Anyone experiencing problems with Bluetooth Keyboards on IOS 7.1?

By Hubert, 12 March, 2014

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Hi everyone, I recently updated to IOS 7.1. I really like the update, however, I recently experienced a problem. When I was typing a message with my Bluetooth keyboard with the quicknav turned off, when I wanted to navigate through the words using option key + the arrow keys VoiceOver wouldn't speak the words. When I turned off QuickNav and navigated to the iMessage text field VoiceOver didn't speak the text, so either VoiceOver couldn't detect the text, which I highly doubt, or there's a bugg with the use of Bluetooth keyboards in connection with VoiceOver on the new IOS. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, has anyone got a solution to this? Hubert

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Comments

By Bandit on Monday, March 24, 2014 - 05:22

Apple has pretty much broken everything when it comes to bt keyboards in 7.1. This has been discussed extensively in the origional 7.1 blog post at: http://www.applevis.com/blog/apple/whats-new-and-changed-blind-and-low-vision-users-ios-71#comment-23061

By dvdmth on Monday, March 24, 2014 - 05:22

I think saying that Apple pretty much broke support for BT keyboards is unfair. Yes there are issues with the BT keyboard support in iOS 7.1, but the same was also true for iOS 7.0, and in some ways the support has improved, while in other ways it was regressed. I have personally found that, under both iOS 7.0 and iOS 7.1, the issues can be largely worked around by switching to another app and switching back. This can be done quickly on the keyboard by holding Command and pressing Tab, then Shift-Tab. As for the issue the original poster had, it is possible that text input wasn't working at all, so nothing was put in the text field. As I said, switching apps will often fix the problem when it is encountered. I just had that very experience when preparing to reply here. Hope this will help you down the road.

By Larry Thacker Jr. on Monday, March 24, 2014 - 05:22

I'm glad some are managing, but the reality is keyboard support is now quite a mess. Right from the start the phone takes forever to react to the keyboard when it is turned on. It goes down hill from there. Voiceover will say "is editing" in text fields but nothing that is typed on the keyboard actually gets input. It may work the first time, but not the next. Turning the keyboard off and back on will sometimes fix it, but what Voiceover reads can still be inconsistent. Thanks for the app switch tip though. I will have to try that and see if it works better than switching off the keyboard and then having to wait again while it takes its sweet time recognizing it. Success may also vary depending on the apps one uses. Overall though I have to classify this a major fail.

The good thing maybe is that apple knows about it, but just saying they're working in it is not good enough for me. I really want it to be fixed so I don't always have 1 notification in my settings icon. frowns

By Isaac Hebert (not verified) on Monday, March 24, 2014 - 05:22

I two had problems with the bluetooth keyboard since updating to iOS 7.1 how ever there is a work around until apple fixes this bug. First when wanting to mute speech use the shift key and not the control key. Next if you're keyboard is not doing text in put then vo right arrow and then vo left arrow back in to the text field then start typing you're text.

I hear though that this will not stop the ipa like symbols from being entered in terms of the big keyboard bug. I have emailed apple bout this but have gotten no response. There are other discussions from the apple vis forum board about this.

By dvdmth on Monday, March 24, 2014 - 05:22

I have to clarify something I had said earlier. When asked if the workaround for the BT keyboard issues would prevent the unexpected entry of incorrect characters, I said that it would not fix that particular issue. I'm not so sure now. I only had that issue happen a few times since getting my iPad and Apple Wireless Keyboard back in December. It happened a half dozen times under iOS 7.0.x, and I had it happen twice under iOS 7.1. However, since I learned about the workarounds, I have yet to encounter the issue at all. It is possible, therefore, that it might be related after all, though my sample size is small and therefore inconclusive at this point. When I first had that problem, I thought it was a hardware issue with the keyboard itself, or perhaps an issue with the wireless communication, and not necessarily a problem with iOS. It happens when the iOS device thinks a modifier key is being pressed, such as Option, when it is not. I can therefore fix the issue when I encounter it simply by pressing the problematic modifier key, so it never really bothered me.

By Isaac Hebert (not verified) on Monday, March 24, 2014 - 05:22

Lately since I have been using the work arround provided I haven't had that issue lately. I hope apple fixes this problem.