***Update 17 November 2014: More of these bugs have been fixed in iOS 8.1.1. See our post for more details: Apple Releases iOS 8.1.1 with Fixes for Blind and Low Vision Users***
***Update 20 October 2014: A number of these bugs have been fixed in iOS 8.1. See our post for more details: Apple Releases iOS 8.1 With a Number Of Fixes And Improvements For Blind And Low Vision Users***
Detailed in this post are possible accessibility bugs which members of the AppleVis Editorial Team have identified during their testing of iOS 8. If you have not already updated your iDevice to iOS 8, we strongly recommend that you read through this post and any comments before doing so, as we believe that there are a number of bugs in this release which might have a significant impact on the user experience for some blind and low vision users.
However, we do need to stress at the offset that our testing of iOS 8 has been somewhat limited. We are only a small team, and in most cases have only installed and used iOS 8 on a single device. Also, some of the bugs listed have not been encountered by all members of the Team. So, please bear in mind that it is possible that problems mentioned below will not be present on all iDevices or in all use cases. It is also possible that, in some instances, we are simply mistaken. Accordingly, we would really appreciate feedback from those who have installed iOS 8 - to confirm whether they are encountering the same problems (or have found workarounds), as well as to let us know of any additional issues that are not on this list. Of course, it’s even more important that you let Apple know of any additional bugs that you find (they already know about the ones currently listed here). This post explains why and the best ways to do it.
With all of the disclaimers out of the way, here are the problems that we have encountered to date. For this release, we have grouped them based upon what we believe to be there likely level of impact to the user experience:
Serious Bugs
In Braille options (Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Braille), changing the setting for Status Cell from "off" to either left or right will cause VoiceOver to stop working completely. The only way to get VoiceOver back is to set the cell back to "off", and to do that one will need sighted help since VoiceOver is completely inoperative. Toggling VoiceOver with the shortcut, telling Siri to turn VoiceOver off and back on, restarting the device - nothing works except changing the status cell option. Additionally, it now appears as though this bug will also present itself when upgrading from an earlier version of iOS if the status cell is set to either Left or Right-necessitating that the VoiceOver user turn the Status Cell to "off" before the upgrade.
In many applications, the screen does not automatically scroll to follow the movement of VoiceOver focus as you swipe through the page. This causes problems when focus lands on an actionable element which is not visually displayed on screen, as you cannot interact with it. For example, the screen does not scroll when flicking through an email. So, if there is an attachment at the bottom of the message, double-tapping on it may not open it as you would expect. One exception is links, where the screen will scroll to their location when focus moves to them. However, moving focus beyond the link will cause the screen to scroll back to its previous position. This behaviour has been encountered in a large number of apps. When this results in VoiceOver focus landing on actionable elements which are visually not being displayed on the screen, it is likely to be confusing and extremely frustrating to users who will not know why a gesture isn't working. The only workaround is to use the 3-finger swipe up/down to bring the desired element on to the screen, locate it by touch, and then double-tap.
Various problems have been reported when using a bluetooth keyboard, including duplicate and skipped characters; conflicts with QuickNav when accessing text fields; VoiceOver-specific controls not working; and VoiceOver occasionally crashing and restarting.
When using the Share option to send a message from outside of the stock Messages app (such as sharing a recording from Voice Memos), double-tapping on the "Send" button does nothing. To successfully send the message, one must disable VoiceOver and attempt to find the "Send" button with no spoken feedback.
Once in awhile if one uses the Keypad to dial a number, they may encounter a stuck key. For example, as you press a number you will hear the DTMF tone for that number. At times, a number will seem to get stuck in that the DTMF tone will keep playing. One must do a reset of the phone to make it stop. We have also found that pressing the same key a second time or removing the Phone app from the App Switcher is sometimes enough to fix the problem without resorting to a complete restart. Reports suggest that this problem is only present when using Touch Typing Mode.
QuickNav appears not to work with a Braille display. Enabling it is supposed to be done with space and Q, but VoiceOver always reports that it is on, thus suggesting it's never on. Pressing H for heading, F for text field, etc, yield no results. This problem has been seen on a Braille Sense Plus and Vareo Ultra.
Using the Handwriting mode crashes VoiceOver. VoiceOver will restart itself in a few seconds, but this does make handwriting unusable.
In Safari, using the Back button or Scrub gesture to return to the previous page will result in VoiceOver becoming near unusable. VoiceOver will read an item if you locate it by touch, but flicking will not move focus. The only workaround it to locate the Reload button and double-tap.
Moderate Bugs
In the lock screen, when a user receives a new Notification, VoiceOver sometimes does not announce the Notification nor the content of the Notification. You will only hear the chime or the default sound for that Notification and nothing else is announced. Conversely, sometimes VoiceOver speaks the entire notification instead of announcing the time and the number of pending notifications.
VoiceOver fails to read the caller ID for incoming calls on the iPhone, whether on the lock screen or while the phone is unlocked. The information is still displayed, and you can touch the screen to find it, but it is no longer announced automatically. A temporary workaround is to enable “Always Speak Notifications” in Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver. However, note that this will have privacy implications.
When in a message thread's details screen, if the thread has attachments, VoiceOver is sluggish and may even crash when flicking right through the attachments for the first time. Flicking left, or even right past any attachments VoiceOver has already encountered, works fine. It is only attachments VoiceOver has not yet seen that cause the problem.
On the “All” tab of the Notification Center, the "Clear Section" buttons are announced as "Confirm Clear Section", even if you have not activated them. You still must double tap twice to clear a section, but you will hear "Confirm Clear Section" both times. Additionally, VoiceOver gives no audible feedback to indicate that the gesture was successful.
In the Featured Tab of the App Store, VoiceOver focus will loop continually through a carousel of highlighted items displayed near the top of the page. The only way to force focus out of this loop is to tap elsewhere on the screen.
When double-tapping on the name of a contact in App Switcher to reveal the available contact options, VoiceOver does not announce the identifying label when there are multiple options for the same contact method - for example, home, work and cellular telephone numbers will all be read as simply "phone call".
When first opening the App Switcher you can move through all of the listed contacts by flicking left/right. However, after double-tapping on a contact to reveal the available contact options, flicking will no longer move VoiceOver focus through all of the contacts. Instead, you have to use the 3-finger swipe left/right to make VoiceOver see all of the listed contacts.
In some apps the screen will auto-lock whilst VoiceOver is in the process of reading text (generally when reading a long block of text). If you have disabled the auto lock in Settings > General > Autolock, this will not affect you.
In some circumstances it is not possible to move app icons on the Home screen. This seems to be particularly problematic for those located in the row of icons directly above the Dock.
When browsing the list of subscription options available in Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive, VoiceOver announces only the price, not the amount of storage space that you get with the package. For reference, as of the time of this writing, the $0.99 per month is 20GB, $3.99 is 200GB, $9.99 is 500GB, and $19.99 is 1TB.
If you tell Siri to add a reminder or Calendar event, it will display your event along with the cancel/confirm buttons. However, Siri speech may be silent or speak a couple words at most, and the prompt for you to speak the action you'd like is never given. This is with Siri's speech feedback set to "always", which works when using Siri for other tasks.
Upon first downloading the Alex TTS Voice, VoiceOver fails to switch automatically from the voice in use while the Alex download was in progress. One must turn VoiceOver off, then reenable it.
The button to purchase an item from the iTunes Store does not always respond to a double-tap. It is reported that in some cases a double-tap and hold on the button may work, followed by another double-tap and hold to confirm the purchase.
When using a Braille display, using space with F prompts you to search for text, but this only works like the search box in the item chooser. It is also case sensitive.
On occasions, VoiceOver will not announce that an email folder is empty when you tap or swipe onto the area of the screen where any email messages would be listed. Instead, the only audible feedback is a muted ‘clunk’ tone. The behavior has been seen in both smart folders and regular folders.
When writing a draft email, flicking left past the "cancel" button will not move you to the "minimize draft" button (which is visually located directly below the status bar). Similarly, touching the minimize button will focus on it, but you cannot then flick right to get to the rest of the page. This is doubly problematic as the button is small, so many users may not realize it is even there since they cannot flick to it and touch exploration can easily miss it.
The VoiceOver Keyboard echo setting is unreliable. It does not take effect in 3rd party apps and some stock asps such as Messages. As a result, keys are always echoed. The only noticeable difference is that the pitch of the echo appears to vary based upon the setting selected.
There are some issues with iBooks created using iBooks Author. Notably, the drag and drop widget does not work with VoiceOver; VoiceOver does not announce if a selected answer is correct in iBooks reviews; and the reviews widget does not show the letter buttons to VoiceOver users.
In Braille screen input, the space (one-finger flick right) does not register roughly half the time. It is not misinterpreted as a dot 4, since no dot 4 is entered, it is simply ignored. This makes Braille very frustrating to use.
In Braille screen input, when deleting or entering text, a sound sometimes plays, the same sound made if you try to flick past the end or start of a screen. The character is usually deleted/entered, as far as we can tell, but the sound precludes any speech feedback so users will have no idea what is going on. Plus, sometimes, the character is not deleted and you have to use the on-screen keyboard to delete it instead.
Occasionally, when using the 2-fingered double-tap to answer a call, audio playback will resume rather than the call being answered.
Some users have reported that the 2-fingered double-tap does not always answer or end a call (most likely related to the above bug).
When searching the App Store, the Clear button will remove any previous search from the text field, but VoiceOver will continue to read what was previously entered in the search field … even after you enter a completely new search. The same happens if you delete characters individually.
Some users have reported problems using the multitasking gestures available on the iPad.
In Safari, VoiceOver will not speak the accessible name of HTML input controls that have a programmatically associated label, whether implicit or explicit.
If you have your device set to use the 24 hour time format, when viewing hourly forecasts in the Stock Weather app, VoiceOver only reads the time for the hours between 0:00 and 11:00.
Minor Bugs
Setup
- Updating the device from iOS 7.1.x to iOS 8 will not remember the VoiceOver Typing Preference.
General
When automatically switching languages, VoiceOver triggers compact voices even if the premium versions are installed.
When in a Group Message, at the top right hand corner is the "Details" button. Flick once to the right and you will land on an Unlabeled button. This button seems to do the same thing as the "Details" button.
When using the Group message facility, the button to add a title to the conversation is not detected by VoiceOver.
When you have issued a say all command (a two finger flick up or down), VoiceOver ignores all incoming notifications instead of pausing to speak them. This is a feature, but notifications from the Messages app are an exception. In other words, VoiceOver will ignore all notifications except incoming texts; those usually cause VoiceOver to stop reading entirely.
In the Mail app, when you have a draft minimized, VoiceOver's focus is affected. Elements are out of order as you flick left or right, you suddenly get stuck and cannot move past an element, or you get into loops where VoiceOver keeps moving between a few elements as you flick left or right, and never moves beyond those few. Sending or canceling the draft, so the "x drafts in progress" message is gone from the bottom of the window, is enough to restore things to normal.
In the stock iOS Calendar app, you can double tap and hold on an event, then move a finger up or down to adjust its start or end time. However, VoiceOver offers no feedback as to the new time as you move your finger, so you must move, lift your finger, check the new time, then try again to make this work at all.
When VoiceOver focus is on an item in the Dock, a 3-fingered swipe to the left or right will no longer move your through Home screen pages (It is possible that this is by design).
When browsing the Still Photo Wallpapers available in Settings > Wallpaper > Choose, VoiceOver reads what appears to be the internal file name for the picture.
When using some third-party keyboards, the status bar is duplicated directly above the top row of the keyboard.
Comments
dialing issue is based on touch typing mode
The dialing issue sticking is only on touch typing mode. When in standard typing or direct touch typing, there is no issue.
More Bugs
Here are a couple more bugs I have detected on my 5s:
1. This one is pretty minor but still annoying. When going to the wallpaper options in Settings, VoiceOver does not properly describe each image that can be set as a wallpaper. Instead, VoiceOver reads what appears to be the internal file name for the picture.
2. When flicking right and left between objects on the screen, I've noticed that VoiceOver sometimes skips items altogether. I've encountered this on the lockscreen, with VoiceOver jumping directly from the time to the Unlock button, thereby missing the date, and on the Mail app, with VoiceOver skipping entire sentences when reading an email.
3. When searching for apps in the App Store, the "clear text" button to the right of the Search textfield does not work, in fact, using the Delete key on the keyboard to delete what was previously entered and start a new search isn't reliable either.
Regards!
Applevis community and team should be ashamed of themselves, Not
In all honesty, I feel like posting this would be a waste of time.
However, Everyone on this site who isn't contacting Apple, writing to them, calling them, etc., should be ashamed of themselves. The ones who are making the effort should be commended.
After multiple conversations with Apple Customer service team, the accessibility team, the customer relations team, I can say that None of them are aware of what Applevis team is talking about when it comes to discussing accessibility in IOS betas. In fact, they have clearly stated that they encourage a dialogue which promotes the community in reaching out when bugs are found in order to help with the engineers resolving the issues.
Moreover, None of you can understand how messed up voiceover truly was during the beta process. If you think it is bad now, what you should have gotten was what the beta testers had in IOS 8 beta 1 or 2.
The fact is that enough of us did not submit bug reports to actually make fixing these bugs a priority. And in the public release, enough of us will not be reaching out to apple to actually leave an impression that the bugs are affecting the majority of voiceover users.
I appreciate the bug list as it will make leaving more thorough bug reports easier, but I despise the idea that I will probably be one of the few who will be leaving feedback.
How many of you think that writing a post here will make any difference? You think Apple is looking at this site, waiting for our feedback? You think that applevis is somehow a hub for Apple to collect feedback?
I just...cannot explain how frustrating the majority of the users on this website can be. You take the time to post your rants, but not to Apple directly.
accessibility@apple.com
bugreporter.apple.com. Log in to your apple account, and leave feedback for pete's sake. Use firefox or Chrome as internet explorer and mobile safari can make it more difficult.
Just do something with actual Apple that does not involve complaining to applevis for one day.
Sigh
Vash, for once, can you leave your soapbox and preaching at the door when you come on here! You don’t know what other people are or aren’t doing, so enough with this continued self-righteousness.
Doesn't matter what I know, Matters what happens
Give me a break. As I said, the ones who are leaving the proper feedback and messages to Apple should be commended. The ones who are not should not be allowed to complain because they are not contributing to things getting better.
I am not apologetic for my stance. I do my part and have and the ones who don't can go kick rocks.
Vash's idea of facts
We’re not going to get into a debate with Vash, as we know that he will only ever hear what he wants to hear. However, for everybody else, please note that things that Vash likes to present as facts aren’t always necessarily so.
He is correct in one regard, though, and that is to stress the importance of reporting bugs to Apple’s Accessibility Team.
Additional comments on some of these bugs
The bugs aren't as bad as they seem. I actually mean that.
I've been running with iOS 8 since its first beta, and you honestly learn to deal with the bugs even in an environment where you can't afford to deal with the serious ones. I have dealt with a lot of these, aside from the braille bugs, but you also have to consider their frequency. I will agree that some of these bugs should have been fixed at some point during a beta, but just because some of these bugs may be easy to reproduce does not guarantee that it is easy to correct the behavior. I don't run into most of these as much as you might think and despite it all, I actually find it a pretty pleasant experience.
For example, I haven't seen the dial pad problem for a very long time now. I also haven't seen the bug regarding scrolling in applications except in a very few applications, and that is consistent. However, that makes perfect sense. I'm curious though. Handwriting works perfectly fine for me and it mostly has throughout the betas, which makes it clear that some of these bugs only reproduce under certain circumstances. As Applevis has already said above, not all bugs can be reproduced on every device, which is very true and very often as well, apple needs your device diagnostic information and crash reports especially if the bug cannot be reproduced.
I just tried to reproduce most of these bugs on this list, and some I could not. For example number seven. Double tapping a contact from the app switcher does put my focus to the available options for that contact, but flicking left with one finger takes me to the contact before the current one. It would be more precise to say that you can't flick right and land on the next available contact when displaying options for the currently selected contact. However, once you land on the home icon in the App Switcher, flicking left takes you back. That certainly does sound a little weird to me, but not quite what I was expecting given the description. Of course, I reported it a while ago, but you wouldn't believe that I have bug reports going years back that aren't closed yet. I'm not sure what exactly happens to them.
As for number two regarding the caller ID, VoiceOver actually focusses on the answer button automatically. VoiceOver usually focusses on the first element on the screen rather than forcing the focus on a certain element, so this might just be a change in design. Regardless, I'd prefer that my focus isn't moved somewhere without my permission.
Has VoiceOver ever stopped the auto locking feature from working? I turned this off immediately when I got an iPhone 3GS way back when, so I don't actually know. I only remember it doing so everywhere since the system doesn't check whether VoiceOver is still speaking before engaging the feature.
Safari surprises me though. It was incredibly bug-ridden and even in iOS 7, at least in my case, but it looks like some of this has been addressed in the latest build at least. VoiceOver often tended to get sluggish on large websites, and some websites caused VoiceOver to become completely unresponsive. VoiceOver also could not focus on any page elements after executing the scrub feature to go back a page, and as a result tended to get stuck. Tapping the address bar or the reload button, then flicking right would resolve this problem. I haven't really encountered this yet.
Respringing the springboard (pressing the sleep/wake button five times) seems to cause this weird problem. The phone comes back around, then VoiceOver restarts itself. I've already sent them crash reports and console logs and everything else I can send them.
VoiceOver tends to get stuck inside certain containers. The software update screen is one example of this. Usually, you can flick through to all elements, but that isn't always the case.
Regarding bug 17 in the moderate section, that particular bug is actually tied to something with international keyboards. Some of you not using multiple keyboards may even have heard something like "char lt=o=char=normal" when entering letters, or at least when deleting them. If this behavior doesn't show for you, VoiceOver instead just repeats the letter regardless of the typing feedback settings. This is a terrible experience, especially when you use another keyboard that isn't the same as your system language.
It at least appears that they fixed the iCloud problems where you had to enter your password multiple times to dismiss the dialog.
One issue regarding speech still puzzles me. All voices since iOS 7 have supported pitch change, and yet Apple does not take advantage of it. I have no idea why this would be. This is particular problematic because not all voices will announce capital letters. For example, if I'm using Danish, I have no idea if I'm capitalizing or not unless I tap the shift key to be sure, and I have no idea if the VoiceOver cursor is reading out a capital letter to me.
I've found a bunch of other weird ones, but again, their frequency matters to me. A lot of these bugs listed here may be show-stoppers, but I personally don't find that they happen so frequently which makes a huge difference. Also, as someone already pointed out, Apple probably could not afford to delay the release even further given the release date of the iPhone 6 and 6+.
Saying all this, their accessibility team actually does work fairly hard on these issues, even if some of you don't think so. I'm surprised that a lot of you seem to be surprised that bugs like these exist. I hope that Apple comes out with another update to address a lot of these, but if not soon, I can live with that. As I've already said, I'm personally very disappointed that Apple hasn't fixed some of these glaring flaws at least, but at least they're not exactly critical bugs.
comment about comment 4
Hi. You say when you try to clear notifications VO does not confirm that they have been cleared. Well I don't think VO has ever confirmed the clearing of notifications in any iOS version. It does not confirm when you try to delete text or iMessages either.
This sounds like the worst iOS in the history of iOS
Well, yes. It is to be expected that the first version of any mager iOS release will have some bugs, but this has gone too far. I think this is the most buggy first mager iOS release since the verry beginning of iOS. I thought 7.0 was bad, but it was perfect when compared with iOS 8.0. I am staying on my mostly bug free and jailbroaken iOS 7.1.2.
Closed beta tester site?
Here's an idea, maybe I'm off my rocker. Perhaps there should be sort of an AppleVis for beta testers? This would be a site, requiring a username and password, which is only accessible to legitimate Apple iOS beta testers. How people would be verified is beyond me, though. On this site, people could talk freely with each other about bugs they've experienced, how to reproduce them, etc. Have you ever heard the expression, "Two heads are better than one?" Well, in software testing and bug hunting, a dozen heads or a hundred are certainly better than two. This system would let people talk freely with each other, without violating the NDA, which is the main reason AppleVis doesn't allow discussions of beta software on its forums.
other bug on group message
Hello,
there is another bug which has not been mentioned
when you create a group for sending iMessages, you should be able to give it a name.
Well, from group messages details, the button to add a title to the conversation, is not detected by VoiceOver.
No, not unlabelled. Not with strange characters in it. VoiceOver does not even notice that button is there
Sighted manage to give a name to the conversation, we don't, for now.
They really ran too fast this time, I can say that this is a 6th beta not a stable release at all!
vash rein - i'm proud to be in the feedback club
hi, this comment is for the user Vash Rein. You are right. There are many many blind -and sighted- users who criticize everything and everyone but are not involved in any direct initiative to help things to become better.
I am one of the persons who work hard to give feedbacks to Apple, both on accessibility e-mail and on bug reporter; I know this is very very hard work, but it's the only way to go. The same time many people spend extra-typing about how apple is bad to us in forums and lists dedicated to blind people, can be spent sending reports to Apple.
This is a hard work and somehow frustrating, in the case you realize a bug has not been solved in the next release, despite your report. I have got this method: every release I go to bug reporter then use the "add new information" field to say if it's solved or not, when it is reproducible, if it comes less often, etc.
But I think it's the best approach. If we work all together, we cannot change the world of course. But we can at least try to help Apple to improve its systems.
bye
other bug, specific for iPad: multitasking gestures
Hi
I just found another bug on iOS 8 for iPad: the multitasking gestures do not properly work.
The multitasking gestures are:
- swipe with 4 fingers from bottom to top: open the app switcher
- swipe 4 fingers from top to bottom when switcher is on: close app switcher
- swipe with 4 fingers from right to left or left to right: moves through apps, it is like a command+tab on the mac or alt+tab on Windows systems.
- close 4 fingers on the screen: it's like the home button pressing. Puts current app in background and returns to home screen.
This last gesture is very difficult to explain; close 4 fingers on the screen as you are simulating to clean up some dust on the glass of the screen.
well, it seems that only the pass from an app to another, the command similar to alt+tab on Windows, is working even if it seems to slow the iPad down.
Swipe up 4 fingers, swipe down and close fingers, do not work at all.
The problem appears just with VoiceOver on, because if it's off, gestures properly work.
Maybe it was an attempt to modify its behaviour with iPad's VoiceOver specific 4 fingers commands, as the multitasking and VoiceOver commands often have a conflict with each other
I do not really know how many users find this multitasking functionality comfortable, but for me this bug is very very very annoying
another bug that i have encounter.
hey, friends you always do great job at your side applevis! well i have encounter a bug in a App Store in search . when you type something in a search box it will not get cleared after clicking clear all. even after pressing that button several times. and the fleksy 3rd party key boards? do not work with voiceover i know you all must have facing this problems . i was very much excited about fleksy but all ended up with disappointment.
One thought occurs to me with
One thought occurs to me with all these bugs, how many of you actually restored your devices fully in iTunes and installed the update that way rather than doing a quick Over the air update. I always restore my device fully and install the update through the phone connected to pc, I wonder if doing this might get rid of some of these bugs. After doing the restore and update that way I obviously then restore a backup. I wonder if it might be worth people trying this.
RE: To Alex Wallis
Hi Alex: I have actually used the over-the-air update through my phone with every major upgrade since that option first became available. Overall, I would have to say that I have never had a problem with most of the major bugs that get reported on here. All of that is to say that I don't think it matters how you update. I would be very curious to know if people with previously jail-broken iPhones who choose to upgrade encounter more or less bugs. Don't know if that made any sense or not.
Thanks to Applevis
I would like to take a minute to thank the team for this comprehensive post. The team obviously went through a lot of frustration and took a lot of time to detail these for us. I've always been an early iOS adopter but will be staying away from this one for the time being. I know the blind community owes Apple a great deal of appreciation. I mean, if it had not been for Apple's initiative in 2009, many of us probably would never have tried a smart phone. But VoiceOver has gotten significantly bugbgier with each of the past two iOS releases. I wonder where we will be in one or two years for now. Will VO be a powerhouse again, or will it be so buggy as to scare the blind consumer away from buying new Apple devices? I mean, I don't require the ability to throw my phone in the toilet and finish my text message on my iPad, but I do want to know that the phone won't crash if I try to make a call with the dial pad.
You should never do an over
You should never do an over the air upgrade on your phone if it was jailbroken, you should always do a full restore and update, then restore from your saved backup, this is because jailbreaking leaves the phone in a state that apple hasn't allowed for and leaves files on the phone that wouldn't normally be there.
Whatzapp messenger
Hi there, I heard that there may be a problem with whatzapp and IOS8. Has anyone experienced this or is it working alright. I quite depend a lot on whatzapp so wouldn't want to upgrade too quickly and then its unusable. Sure it may be fixed but just would like to find out if anyone else has been experiencing this. Thanks
Hello all! I wanted to post
Hello all! I wanted to post once more now that I have had more time to spend with IOsS 8. Overall, the system is working quite well for me on my iPhone 5s! I am especially enjoying the messages app! I found a work around that may help others dealing with Siri and Voiceover conflicting. To keep Voiceover from cutting Siri off, I simply rest my finger on the listen key when Siri gets ready to speak. I suppose this keeps Voiceover from jumping an disrupting Siri. Also, thanks AppleVis Team for this list and all of your hard work!!!
Caller ID not spoken
Hello all,
Has anyone experienced this bug, where when someone calls you VoiceOver does not speak the name of the caller, or announce the phone number? If so, is there a work around for this bug? I would like to know this before I update my 5S. Thank you.
another bug for bluetooth keyboards
I updated last night and was using my bluetooth keyboard. I notice that when typing, voiceover would shut off for a second or so and come back on again. This happened several times in the space of a few minutes. Is there a work around for this bug?
my thoughts
I upgraded to ios8 on my 4s. It runs ok, a bit slow at times but since I still have my 4s until my contract ends I don't expect any bug fix will fix this since it is an older phone. I can not answer a call using the 2 finger double tap, I guess I will have to use the answer button. As for the talking caller id announcing automatically, I believe I heard mine, but my ringtone always seems to over power the voice, I have changed my ringtone so I can hear what is actually said when I get a call. I guess some ringtones are not meant for accessible phones, lol. Anyways someone had asked if there were any bugs that were in ios7 that are in ios8, the only one I see so far is pressing the lock screen vo is delayed on saying screen locked, this however personally does not bother me. One thing I had to find out and I don't think apple even mentions this which I think they should and maybe they do I just hadn't seen it is that Alex is not available in the 4s and 5c. I had to go to the podcast about alex to find this info. Overall I think we need to take our concerns to apple as I am confident they will listen, when I was having some issues in ios7 apple told me try resetting the phone which I did and all was better, I probably won't do that again unless someone has said it has helped.
possible ios 8 bug
Hello: I have noticed whenever I try to close an app using the home button instead of closing the app it will turn voice over off, and I have to press the home button 3 times to turn voice over back on. I am running an iphone 5 with ios 8. Has anyone else experienced this? It only happens every once in a while.
reply about voice over turning off and on with keyboard
I noticed that too. I don't know if there is a work-around to fix it.
Not Faulting Apple Alone
When complaining that new features are added faster than bugs are squashed, I do not fault Apple alone: the whole industry seems more focused upon bling than performance/reliability. Squashing bugs is sometimes a difficult and complex business. However, if manufacturers/software developers made it absolute policy that, say, a new device or software release would not/could not be released until, say, 75% of all bugs reported by X date -- whether VO-related or not -- had been squashed, I'd bet more resources would be devoted to bug-squashing and/or sloppy coding/programming wouldn't be tolerated near as much as it currently seems to be. All I can tell you is that when I was a programmer, some of the sloppiness I observe would have resulted in wage-freezes or termination had I commited them!
IOS8 and VoiceOver
I'm finding that when I'm using my iPad Gen 3, I'm frequently getting a dialog saying ""voiceOver on." Annoying.
My findings
I felt adventurous enough to download iOS 8 this morning on my iPad Air. I will leave my initial findings here.
I cannot emphasize enough that those using Bluetooth keyboards should avoid this release like the plague. I have found that iOS 8's performance with BT keyboards is extremely poor, almost to the point that BT keyboards are useless with this version. Many keystrokes requiring two or more keys to be pressed simultaneously pressed simply don't work, whether they are for VoiceOver commands or not. Also, VoiceOver is very prone to crashing and relaunching when using a BT keyboard. I don't know how much of this is caused by VoiceOver, but since I found some non-VoiceOver keystrokes that aren't working, I am wondering if it's a global issue with iOS 8 and not VoiceOver specific.
Examples of keystrokes that don't work under iOS 8 include:
1. Anything involving the Control + Option keys, the so-called VO keys
2. Control + Arrow and Option + Arrow when using Quick Nav
3. Shift + Letter when using Quick Nav for navigating to the previous heading, link, etc.
4. Command-Tab and Command-Shift-Tab for switching apps
5. Shift + Arrow for selecting text. This is not a VoiceOver feature, but a global iOS one.
Incidentally, the Caps Lock On bug is back, meaning VoiceOver always says Caps Lock On every time the key is pressed. They fixed it a while back, and now they broke it again.
When I am not using the BT keyboard, I am happy. I haven't run into anything significant when using the iPad via the touch screen.
voice over turning on and off
On the 4s, the only time I noticed vo turning off and on was when I was in the lyft app, not sure what I was doing though. The only difference is voiceover turned back on by itself. The only reason I knew vo didn't freeze is because it said voiceover on when it came back on.
anyone else noticed that?
This was going on in ios8 beta 4 with iphone 4s, and still is bothering me in the official release. VO stops speaking for a few seconds every so often, after which is saying voice over on, and moves the focus to the first element. This behaviour I've noticed a lot when in photos or videos, or any other memory intensive app.
We may have a small shot of bugs fixed in the next release.
Hi all. According to tim Cook, they will update for apple Pay. since us on the five are kind of out of the loop as it were on that, I'm hoping at leas the key echo bug is fixed. Like someone who said they don't have anything, please bless whatever you can, because dar lord this is driving me crazy! I find myself totally screwing up more then normal. I'm off to write to explain a few of the bugs. also has anyone ntoiced with the apple keyboard bluetooth I mean, you can't press a key to unlock the phone? That was how i kow the keyboard was off.
My thoughts, re iOS 8
Hi. This will be kind of long but I urge everyone to please, please stick with me! Firstly, I have not upgraded to iOS 8 yet so I can't speak to any of the bugs present, I can only go for what I've heard on both here and on social networks like twitter and Facebook. People do talk about this on other places too so there is an absolute wealth of information there regarding this. I use a Bluetooth keyboard so I am avoiding the update until such time as that particular bug can be squashed, it's a show stopper for me, and I have no interest in upgrading, simply because it's the cool thing to do. I only have an iPhone 5 and if anything were to happen to that I'd be s.o.l. So I choose to wait out the bugs. On the idea of speaking to apple accessibility, yes I agree everyone who is experiencing a problem should contact them, and Apple overall. When you do, please, please be as kind as you can, as being rude never solves anything. Also, when submitting a bug report, be as detailed as possible, listing the exact steps you took and what happened whenyou did so things can be made as clear as possible. Simply saying a feature doesn't work really isn't helpful to them, simply because there are just so many configurations and the way things can be set up, that it's hard to duplicate things on your device, so it's really important to be as detailed as possible. Like it or not fellow Applevis users, we are a small group. Apple is a huge, huge company and the accessibility team is simply that, a small group of people who are here to listen to our concerns and, hopefully, pass them onto the appropriate people. It also alarms me that this first release has all these bugs, and I say this from an overall perspective, not just from a VoiceOver point-of-view. I follow many other sighted folks who are experiencing bugs in the new iOS, so we're not alone on this one. We went through this same bit of business in iOS 7 and here we are, dealing with it again in iOS 8. I guess if the world were a more ideal place more people would simply wait to get these upgrades, and Apple would get all these bugs out in the initial release of the new version of their operating systems. So in short if you're experiencing a bug with VoiceOver, call Apple's accessibility number, write them an email, whatever it takes. The more people who do it, the higher up these bugs will go on their list of bugs to be fixed.
Issue #2 in "Serious Bugs"
This issue is the one that concerns me most, i.e., when swiping through items in an app, it does not always scroll down as focus shifts and you must therefore try to find what item you want to activate by manually scrolling down.
I am curious, however, how many people have actually encountered this problem? I am specifically interested in those who still have the regular iPhone 5 (NOT the 5s or 5c or anything like that). Also, in how many apps does this happen? In what kinds of apps does it happen? Is it mainly in native iPhone apps? Is it frequently in other apps that most of us here commonly use?
Please do write in here to let me/us know whether or not you are experiencing Issue #2! I think the majority of us would consider this issue to be the worst of them all.
Thanks.
a bug I found related to playing music purchased from the iTunes
Hello all! I found a bug related to playing music purchased from the iTunes store and Voice Over. I have already sent the accessibility team from apple an email regarding this issue, and it's pasted below:
Hello! my name is JC. I came to report a bug regarding using voice over when listening to music purchased via the iTunes store.
Normally, when you activate the purchase button, the music starts playing automatically, but it didn't work. here's what I did:
1. I flicked to the right to the purchase button and dubble tapped it
2. no go. repeated the dubble tap still didn't do it.
The only way around it is dubble tap and hold, and swipe up and down, and the music plays automatically. I know apple cares on accessibility, and I would love to see it fixed soon. with warm regards,
JC
Music in the iTunes store
Hi, I have never had music start playing automatically after I click purchase in the iTunes store. Usually, it just downloads and then you can go back and play it once it is finished downloading. Maybe I am doing something wrong.
A question
Hi, I am not sure if this is a bug, but when I receive a Facebook notification, I was under the impression that if you highlight the notification and then flick up or down with a finger, you should be able to reply right from the lock screen. When I touch a notification and flick up, I am given the choices of activate or delete. Has anyone had success with this action for replying purposes? Thanks.
Issue #2 in "Serious Bugs"
I'm running an iPhone 5 and have not upgraded; I'm still on iOS 7.1.2. Nevertheless, I've occasionally encountered an app that did not respond as I would expect to the flick-left and flick-right VoiceOver gestures. The most notable example I've found is the latest version of the Pandora app. In this and the occasional other instances, bringing the field one wishes to activate into visual focus and then double-tapping it initiates the correct action whereas reaching the field via left-flick or right-flick VoiceOver gestures either causes no action or the wrong action if the field is not in visual focus.
As I say, it is my experience that this is app-dependent, not iOS-dependent, leading me to suspect that some aspect of program development to accommodate VoiceOver has gone awry.
MMM ... one other app where I've encountered this issue (as I say, under iOS 7.1.2) is in the GlucoseRecorder app.
A Quick Question...
Hello everyone! I have one more issue! Earlier today I was on a call and I had a call waiting and Voiceover did not announce the person/number that was coming in as it did in IOS 7. Has anyone else had this issue? Thank you so much in advance!!!
New bug: Row navigation not working
I found a new bug that has not been posted here yet, unless I missed it. When in a table, it is not possible to navigate by rows. The rows option is in the rotor, but when selected, flicking up or down does nothing. In some cases, you can work around this if you have vertical navigation in the rotor and use it instead, but that doesn't work in all cases.
iOS 8
Thank you AppleVIS for this very helpful post. Unfortunately, this article has persuaded me not to go anywhere near iOS8 at the moment but I'd much rather be aware of all the issues and stay away until they're fixed rather than be stuck using buggy devices. I guess it's just a waiting game now until Apple get their act in gear.
iOS 8 update
Hey Guys,
I am experiencing many issues with iPod 5 gen. I will continue to contact accessibility Dept.
I want to tell you I contacted Exec. Offices by email. I just received a phone call from them. They forwarded this post to Accessibility head engineer.
I emphasized gratitude for Accessibility, but told them how buggy 8 is over any other release.
This is entirely not true!
This is entirely not true! You can put your phone in DFU mode, and downgrade with an IPSW file. In DFU mode, the downgrade does not authenticate with Apple. It just happens, and I have downloaded from later versions of iOS 7 all the way back to 5 without a hitch. Anyone who's been through the frustrating process knows that DFU mode and Recovery Mode are different beasts, so yes, with a little Google, you can in fact downgrade, which is what I did.
hello
Hey everyone,
I've got one little bug. When I am trying to move an app around on the home secreens, using the double tap and hold, it isn't working. Has anyone noticed this issue. It's not a deal breaker, but I was just curious if there was a work around.
Another bug
I noticed that radio buttons seem to be broken in iOS 8.
The radio button itself is read separately from the text of the button, requiring you to swipe again to get the text that should've been spoken with the button.
Also, each button is said to be "one of one."
arrange icons
"When I am trying to move an app around on the home secreens, using the double tap and hold, it isn't working. Has anyone noticed this issue. "
if the icons are on the 5th row, they are not moveable directly. the work around is to push other icon onto these icons, and they will be forced to move to a different row, then you can move it, make sense?
i counted over 90 msgs on this thread, boy you guys must have scared many people away from iOS 8. unless you are using blutooth keyboard or braille device/input, iOS is great! i don't have any issue at all, and many previous bugs have been crushed.
for example, the dictation and battery drain issue has been fixed, so is auto language switch when dealing with multi languages, one does have to enable the languages, though. and there are many cool things waiting to be discovered.
Problem with clock in iOS 8
Has anyone else experienced a problem with the native clock app in iOS 8? When I open the clock app to try and set a timer, voice over acts like the screen is blank. Guess this another bug to add to the list. Another thing, the Fleksy keyboard is not working on my 5S. I added it to my keyboards and when I switch to the Fleksy keyboard to type, Voice Over shuts up completely. I couldn't even switch back to the standard keyboard. I had to remove Fleksy from my keyboards for now.
Lastly, I updated my iPad mini to iOS 8 and discovered that the Alex voice is not an option. Weird!
Funny...
I just posted a problem with navigating by rows, and now I can no longer reproduce the bug. I have no idea what changed.
Responding to some other comments here:
For me, on the iPad, I have no problems moving apps in the fifth row, or anywhere else on the home screen for that matter. If anything, moving apps on the home screen is easier now, though they seem to move faster than my finger.
I have used quite a few apps now, and I have yet to encounter the serious bug #2 regarding the screen not scrolling and causing actionable elements to be unusable without manually scrolling. I can't say for sure if the scrolling issue is present or not, but so far I have had no trouble interacting with any elements, including those that are clearly far enough down to require scrolling.
I also could not reproduce the handwriting crash issue, but I only tested briefly, since I don't use handwriting mode anymore. I'm even less likely to use it now, since braille input is now an option.
Regarding multitasking gestures on the iPad, the only one I couldn't get to work is the four-finger swipe up for the app switcher, but I never use that one. The four-finger swipes left and right, and the five-finger pinch, work as advertised, though the four-finger swipes only appear to let you switch to an app you recently used, making the feature a little less useful IMO.
I don't know about radio buttons, but I noticed similar behavior with other controls. For example, a text field with a label before it now has the label separate from the text field. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a design change. The radio buttons, however, should definitely not be announced as 1 of 1, so that's a bug for sure.
I can confirm the Alex issue, where VoiceOver has to turned off and back on after the voice is downloaded before it will work. It took be a little tinkering to get the Alex speech rate on my iPad in sync with my Mac. I ended up with the rate set to 45% on the Mac and 35% on my iPad, and that appears to be in proper sync. No, I don't use fast speech rates, like I know a lot of people here like, for I have trouble understanding anything at faster speeds than what I'm using.
I have to say that I am pretty satisfied with iOS 8, except for the BT keyboard issue. I read that Apple is promising an update to fix Health Kit by the end of the month, so maybe we'll see an iOS update very soon. Maybe too soon for significant improvements, but you never know.
zoom full screen
I have the Zoom set to Full screen but it often works as per window mode with only a small portion of an app display being zoomed upon entering zoom mode (three finger double tap). This is seriously affecting my enjoyment of using the iPAD. I was going to report it as a bug on the apple site but it is just too hard to work out where you do it :-(
No IOS 8 for me yet
Hi! In spite of the negative-sounding subject line of this comment, I would like to thank the AppleVis editorial team, and other registered AppleVis users who have commented here, for bringing the various bugs in IOS 8 to our attention, even if all these bugs are not experienced by everybody. However, after being undecided whether to update to IOS 8, I have now decided not to do so., Several of the bugs reported here worry me, such as audio starting when you try to answer a phone call, numbers sticking in the dial-pad, issues with scrolling, problems clearing text in the App Store or iTunes Store, voices changing to compact randomly, and VoiceOver randomly switching itself off and on. Also, my only i-device" is an iPhone 4S, and, even though some 4S users have found IOS 8 works for them, it is the oldest iPhone able to take IOS 8, and I fear that my 4S, which already has some little quirks I can easily cope with under IOS 7 but still works well on the whole in spite of those, may be far more slow and buggy with IOS 8 if I update to that. Given that my 4S will be three years old in late October this year, I plan to buy an iPhone 6 before the end of 2014, by which time a bug-fixing update may have been released, plus IOS 8 may work better on a brand-new iPhone anyway. This is just my personal view of geting IOS 8, I would never tell anyone whether to upgrade or not, but I personally do not yet feel ready to work with IOS 8 until I get a new and more powerful iPhone.
Report problems here.
Hi Paul Miller,
If you want to report the bug that is seriously impacting your use of your iPad, please use the following email:
accessibility@apple.com
Hope this helps.
Sea No Evil.