Problem when composing a mail using a Focus braille display

By Isak Sand, 16 January, 2016

Forum
Braille on Apple Products

Hello all,

I'm not a heavy-user of braille, but a client came up with a veird problem yesterday. They weren't able to compose a mail using a Focus 14 braille display. I can reproduce the issue with a Focus 40.
I have an iPhone 6 with iOS 9.2.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open the Mail app.
2. Select the Compose button.
3. Now you should be placed in the to field, ready to write.
4. Write a mail address or just a few characters. You can see the text coming up just beautifully on the braille display.
5. Try to advance through the screen with the rocker bars on top of the Focus or with the regular command Space + Dot 4. Note that nothing will happen; you'll only hear the "bonk" sound.
6. If you explore the screen itself with your finger, you will notice that no text has been written into the To field and that the braille display won't follow when the focus changes.
7. By pressing Space+dots 1 and 2 you can get out of this freeze, and after that the braille display will be usable again, but the To field is still empty and if you start typing into it again, this same problem will occur.

Can other users confirm this? Will it occur only using the Focus or also with other braille displays? Have you found any work-arounds?

Options

Comments

By TJT 2001 on Monday, January 25, 2016 - 03:20

In iOS 9, you need to give the phone a short time to process the typed characters. You will know that the phone has finished processing the characters when you see the whole email address on the braille display. Also, it is generally a good idea to move to and from an edit field before double-tapping on it to edit it to make sure that VoiceOver is actually focused on the edit field, which is not always the case even though it may seem to be.

By Jessica Brown on Monday, January 25, 2016 - 03:20

I have iOS 9.0.2 and a Braille pen and don't have this problem but I am not sure if your problem is with your display or your iOS version because we both have different displays and iOS versions. Do you remember having the problem before you updated to 9.2? Did you have that display before updating to 9.2 and if you did then did it work before the update?

By Isak Sand on Monday, January 25, 2016 - 03:20

Hello,
I compose mails on my phone extremely rarely, so I had not seen this problem before iOS 9.2.
I have not been able to solve the problem by moving away from the edit field and back to it. I can still reproduce the problem every time.

By Weary Mouse on Monday, January 25, 2016 - 03:20

If you don't have auto-translate turned on in settings, the address will not show up until you press the spacebar. If you do this, you probably need to backspace to get rid of the extra space. An alternative is to press dots 4-5-chord. or 4-5 with the spacebar, not sure they talk about things as chording in the apple world.

By Isak Sand on Monday, January 25, 2016 - 03:20

Hello!
Thanks! Actually I noticed this when I was playing around with this a couple of days ago. Good to have some kind of solution to give the client.