Second developer betas for iOS and iPadOS 18.4, macOS Sequoia 15.4, tvOS 18.4, visionOS 2.4 and watchOS 11.4 are out

By TheBlindGuy07, 3 March, 2025

Forum
Apple Beta Releases

Share any accessibility related findings here.

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Comments

By Levi Gobin on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Here's what I have found in the new betas:

iOS 18.2 beta 4 (build 22E5216h)

VO related changes:

  • The only change related to VoiceOver is that the toggle that did nothing (Always use Siri sounds) appears to be gone.
  • Weather it be a bug or feature, when editing a voice, the speech volume slider is no longer represented as a percent. It is represented as a value from 0 to 1, 1 being the loudest, and 0 being the quietest.

Non-VO related changes:

  • If you want visual intelligence on your iPhone 15 Pro/pro max, this is the update for you. You can now add it to Control Center, or the Action button.
  • If you are like me, and you have an iPhone 16 model (not the 16E), and you sometimes accidentally activate Visual Intelligence, you can now disable it from Settings>Camera>Camera Control.
  • You can select which apps have access to send you priority notifications, rather than it be an on/off switch.
  • More shortcuts actions for built-in apps.
    • I do not know if these are available on Mac.
  • New Control Center toggles for accessing Siri join the already existing Type to Siri control.
    • Talk to Siri: brings up the standard Siri interface, same as pressing and holding the side button.
    • Type to Siri: This control brings up the standard Type to Siri interface.
    • Visual Intelligence: Activates Visual Intelligence.

Funnily enough, there are no new VO gestures for the new controls. - For the lucky few of you who own a Vision Pro, the dedicated iOS app for managing settings and installing apps and games now gets preinstalled if you own a Vision Pro.

macOS 15.4 (build 24E5222f).

VO related changes:

I have noticed one change to VO. The WTA (Writing Tools in Action menu) announcement that became very controversial has been dealt with. How? It is no more! I have selected text in both Text Edit and Pages, and not ONCE did I hear the ding sound, nor the Writing tools in action menu.

Non-VO related changes:

I have not noticed anything new in this update except for what I already mentioned. I will let you know if I find anything.

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

Thanks, Levi Gobin. The news that WTA might be gone makes me wonder if Apple has given a little love to text editing. Several new issues have made editing pretty tedious lately, and I hope WTA's obituary might be a positive sign for things to come.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

I confirm that the wta announcement is gone, and the dock bug seems to be fixed in this second beta of macos as well.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

For wta we still have the sound when it's generating and when generating is complete. I really hope we can get a braille equivalent to this as well as currently there's no way to customize any of this first and no speech output.
I've also noticed that now we can go from a finder window open to desktop again when pressing vo shift d.
I'm not sure yet but it seems that in the save dialog when downloading a file in safari (not tested in chrome or others yet) we can edit the file name normally and brows file structure with regular announcement from vo with arrow keys in column view.
Another big bug though, seems that for me I can't edit or review any vo command normally in the big browser in column view, it announces only the first of the three columns (categories) but says empty cell for the second with the actual commands, and only announce the edit button and not the shortcut assigned in the 3rd.

By Brian on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

Hopefully by the time this version is actually released to the public, there will be verbosity settings for it, such as a sound, or speech, or haptics, or Braille or nothing at all. Choice is good.

By Igna Triay on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

Just chiming in here to confirm that as others have pointed out, the dock bug in mac osis fixed. Glad to hear about the wta as well.

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

Sad news about the chime still present. I can turn that off by turning off all sound effects in VoiceOver, but that's pretty undesirable.

I'm still baffled as to why Apple thought it necessary to announce writing tools in any way for VoiceOver users, given that my sighted spouse confirmed there is no equivalent announcement or dialog of any kind for sighted users.

By Igna Triay on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

The chime makes sence to me the voiceover announcement though, no. So is the voiceover announcement gone?

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

Just to clarify the chime is there only when we use a writing tool and the ai is generating, or has finished generating. It makes sense here they should just add it properly under verbosity and give braille equivalent for it as well for deaf-blind. . Yes no announcement at all.

By Dennis Long on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

You want some way to know it is complete. I also agree there should be a verbosity option for speech speech and chime and nothing.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 - 04:55

This is a systemic problem with apple accessibility on macos, I am sure that the only reason why they even bothered to add accessibility section to logic pro was because of the pro blind daw users in the workforce pressuring them. I of course suggested them to do exactly what I said above I wish to have.

By peter on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 04:55

Now that this feature is available with the iPhone 15 Pro which I have, is it possible to use the silence/ringer button to cycle between silent, ring, and Apple Intelligence to use the camera?

I see that there are lots of choices for the Action button, but don't see how I can choose more than one. Right now I have it set to cycle between ring and silence. Would be nice if I could add other actions to the cycle but I don't know if that is possible.

Thanks.

--Pete