The Accessibility Bugs in iOS 8: From Serious To Minor

By AppleVis, 17 September, 2014

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

***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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. Using the Handwriting mode crashes VoiceOver. VoiceOver will restart itself in a few seconds, but this does make handwriting unusable.

  8. 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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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".

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. 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.

  19. 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.

  20. 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.

  21. Occasionally, when using the 2-fingered double-tap to answer a call, audio playback will resume rather than the call being answered.

  22. 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).

  23. 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.

  24. Some users have reported problems using the multitasking gestures available on the iPad.

  25. In Safari, VoiceOver will not speak the accessible name of HTML input controls that have a programmatically associated label, whether implicit or explicit.

  26. 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

  1. Updating the device from iOS 7.1.x to iOS 8 will not remember the VoiceOver Typing Preference.

General

  1. When automatically switching languages, VoiceOver triggers compact voices even if the premium versions are installed.

  2. 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.

  3. When using the Group message facility, the button to add a title to the conversation is not detected by VoiceOver.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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).

  8. When browsing the Still Photo Wallpapers available in Settings > Wallpaper > Choose, VoiceOver reads what appears to be the internal file name for the picture.

  9. When using some third-party keyboards, the status bar is duplicated directly above the top row of the keyboard.

Tags

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Apple
Braille
iOS
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Comments

By sockhopsinger on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

I have no problem at all when I go to buy anything from the iTunes store. Do you have the same problem with the app store too? Just curious.

By Russ Kiehne on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

Here's my issue after upgrading to Ios 8 on my 5th generation ipod touch.

It appears as if when you activate any link on any web page in Safari when running Voiceover, the moment you activate the Back button or use two–finger scrub, complete instability occurs, it is not possible to flick through the
content of the page, no links or headings typically are being reported in the rotor, and the page is generally just not navigable in any way.

Here's my work around for this issue.

Double-tap and hold on the back button to open history.
Double-tap on the first link in history to return to the privious page.

For the time being, I won't be upgrading to Ios 8 on my first generation ipad
mini.

I did report this issue to Apple accessibility.

By Missy Hoppe on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

This is so easy to do. If nothing else, it can be found in settings, general, about. The methods Mike suggested are great as well. I had a wonderful chat with Michelle in Apple Accessibility last night, and she was very patient as I looked for my serial number; thought I had written it down in a "safe place," but couldn't find it, so just got it from the phone itself; navigating character by character after that, it couldn't have been simpler, and I was able to report my top 4-5 concerns regarding IOS 8 accessibility.

By Joey G on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

Let me start out by saying that I have read this entire post, including all comments. I don’t remember this issue being mentioned, but it is possible I missed it. So, my apologies if this is a repeat. I am using a 5S.
Though there are some bugs in IOS 8, I have for the most part, enjoyed the os experience. One of my favorite features is the interactive notifications feature. That said, it brings up the topic of a small bug, which can be no big deal, or quite annoying based on your personal opinion. I fall into the former category.
Your phone is locked, you get a text msg, and you flick up to reply from the lock screen. Battery power seems to drop by double the amount you had before the text came in. For instance, I was at 83 percent, but while replying to the msg, it dropped to 46 percent. Once I sent the msg, it went back up to 83. I can then use my phone as I normally do, and the battery is fine. As far as I can tell, this only happens when using interactive notifications. This was just something I noticed this morning, and I did report it to the apple accessibility team.
As I have stated, it isn’t a huge deal, and it certainly doesn’t detract from my IOS8 experience. I just wanted to make people aware. Thanks.

By Jesse Tregarthen on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hello, I have noticed this as well. I assume that it is just an incorrect printing of what the battery level actually is. It is hard to tell whether the battery actually drops or whether it is just a bug and it says that it has dropped when it really hasn't. Regardless, it seems to return back to the before value when I am done So it all works out in the end.

By Jesse Tregarthen on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hello, I have seen comments on here About how the braille is being flipped upside down. It seems that for me at least, I have to pay attention to what voiceover says when it goes into landscape mode for braille screen input. Sometimes it says home button to the left and sometimes it says home button to the right. Sometimes I will go into braille screen and put with the home button on the left which is how I prefer to do it and it will be backwards so I either have to flip the phone around so the home button is to the right or sometimes I use the rotor to get out of braille screen input and go back in and it will set it with the home button to the left. Sometimes they won't announce it so I go out and go back in. This is in tabletop mode. I am Magent it would be relatively similar in screen away mode. I am not sure if people are having other issues but I know this is the issue with me. As long as I know whether it is in landscape with the home button to the left or right, the braille seems to be laid out the proper way and I have used it successfully. Best regards, Jesse

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

One thing I have noticed is that people on this site are very interested in finding about work arounds. This can be a good thing because it can help with an immediate issue. But that never fixes an issue, just makes it something people try to ignore.

For those reporting, great job. For those who have not, maybe you could take some time to do so. The more people write and call in, the more likely we will have fixes for these issues.

By dvdmth on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 03:24

This is a funny little bug I just encountered.

I came home to find that my iPad Air had six notifications on the lock screen. I used the new feature to delete a notification straight from the lock screen by flicking up on the notification, then double-tapping. That worked, but then VoiceOver announced that there were four notifications, even though there were still five on the screen. I deleted a second notification, and VoiceOver announced that there were three notifications, when there were really four. This continued until there was only one left on screen, which VoiceOver simply announced without saying how many notifications there were.

So I guess VoiceOver can't count.

No, the problem only occurs in iTunes Store, while trying to purchase a track out of an E.P. So, no problem as well when downloading a whole album...

By dvdmth on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

I have also seen the Safari bug when going to a previous page. It doesn't happen everywhere, but it is pretty common and happens on a number of sites I visit, including AppleVis. The workaround I found is to hit the Reload button after going back. For what it's worth, a similar bug appeared in Safari 7.1 for the Mac, so I suspect it's a Safari bug, not a VoiceOver bug.

I noticed that most of the Safari bugs on iOS 8 have been around since iOS 7. Hopefully these are fixed in a future update soon? I'm sure Apple is aware of them.

By Mister Kayne on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Siri is acting up with the IOS 8 update. I have to command it twice to turn WiFi off or do something. The keyboard in touch typing is kind of sluggish. When exiting an application which is in a folder, earlier it used to announce the folder name. Now it is just announcing the app. name. You have to use your sixth sense to figure out that you are in a folder.

By Russ Kiehne on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Has anyone run accross the following issue? I'm using an ipod touch 5th
generation.

When flicking through the search results I keep hearing voiceover on.
Once and a while when playing a video, i hear voiceover on.

By Justin on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hi there!
Sounds like VO is crashing on your iPod. I've never really experienced this bug on my iPhone 5S, but I've seen other people on here report on this issue occurring.
Take care.

By Troy on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

This morning blind bargains mentioned a work around that I can confirm does work for crashes on older devices. Switching to the Compaq voice will solve most crashes, I've tried it with the camera and other apps that were crashing for me and it does work. We have 2 options here, we could either deal with the crashes, or put up with a voice that sounds like she has her teeth mashed together, lol.

By alex wallis on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Just a thought, I wonder if changing to the compact voice might also help with the knfb readers sluggishness on the iPhone6 and 6 plus.
speaking of knfb reader is the app basically now almost unusable on ios8? or is it just the main screen where issues happen? knfb said 8.0.2 had created more issues, does anyone have any idea what those might be?
it would also be nice to know from them if issues can be fixed with a future app update or if they are depending on apple to sort some bugs out like fleksy.

By Missy Hoppe on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hi there! On the whole, KNFB reader is working fine on my IPhone 5S. I noticed at one point that VO had crashed, and field of view reports don't always happen. There's also quite a bit of sluggishness, but I don't know if that's because I don't have a shiny new iphone 6, or what the deal is. On the whole, though, KNFB reader seems more or less stable, and is still quite useable for me under IOS 8.02. I hope this helps a little.

By alex wallis on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

the issues with it specifically affect the iPhone 6 and 6 plus, so the nice shiny new phones.

I have been using it fine under the latest IOS. I don't really get the issues with the field of views either, it seems to be fine. I don't take 60 a minute of them though

By Mike Fulton on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Is anyone else experiencing the bug where you cannot enter your passcode on a braille display?

By Missy Hoppe on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Good morning! Depending on your perspective, this one is either really minor, or a pretty big deal. For me, it's minor, but ever since updating to 8.0.2, the alarm doesn't seem to work. I have the icon in my status bar telling me that the alarm is set, and I've even gone in and reviewed my alarm info, all of which appears to be correct. However, for the past two mornings, the alarm has not gone off. In my case, this isn't a huge deal as the iphone alarm is only my emergency back up alarm in case of a power failure, but I still find it strange that it has stopped working as expected. I wonder if deleting the alarm and recreating it would make any difference? Has anyone else had this experience since updating to IOS8.0.2?

By Sebby on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

I've not tested it out yet, and probably won't (this Apple tomfoolery is frankly wearing me out) but those with access to it should probably be downloading it and testing it for accessibility-related issues. Obviously, nothing they learn can actually be communicated, which is always a shame, but you'll be in good hands so everything will be fine and dandy and you mustn't worry your pretty little heads about it, etc. until such time as it's released.

hi. in fact, the alarm is in fact working perfectly fine in 8.0.2. no problems here, and i know at least 3 others that have used it without a problem

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

So there are quite a few of us working on ios 8.1 beta and rest assured, that without saying anything that will breach things, there are people directly working on voiceover bugs and have been since ios 8.0 betas. however, keep sending in your messages to accessibility@apple.com and keep calling, the more we do, the more we get them to focus on the issues and come up with a fix.

By sockhopsinger on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Seriously, why would you put in a feature that works half the time, if that? When you switch to braille input mode, truly about half the time, you try to type and get no response. You can't even switch between braille modes. What an awful implementation of braille! If you're going to do something like that, why not just work with MBraille, a fully functional, feature-rich braille keyboard that's already got many kinks worked out? Oh well. I try not to do an Apple smackdown, but this really is poorly done. I realize it's new for Apple, but I'd rather they have not released it at all than to have released this ... tempermental feature ... is the kindest way I can think of to put it.

Entering the Passcode from the Lock Screen using a Bluetooth keyboard does not work on my iPhone 6. I tried it with an Anchor keyboard and with the RIVO keyboard for the blind. It used to work with IOS7. I've reported it to Apple.

By ftealucard on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

I'm currently running ios7 still on a 4s and it's unfortunate but not surprising to hear that apple may have screwed up the braille keyboard, are the dots really reversed or does it depend on the mode? If they are, that's just rediculus. They also unfortunately screwed up some of the grade 2 braille display implimentation with the whole (typing H and if you wait a few seconds it turns in to have) thing. If they had just followed notetaker conventions that have been around since the braille lite, things may have been better. Apple likes to reinvent the wheel when there is a perfectly good wheel just waiting to be used.

By Carol P on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Having had more time to use my phone for email, I really don't think the email experience is so smooth. Quite often my phone just hangs and you have to leave it a while before you can continue, or come out and go back into mail. I tried it on the iPad Mini first gen (with which I am less familiar and don't really care for the pad) and again it appeared rather sluggish.

I hope things will improve on this score soon.

By Justin on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Yeah, the braille dots are all screwy on my 5S. It's wierd, because I'd be having my fingers in the dot positions for a J and I'd be getting something no where close to a J. The dots on my end are completely reversed and I haven't found a way to fix it. All of you who are using the braille input mode and have correct dots, I'm impressed!! Really, other then that, no major bugs on my end. Also, I've noticed something minor. I don't know if anyone has put this on here, but when using siri, it sometimes gets cut off by Voiceover, I believe, so I just mute Vo and ask siri.

I tried using the braille screen input last night, and promptly took it out of the rotor. In my opinion, this is the worst feature that Apple has ever come up with. How do you mute voice over to you Siri?

By sockhopsinger on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Either mute voiceover before using Siri by double tapping the screen with three fingers, or turn off Voiceover completely before using Siri.

By Justin on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Yeah, thats a good idea. I think i'll remove braille input from my rotor also. I'm gonna wait to see what comes next.

By Rafal on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hi guys, I have been using iOS 8 and its current version. I have found a serious bug in the in-built weather application. In Poland we have a 24-hour system and the application does not read hours from 13 to 23. Instead, it only reads weather conditions for these hours. Also, when browsing detailed weather for the region it does not read all information e.g. sun rise/fall, wind, etc. I have reported this to the Accessibility team.

As suggested, I tryed Switching to the Compaq voice on my iPod tuch 5th
generation and still have the same voiceover issues. I talked to Apple
Accessibility about it. They had me send them my crash log. I'm hoping they
can track it down?

By Jeanine on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

An additional bug I just discovered while reading a Braille book with BARD Mobile is that the Braille shortcut keys for navigating a book and moving to various sections of the BARD Mobile screen using a Braille display no longer work. Instead, the key I press is displayed on my Braille Edge 40 until I push a panning button, and my iPhone 5s makes the same sound as it does when reaching the boundaries of the screen a few seconds after I press a BARD Mobile Braille shortcut command. I don't know if this issue needs to be addressed by NLS or by Apple, but I do hope it is fixed soon because, in the short time I was using my new Braille Edge 40 with IOS 7, it worked perfectly with BARD Mobile, and the Braille shortcuts were not only convenient, but I found them essential for reading Braille books.

The braille input seems to be working fine on my end so far. I just have to remember to check what landscape mode it is in And whether the home button is to the left or to the right before I use it and the dots are always flipped around the right way then. It is kind of annoying that it won't tell me what dots I am typing until I flick right for the space. It seems to do that in grade one braille though But I have been using contracted braille since I was seven years old so I don't really want to use I'm contracted braille if I don't have to so I fight with it. From what I understand, that is a general keyboard echo problem and not so much a braille input problem. Other than that, I find it quite nice.

By J.P. on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Tech blogs are saying update around corner, keeping fingers crossed. I sure hope 8.1 fixes quite a few accessibility bugs.
I love Apple and dedication to accessibility. I must say 8 has been a disappointment. Quite a few accessibility related bugs. Even if many are minor, just careless quality assurance.

By Sarah Cripps on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

All:

I began using Apple's iPhone with the iPhone 4 and now have the 5S. I have noticed some extremely disturbing bugs in the latest OS iteration as described hereinbelow:

1. Unlike with IOS 7.1.2, I can no longer share contact cards via iMessage. This is the case even after repeatedly pressing the "send" button and even holding down the "send" button as we are now compelled to do with the "buy" button in iTunes and in the App Store. Frustrating, to say the least.

2. I have experienced grave malfunctions when using siri and voiceover. Siri and voiceover appear to cancel each other out so that neither works well. Siri will not allow me to finish speaking and, oftentimes, will not repeat my command.

3. The iPhone 5S appears extremely sluggish when using voiceover in Safari. In fact, Safari often simply exits and returns me to the home screen. Moreover, and equally problematic, voiceover will absolutely cease speaking while I am using Safari and going from bookmark to bookmark or searching for information.

4. I have noticed the frustrating problem with dialing a number on the keypad and having the tone for the number continuing to sound unremittingly despite even closing the phone app. This sounding of the tone requires a restart of the iPhone almost every time. This problem occurs more than once every day.

5. I cannot enter dates of birth, anniversary dates, etc., in the picker item areas when entering data about my various contacts. This was never an issue in IOS 7.1.2.

6. I have noticed the issue in the Notification Center where you receive the "confirm clear section" notification before you have ever attempted to clear a particular section of notifications.

In summary, Apple, who typically is to be lauded for its attention to detail, precision, and overall presentation and roll-out of new software and harware has absolutely missed its mark with the release of IOS 8.0 and subsequent iterations which contain enumerable serious flaws. I am disappointed in Apple this time.

Unrelatedly, I wonder if the Apple Watch will have voiceover on its. I posed this question to Apple's Accessibility folks but received the unhelpful response that Apple does not release information about products that have yet to hit the consumer market.

Sincerely,

Sarah J. Cripps

By Missy Hoppe on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hi! The bugs you just listed are many of the ones I've encountered too; I can't speak to the safari ones because I almost never use it, but I cannot send contact cards, access picker items, and have experienced most of the other glitches you mentioned. I have reported them to the Apple Accessibility team, and would strongly recommend that if possible, you do the same. I called the phone number and spoke to a very kind Apple representative who took detailed notes on the problems I was reporting. So, if you call in or send an email about the same problems, that should increase our chances of getting things fixed. Apple will only know we're having these issues if we all report them, and IMHO, the key is to be as friendly, patient and professional when calling or writing. Ranting, cussing, carrying on, etc. isn't going to accomplish anything, and, in fact, I think those who take that approach won't be taken seriously. On the other hand, calling or writing in the spirit of cooperation is far more likely to get your bug reports taken seriously, and Apple is probably far more inclined to help if we approach them in a professional way to express our concerns.
Well, I guess that's my sermon for the day. LOL! We'll just have to wait and see what IOS 8.1 has in store; with any luck, a lot of the bugs we're experiencing now will be a thing of the past.

By alex wallis on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hi, this bug isn't VoiceOver related exactly, but can someone tell me have apple fixed the problem where you can't delete custom contact labels that was present in ios7?
buy this I mean lets say you added a phone number to a contact and you wanted to call it john smith mobile you could add a custom field and name it john smith mobile.
Under ios7 you can't delete the or edit the custom label once added so your stuck if you make a mistake, or no longer need a label.
I reported the issue to apple during the ios8 testing process and they said they filed a bug report, just curious if you can now once again delete these custom labels as I have a bunch I am stuck with and no longer need.

By Paul Hunt on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Hello. I have an IPhone 5s running IOS 8.2.
I also have a Brailliant BI 40 Braille display.
After pairing and writing in both AccessNote and the native Notes app for a few minutes my braille display stops responding. I have to restart my IPhone and Braille display to recover. Have any of you found this bug? If so, did you report it to Apple Accessibility? Are any other braille displays impacted? Any work arounds?

By Curtis Chong on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Most of the bugs that have been reported with regard to iOS 8 fortunately have work-arounds. I do not know whether this is an iOS 8 bug or something that is caused by the iPhone 6, but when I upgraded to the 6, I noticed that I could not use the power button to disconnect a call while the iPhone was next to my head. Even when I lay the phone flat, thus activating the screen, the two-finger double-tap does not seem to work consistently. This is more of a frustration than anything else, and I suspect there will be a fix for this in the foreseeable future<smile>.

By John Gurd on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

Running IOS8.02 with an iPhone 6. When I preview songs in the iTunes Store a 2 finger double-tap no longer works to pause and restart. It kind of leaves you stuck until it finishes. Even backing out of the screen doesn't help. Good job I didn't preview an album! :)

By Troy on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

I'm hearing a lot about the send button issues in text messages, I'm wondering if this is isolated to the newer devices as I am using a 4s and not having this issue, I do notice the send button is a little hier up on the screen maybe about an inch or less where it originally was but I can double tap it and it will work.

By Missy Hoppe on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

That's an interesting idea: most people I know who have encountered this particular bug, myself included, are using the 5S. Finding the button isn't the problem, though. I, and most others I know of who have experienced this bug, can find the send button without any issues. The problem is that it refuses to activate. This seems to be the case, though, only if there is an attachment of some sort involved: a picture, contact card, etc. If you're just sending a plain text message or IMessage with no attachments of any kind, everything seems to work just fine.

By J.P. on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

We have a 5S and 5C in my house. The bug also occurs on 5C, not just 5S.

By Usman on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

I've alos noticed that periodically, my voice over will just click but won't speak. I tried unmuting speech with no results. I had to tell siri to turn it off and turn it back again to fix it. Anyone else noticed this?

By Missy Hoppe on Friday, October 24, 2014 - 03:24

There definitely seems to be a conflict between VO and siri under IOS8. I don't know if it it's specific to those of us using the Alex voice, or if everyone is having problems where siri cuts off and then VO can't be used until Siri has finished saying something completely. I don't know how to explain it better than that. The best work-around I've found is that if you want to talk to siri without incident, VO should be disabled first. That is far from ideal, and is definitely something we should not have to do, but it gets around the problem until Apple fixes it. The Siri/vo conflict bug is probably the most frustrating for me, and I definitely reported it when I called Apple Accessibility. Unfortunately, the problem wouldn't manifest itself when I was talking to them, but so far as I know, its very easy to reproduce; not sure I know of anyone who hasn't experienced it at least once.