the same time. Firmware is 5.28-26 though - as I don't use a Windows machine regularly, I have not updated yet.
When the connection is lost reconnect gesture will not work
Sorry for a long time before answering this one, but I had to setup the gesture and try it out, and of course wait for the bluetooth connection to get lost. When this happens when you see only the 3 lower g signs in the connection status cells, this will not reestablish the connection. The only 2 ways I know of that works is either a restart of the phone or go to accessibility, voiceover, braille, and double tap the name of the display, then it magically reappears.