Hi guys!
I haven’t seen much discussion about a VoiceOver navigation issue in the Health app, so I wanted to check if anyone else is experiencing this or if I’m missing something obvious.
Since the release of iOS 17.0, I’ve been unable to navigate backward or forward through health data using VoiceOver. Specifically, when inside a health category and selecting a timeframe (day, week, month, 6 months, or year), there’s no way with VO to move to the previous or next period—even though sighted users can do this without any problem. I reported this through the Feedback Assistant (FB14848513) back in September, after having talked to Apple Accessibility on accessibility@apple.com, and getting a reply confirming that they also could reproduce the issue. But since I was running a beta version of iOS, they wanted me to report it through the Feedback Assistant instead, so I did, and have kept on updating the rapport with new comments for every new release where this haven’t been fixed yet. And the issue persists still in the latest dev beta, iOS 18.5 on my iPhone 14 Pro.
Has anyone else encountered this? If you have noticed the same issue, it would be very nice if you could report it to Apple via Feedback Assistant or by emailing accessibility@apple.com. The more feedback they receive, the more likely a fix will eventually come.
Thanks and take care
Comments
No Issues Here Thus Far
I saw this thread just a bit ago, so I opened up the health app on my iPhone 14 running 18.4 . Everything seems to work okay for me, and I noticed that I can now set up walking steadiness notifications. I successfully did this and we'll see what happens.
Yeah, that's great, but can…
Yeah, that's great, but can you navigate back and forward in your health data too? Can you e.g. check your step count for any particular day say in 2019, or check your activity for 10th of June in 2021? That's the part I find impossible to do ever since iOS 17.
No-one else?
Can anyone else check and see if you can navigate back and forth between different time periods in the Health app using VoiceOver? If it works fine for everyone else, there really has to be something I've missed completely 😮💨 In that case, I should probably stop sending bug feedback to Apple about this issue, but if there are others seeing the same behaviour, it would really help if others could confirm this and also report it to Apple 👍🏻
Not sure if I followed your steps, but…
Opening my Health app, then tapping on the browse tab on the bottom, then under the activity heading I tapped on steps, then I can navigate between day, week, month, six month, and year, reading through the information provided.
After which I can choose a different option, such as week instead of day, or a year instead of six months, and read through that particular information.
I personally did not have any navigational issues with this.
Is this what you are referring to? Just trying to follow your steps.
BTW, I am running iOS 18.5 on an iPhone SE 2022.
Edit, forgot to mention I am using Alex (US English voice).
I roughly know what you’re referring to
I noticed this the most is when looking back at my previous sleep data collected by my AW.
No matter what I do with VoiceOver, I couldn’t view the previous nights sleep
My phone stubbornly stays on today’s sleep session.
I tried swiping right with 3 fingers and nothing happens.
Need to turn off VO and do it that way.
Is this the issue you’re referring to?
Clarification on Navigation Issue in Health App with VoiceOver
Hi @Brian and @AppleFan01,
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond! I appreciate your efforts to follow along and test this out.
Just to clarify a bit more about the issue I’m referring to, since it might be easy to miss:
What works fine—as you both noted—is selecting a timeframe (day, week, month, 6 months, year) and hearing the data presented for that selected period. So, for example, when you pick “week,” VoiceOver reads out the days in the current week just fine.
The problem happens when you want to “go back” or “go forward” to a previous or next week/month/year/etc. In the visual UI, sighted users can often swipe left or right, or tap arrow buttons to move backwards and forwards through these periods (e.g., from this week to last week, or from June to May), but with VoiceOver, there’s currently no accessible way to do this.
So you’re “stuck” hearing only the current period’s data and can’t browse historical data by moving the timeframe forward or backward, which makes reviewing past health data quite difficult or impossible without turning VoiceOver off and navigating manually.
@AppleFan01, your description about the sleep data is exactly the kind of scenario I’m talking about. You want to be able to move through previous nights or weeks of sleep data using VoiceOver—but it keeps locking on the current day/session.
@Brian, I understand you can select different timeframes just fine (day, week, month, etc.)—you and I are on the same page there. But can you try to actually move between, say, last week and this week purely with VoiceOver gestures or rotor navigation? That’s where the problem lies.
I hope this makes the issue clearer. If anyone else can test and confirm this, it would be really helpful to have more reports sent to Apple via Feedback Assistant or accessibility@apple.com. The more feedback, the better the chances this gets fixed in a future update.
Thanks again guys, for helping with figuring this issue out together with me