iOS, Siri and Voiceover

By Joe Fallin, 28 October, 2014

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I thought that Voiceover would not be involved with Siri in OS8. Most of the time, Voiceover tries to override Siri, the result being nothing is spoken and I have to manually read the screen. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Any work arounds?

Options

Comments

By david s on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

Yes this happens to me quite often. It also causes Siri responses to get truncated. Or cut off.

For me, I use Siri to turn off VO and do the things I need to do. Like tell Siri to send text, enter calendar items, etc. When done, I tell Siri to turn on VO.

Hope this helped.

By Lielle ben simon on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

Yes i am recommending to cancell hey siri".
Somtimes siri thinking that wee are talking with you, it's heppand an manny happendes.

By Jakob Rosin on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

In reply to by Lielle ben simon

How's "Hey siri" gonna stop VO interrupting siri speaking? I have tried both ways and sadly this workaround didn't work for me.
Sadly only workaround which works for me so far is disabling Vo or just reading the screen manually.

You don't really have to disable VO; just turn off speech with three-finger double-tap and toggle back on when done. I suspect introducing some sort of semaphore system between siri and VO to keep each other apprised of who is speaking when would cause as many problems, i.e., unwanted interactions reducing modularity, as it would solve.

By Tree on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

I am still running iOS seven so i have no idea if this will work or not. I get siri sometimes stopping in mid sentence, mainly when she is reding back dictated responses to text messages. She will start reading the text and then stop with the sound that indicates she is listening. When she does that, depending on what you are doing, you can try saying, review, or repeat. At least under iOS 7 with siri reading back dictated responses this will make her start over reading what she thinks you said. Sorry this might be totally irrelevant to the issues this post is about; just thought I would throw my two bits in.

By Troy on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

When I turn off the speech I am still having the same issue so that doesn't work, well at least for me.

By Missy Hoppe on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

I experience this on an almost daily basis, as does one of my friends. I've reported it to Apple, but so far, nothing has been done. The only work-around I know of is to turn off VO when you want to work with siri, but that isn't always a good thing since siri doesn't read back reminder confirmations or anything like that without VO running. I really, really hope this problem gets fixed, and if anyone else out there knows of a work-around, I'd love to hear about it. In the mean time, I guess all we can do is keep reporting the issue to Apple Accessibility and hope for the best.

By Seanoevil on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

Hi All
I have an iPhone 5, running IOS 8.1. Like all others, I have the problem of SIRI being truncated by VO. While I do not have a fix, I can anecdotally report that I find the problem to be much worse if I use SIRI from the lock screen.
Unlocking the phone prior to activating SIRI gives me better, not perfect, but better results. Of course, this may just be magical thinking on my behalf...
HTH.

Sea No Evil.

By Troy on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:21

This doesn't sound like an accessibility related issue with Siri, but yesterday when I tried to make a call using Siri, she told me to unlock the phone first when it was already unlocked.