[Updated: Fix On the Way] A Warning to Blind, DeafBlind, and Low Vision Users About Potential Loss of VoiceOver Speech in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26

I haven't updated any of my devices due to time constraints yet, but from the description of the problem on the original post, I guess that physically connecting a keyboard to the device will at least make it possible for people to independently input their passcode after a reboot, thus unlocking the device and addressing the conditions in which the problem is triggered. Braille displays with Perkins-style keyboards may also work even if the displays themselves don't actually output anything. I reinforce the need to do this through a physical USB or Lightning connection, because right after a reboot, and until the passcode is entered, the stored user data is inaccessible due to encryption, and since the Bluetooth pairing tokens are likely stored there, Bluetooth keyboards are unlikely to work.

I updated to iOs 26 a few days ago, and VoiceOver was silent after the update. However, after waiting for a bit, VoiceOver started working again. Unfortunately I don't remember how long I waited, although it didn't seem very long. That being said, I'm not sure if I actually experienced the VoiceOver bug or a temporarily frozen screen after the update.

Hope people are reporting it. Heard that Apple will be releasing iOS 26.01 soon. Looks like some sighted people are having issues with the camera. Also other issues.

Wow, this was quick! It must be a very serious issue. I still belive that it's more because of the sighted users problems that they are issuing a .01 update in the first place but as long as they acknowledge it, which they are, why not. Thank you Apple!
I didn't experience this but some of my friends definitely are.

Camera on iOS having issues. phone 17 are having issues. Nothing to do with those poor blind who keep annoying apple. If they fix bugs for us is an after thought.

It's unproductive.
It's already a huge thing for Apple to actually acknowledge and patch an accessibility bug so quickly.
We can all have your opinions, I always remember that my accessibility advocacy jurney started because of Apple and macOS. This is just it.

Is not just reality.

I agree with TheBlindGuy07 about this not being the right time to express negativity. In my opinion we should promote positive behavior whenever it happens and reserve negative criticism for when it doesn't. Even if we're far from being the main motivation behind the 26.0.1 patch because there are more economically relevant problems to address, I think that we should already be thankful about our problems being considered at all.

This is a pet peeve of mine with the blind or maybe even disabled community in general, which is that even when I have a legal right, I still don't feel entitled to any kind of special treatment, so I must always be prepared to tackle any kind of problem that I might face independently even in the total absence of accessibility. This is called adaptation, and is a skill that I am far from mastering but am constantly improving.

Do you have anything positive to say ever? Your snarky attitude is very tiring! You never give Apple credit for anything! If you are so dissatisfied with
Apple products, find a product that better meets your needs! @Apple awesome job of working to fix this so quickly! To those that reported awesome job! I couldn't report this as I wasn't experiencing it.

That was really clever.

Yes, the issue with VO and notification will continue. Long live the apple.

Apple is truly awesome! This issue is why I held off on the update Keep up the good work

I've never considered purchasing a keyboard for my iPhone. Have nothing against them, just felt they were too, situational, for my needs.
Then this iOS 26 Reboot Bug made itself known, and oh look ... a situational issue.

Sigh ... now if only I had a compatible keyboard, my old iPhone that I updated to iOS 26 to play around with, would not currently be a beautiful paperweight.

Grr... 😣

Criticism of Apple is and will always be welcome on AppleVis. I personally agree with others that constant negativity is not helpful (and certainly not in response to news that a fix for such a serious issue is on the way), but people are entitled to openly express their opinions about Apple on AppleVis. If we don't have that, we have nothing else. The only thing we ask is that people keep their posts free from personal attacks and other potentially offensive content, and Holger certainly followed this requirement in his posts.

Glad that this is getting fixed, even though this should have never been an issue in the first place

I only had this in beta one and never since

This was not an issue on the RC, do not recall on here when discussing the beta issues. If wrong someone let us know. The only issue was 2 app library coming up all the time and VO stopping on middle of reading notification. First was fixed by turning external keyboard off. Second is more regular than previous iOS.

Hello guys, this is Satya from India Apple says always Apple ever this feature, but still there is no use the problem is in India. Auto language switching is not working in all Indian languages. I have put so many mails to the developer team as well as I have send the example recorded video also, but still they didn’t fix anything and they didn’t take anything serious. In iOS 18 not working still the iOS 26 also, not working then well they will fix? Feel felt very irritating while reading multi language documents like local newspapers, government articles like that in Indian languages.

Was someone saying bluetooth keyboards don't work on the reboot of an update when you first sign in? If you have a lightning to USB adapter, a regular wired keyboard works well with the SE iPhone. Yet another adapter that will eventually be obsolete. I have no idea what the USBC iPhones do, but they probably would work if they have the right doohickey on the end.
Auto updates were turned off on my phone as soon as I read that phones were being bricked, so I probably won't be trying the wired keyboard with the VO bugged passcode screen.

This is great! I wish they promptly responded like this on many other issues, particularly concerning macOS. I reported several bugs during the Tahoe beta cycle and to my knowledge only a single one was addressed. We can and should celebrate when Apple does good things like this, but we should always try to maintain a balance. Apple should be commended for many things, but they should also be able to recognize when they've made a mistake and promptly fix it.

This is awesome. It’s good to see the Apple is fixing this as quickly as they are. Hopefully they can fix some of the other voiceover bugs such as voices that literally just do not work. I bet you that will be something that will get fixed in an update too probably. It’s probably going to be like a 26.1 update or something that will fix that one. I didn’t mean if not, I will just you know keep reporting it. But I really do like fill the Apple will listen and they will fix things. They are one of very few businesses that I can make a phone call to without feeling anxious about making a phone call to a business. Yes, I do have a lot of anxiety about making business phone calls. It makes me nervous. But when I talk to anybody in Apple, I don’t feel that way. This goes for calling the regular Accessibility number and the regular Apple support number. I’ve talked to both sides of the company for different reasons. They know about the Voice is not working issue too. They’re working on a fix for that as well. It’ll probably come in another software update. For now I’m using regular Karen and my iPhone 15 and regular Samantha on my iPhone iPhone SE third generation. I did update iOS 26 on both of my devices and I have not experienced the issue of no speech on the update coming on or any restart of the phones. I think it’s awful that people have experienced that. That’s pretty scary. I’m not really sure why the lock screen gets all hung up like that and VoiceOver won’t turn on, but it’s good. The Apple is fixing this as soon as they are. Things like this happen every year. It’s pretty normal you know for it to be software bugs and stuff especially in the first couple days of an update. I’m in an update. It just came out this past Monday. It’s amazing. It’s just stable as it is I think. I think it’s amazing. Any of these devices run as well as they do given everything that takes the program all these.

I've been testing iOS 26 since the beginning of the beta cycle on two different phones and haven't encountered this issue with VoiceOver at any point. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for anyone who has experienced this. I don't have an external keyboard or braille to overcome this barrier, so I would have to rely solely on the help of someone who can see to overcome this inconvenience. I don't even have a computer currently, so it would be difficult if I had to restore my iPhone through iTunes

Oh, absolutely. I would want a wired keyboard for something like this, anyways. Just in case, as you mentioned, Bluetooth fails.

whilst I don’t think the constant criticism of Apple isn’t helping anybody, I also understand why it’s happening.

This issue should not happen. Nun of the sighted community has to deal with the issues we have. That is a major issue that impacts people who face this issue and there usage of their devices. In some situations, those types of situations could be emergencies that affect peoples lives. Apple is a multi trillion dollar company. Surely it has people on deck to actually look at these issues, and then tell the higher-ups, stop. There is a major issue in this line of code that could impact this certain community and the way they use their devices. Because even though we are a minority compared to the sighted community, we still have some form, even if it’s just a small bit, of market share to the trillions upon trillions of profits each year that Apple gains from customers buying into the wall garden solution.

But it’s the exact same on macOS. There have been issues with VoiceOver in macOS, as many people have pointed out over the last few years, that still, even seven, eight, or even nine years later, still exists. app name not responding has been around since I first started using a MacBook in 2021, and still, after four years later, whilst the issue has been better, it still has not been fully resolved. Which in my opinion is outrageous.

But for now, until this issue gets resolved, I advise people to make sure that there voice over voice is set to there default voice for their language, say, British English, Daniel, Australian English, Karen, until the update is complete

Not sure if it's the same issue, but I definitely experienced something like this after enabling Developer Mode on iPad in the first developer beta. Was locked out of my iPad because there was no way to turn VoiceOver on before replying to the on-screen prompt after the reboot so I had to restore my iPad to iOS 18 from a local backup that I made precisely to recover from these problems. At the time it did not really occur to me to just plug a keyboard into the iPad as I suggested earlier in this thread, plus I wasn't really that interested in testing anything anyway so my participation in the betas ended there.

As for USB-c devices, dongles are only needed to connect USB-a peripherals, as most standard USB-c devices work just fine. The only glaring exception that I have mentioned here on multiple occasions are USB UVC cameras, which for some reason that escapes my understanding, only work on iPad. As for keyboards, the baseline Magic Keyboard normally used for Macs works perfectly both wireless and wired, and since it's an Apple keyboard, the Fn / Globe and function keys also work as expected.

Are there any lightning connector keyboards out there, just in case this issue does happen?

Also, I wonder if anyone has tried doing a restart straight up after the update. Not before you enter in your passcode, but as soon as your device restarts after the update. trying to restart your device.

Are there any lightning connector keyboards out there, just in case this issue does happen?

Not to my knowledge, but Apple sells two Lightning to USB-a dongles: an older one only providing a USB-a 2.0 port, and a newer one providing USB-a 3.0 and Lightning ports for power and data. Both dongles provide general purpose USB hosting capabilities to Lightning devices, making it possible to plug USB network, storage, audio, and even MIDI devices to a Lightning port, however and although they are actually marketed as camera adapters, they don't really support standard USB cameras, so their branding is rather unfortunate. I suspect that they called them camera adapters because the intention is to use them with cameras that provide access to their stored data as USB mass storage devices, but I still think that the branding is quite misleading even if not intentionally.

If you decide to buy any of these dongles, I strongly recommend getting the USB 3.0 one, because the power supplied by the Lightning port is extremely limited so the ability to take external power from a charger or computer is essential in most cases, plus you get to also charge and access the Lightning device at the same time with that dongle, whereas the other one just consumes the Lightning port to provide a USB-a 2.0 port without any extra functionality. I own both dongles so I'm talking from personal experience.

It's great Apple is fixing this so quickly. No matter the initial reason, it's getting fixed and this is what truly matters.

I just recalled that, when an external device is connected to a locked iOS device, and if a specific security setting is enabled, the iOS device will prompt the user to unlock it before actually interacting with the external device, in which case an external keyboard will not help at all. I just tested this using a Magic Keyboard as I suggested earlier, both on Lightning and USB-c devices running iOS 18 which I rebooted to make sure that my earlier suggestions worked, and in both cases the security feature prevented me from using the keyboard to input the passcode, so anyone wanting to risk upgrading now might also want to ensure that this specific security setting is disabled prior to installing iOS or iPadOS 26.

I'm sure not everyone would agree with this, but I really, really wish Apple would allow biometrics to work immediately, even after a reboot.

That Brian, makes a great idea. As most of us now use Face Id that would avoid this issue even with no speech. Actually thinking about it wonder why Apple insist on this anyway. After the first reboot or upgrade you can use which ever method you prefer so doesn't really make much sense to insist using a code on the firsttime.

For security reasons, biometrics are also encrypted, which is why one is required to enter the passcode to unlock the device.

My suggestion to use the keyboard also makes very little sense now that I think about it, since people risking an upgrade can just disable their passcode before doing so as suggested on the original post, and the people who are already stuck will not benefit from using a keyboard if they have the aforementioned security feature enabled, so scrap everything I posted to this thread because I'm just being an idiot.

What and where is the specific security setting that requires the device to be unlocked to use a keyboard?
What are the consequences of turning off the passcode and such to the iPhone? I started to do that once a long time back, but got a bunch of warnings about it shutting off iCloud and other things, if I remember correctly. Does disabling it require you to set up all over again the sign-in things for apps and sites and risk losing a bunch of information?

Oh wow, that sounds serious. I’m on an iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 26 and haven’t experienced this issue. Could this be happening on older devices? I’m glad Apple has acknowledged the issue. Apple is awesome! ☺️

I—believe— the setting to disable requiring passcode or biometrics to enable peripherals, such as a keyboard suggested by @João Santos, is found under Settings, FaceID and Passcode (TouchID and Passcode for iPhones with a Home button).
It's labeled as simply, "Accessories", and is found under The heading labeled "ALLOW ACCESS WHEN LOCKED". It will be the setting just before "Erase All Data".

Surely Apple could find a reason why this keeps happening? I'm glad they're taking this seriously. I remember another year when they had to do the same thing, but I don't remember which IOS.

Hello Satya, Auto Language Switching does work in India, but it only works if you are using the primary voice set in VoiceOver Speech settings. If you switch to another voice through the rotor (like a different English voice that isn’t your primary), the feature won’t work. Just check in VoiceOver → Speech settings.

On iOS 26 this is found under Settings > Privacy and Security > (Security heading) > Wired Accessories. An option is "Always Allow."

I upgraded to iOS 26 on an iPhone 11. I made sure to set my speech voice to the default voice of my language. The update installed fine and I was able to enter in my passcode. So I think that’s what everyone needs to do, set there voice to their default language. But I remember this happening in iOS 13. It was so bad.

Perhaps I am misremembering, but in the past, I seem to recall that there was always a work-around when this happened, whether it was triple clicking the home/side button, using siri, or turning up volume even though the phone was locked. I can't remember ever genuinely needing sighted assistance to resolve the issue before now. Also, it's great that people have found work-arounds, and it's even more awesome for everyone who never encountered the issue in the first place, but given that this wasn't something we had any prior knowledge might happen, I can't imagine how we would have been expected to know to take any precautions. I don't have multiple devices, so experimenting or trial and error aren't options at my disposal. Similarly, I don't own a hard-wired keyboard that I could connect to my iphone, and as a general rule, I don't have a Braille display with me when I'm out and about. Even if it would only be temporarily, I'm definitely not turning off my passcode, biometrics or the anti-theft stuff, and that's not something I should ever have to do just to install an update. My phone has all of my most important info on it as I use it for pretty much everything so that I can be as independent as possible. If I would have known this was a risk, I probably would have waited to install the update until Apple resolved the issue. I suppose I would have at least try switching to Samantha ahead of time, but the whole issue is that short of waiting and finding out about this issue later here on Applevis, there was no way anyone could have anticipated such a serious issue. This year's update experience ended up forcing me to acquire an emergency back-up book of paratransit tickets, which, to be fair, I probably should have done months ago, but this happened at a time when spending $44 was not ideal for my bank account. I'm relieved to hear that Apple is on top of things and will be releasing a fix, but it's a bit late for those of us who already had to figure out a way to work around the issue.

I didn't have this issue, but it does give me iOS 13 vibes, as the kids say. lol

Anyone remember the bug where VoiceOver would completely lock up when you ended a call? I got that a couple times during the beta, and for me anyway, it only showed up when using wired ear pods. VO would go totally silent, and the only way to get it back was to restart your phone. This was before the days of sounds/haptics that let you know the phone was restarting, so you had to hope you held the button combo down long enough, but also not long enough that your phone called emergency services, which happened to me twice. Had to explain to the 911 dispatcher that I was fine and that it was just a bug with my phone. I also got a worried call from my mother since she got an alert on her phone when that happened.

iOS 13 was released on September 19 2019. It made sense that Apple would fix a bug like that, but said fix didn't show up until 13.2 on October 28 2019, over a month later. Hopefully it doesn't take Apple as long to patch this one.

I wonder if the suggestion people have made of switching to the default voice for your language would make a difference? I sometimes do that anyway before doing a software update since for a little bit anyway, it switches to that after the update is done anyway and I'm actively using my phone for something. If not, the voice I usually use (eloquence) comes back.

I also stopped using premium voices a couple years ago since they always had things I didn't like and I don't need them taking up space.

So, as of about two minutes ago, I managed to unlock my back up iPhone, the one with the new update, and get my voice over and everything back up and running. Now, this was not easy at all. I basically would keep my two phones next to each other, and would lock my daily driver, which is running iOS 18.7 by the way, I would pull up the keypad to unlock it, and try my best to Remember where the correct numbers were to unlock my device.
Through a ton of trial and error, I managed to unlock my backup device, running iOS 26.

A couple of ironic things happened, once the phone was on the home screen. First, I literally heard VO say, "VoiceOver off". Likely due to the several times I tried using the triple click option to enable it, when I first rebooted the device after it's initial update.

Also—Find My—started chiming on my phone like crazy, because I had try to use the find my option, to see if I couldn't reset the phone that way.

Pro tip, I could not use—Find My—to reset my phone. Why, you ask? Probably because it had no network activity, until the phone was unlocked and on the home screen. Then it discovered my home network, reconnected, and all was well and good in Brian's world.
That is my best guess, at least.

So, the moral story, don't update your device unless you have a lot of patience.

Also, for those worried about removing your passcode and biometrics; this would just be a one time thing. Basically, remove those, update your phone, manually reboot one time, reset your passcode and biometrics. Because after that initial reboot, and getting past this glitch, I can now reboot my device running iOS 26 without any problems with voiceover or anything.

Thanks for reading.