Apple Releases iOS 10.2; Bringing Fixes, But Also Some New Bugs for VoiceOver and Focus Braille Display Users

The mail bug above has been present since iOS 10.0 was first released, or at least it was for me. I hadn't heard any talk of this bug before, like it was just me, so nice to hear Apple is working on a fix. It's been driving me crazy for ages.

Hello, has the bug related to keyboard clicks with braille input been fixed in the new update?

I noticed that the hint for uncovering messages sent with Invisible Ink is to double tap and scrub with 1 finger. I contacted Apple before and told them that this seems to be impossible to do and I still can not do it after updating to 10.2. Has anyone been able to do this gesture?

Hi.

if I want to move an app from inside a folder to the home screen, that was possible through the actions "drop app out of folder". I no longer see this choice in 10.2

can anyone confirm this?

I do not know for sure if this is related to the iOS 10.2 update, or if something else was going on for me.

When logging in on AppleVis, I need to activate the user name text field, then look for the button to autofill the password from my keychain. This worked fine in the past, but today I had an issue, as follows.

I activated the user name field as usual, then navigated to the autofill button at the bottom of the screen. When I activated the button, nothing happened. I also could not find the button when navigating by touch, because an autocomplete suggestion appeared to be covering it up. I found that if I used the previous and next buttons to move to other text fields on the page, then returned to the user name field, the autofill button showed up properly and I could activate it to fill in my credentials.

I never had this problem before. I am using an iPad Mini 4, and I was using a Bluetooth keyboard at the time of this occurrence. I will need to do some testing to figure out what other factors might have led to this problem.

One thing I have never been able to figure out is why I have to find and use the autofill button on this site. Most other websites where I have my credentials saved to keychain are automatically filled as soon as I visit the login page, without having to do any interaction with the text fields, but at AppleVis this does not happen, and never has.

Voiceover has now Added BraillePen14 support and has now Fixed an issue where the braille table could switch unexpectedly.

Same old story -- they fix some things and break some things, leaving us with an only partially usable product. Is it too much to ask for them to just actually *fix* VoiceOver so our user experience is comparable to that of sighted users? I pay as much as a sighted customer for my Apple products; I should either get 100% usability or they should cut us a discount until they get it together. I'm tired of being patient

I was able to move an app out of a folder by double-tapping and holding it then dragging it until you were outside the folder. You then hold your finger for five seconds until the foler closes. At that point, the app is outside the folder. Just like how you used to have to do it before they came up with the better movement system. Not ideal but still very doable. Adding apps to folder still works fine.

I haven't updated yet. I have been using the two finger scrub gesture to close folders when moving apps because I didn't know about the feature you all are discussing. Might give it a try; it stays in edit mode until you push the home button.

I've noticed a slight redesign of the news app, in the UK at least. You no longer have the tabs running along the bottom whilst your inside of a story. Also when you've saved an article, VO no longer repeats the title. Just some observations. Hope the Braille display issue is resolved quickly for those affected by that, and moreover, the removal of apps from folders as well. I'm so disorganized I rarely use folders at all, but slightly counter-intuitive to introduce a new, highly useful feature and then break it almost immediately.
I do find myself agreeing with Joe's point above, but at least the bug with edit fields is now fixed. Finally, I've had BSI crash on me since installing the update tonight, only once, and also flaky dictation once or twice when your double tapping to finish what your saying, it seemed to freeze strangely.
Best to all.
Darren.

@CrockerBear that is a good tip and in some ways it may be even faster to scrub to close the folder. It would make it faster to move an app from 1 folder to another! Thanks for the work around.

I am not sure if it is just be but, after closing Firefox and reopening it, there are no spaces in the bulleted lists.

I know the feeling. When I called tech support to discuss my app movement problem, & recently, when I was trying to figure out how to copy & paste text from the body of an email, that someone had sent me, the people were on the phone trying to figure it out with me! They helped me solve the problem of copying/pasting from an email, but I spent 2 1/2 hours on the fhone with them!

Now, don't get me wrong, I like the fact that these products are accessible to us, & I like the fact, that there's a tech support line for people with accessibility needs/issues, to call & get the help they need. Apple gets plenty of kudos from me on that front.

I think that Apple Support techs are the most patient, helpful, caring people. I've had to call jech support hundreds of times when I had a braillenote, BARD. & Bookshare. And all in all, I think Apple's techs are the better of all of them. I've talked to some good people on HumanWare tech staff too, but Apple's techs take the prize. But I agree that Apple needs to have more people working on this kind of stuff accessibility & otherwise.

That being said, I also understand that not everything is perfect nor will it ever be, & every circumstance is different. But I also think that it's getting better. I think Apple, like every other company, has it's weaknesses & strengths.

Personally, I like that the rotor no longer defaults to actions on some things. I hope it's the case with Safaari. I found out that was why I couldn't move by links in a webpage. Once I got the rotor on links after a few times, it worked fine.

After clicking on the send button in the Mail app, VoiceOver doesn't react anymore no matter what I do. I have to turn VO on and off several times until it works again. Furthermore, in longer mail conversations navigation with VO is very sluggish.
I have to work with lots of mails on my phone so this is a real show-stopper!

Hi all

I haven't upgraded to iOS 10.2 yet, just wondering if the problem with the spacebar has been fixed. Sometimes when I land on it it says Dictation and I have to double tap to make it work every time, until I use punctuation and it clears up. this has happened since iOS 10, so it's about time Apple fixed it, as it puts me off using the keyboard for comments etc.

Hello,
I am happy to report that the bug where voiceOver would say metres instead of minutes has been fixed from the few notifications I had today. Thanks to the team for fixing this bug. I hope the alarm is fixed. Remember the bug where the alarm would sound softer when audio ducking was on?

In the grand scheme of things this is quite small, but I use news a lot on the way to work, especially in the morning, and I've found that VO no longer announces the state of read and unread articles correctly. It just says unread now for every article, even if you have in fact read it. This persists until you close and reopen the app.
However, it would be much worse if this behavior was exhibited in mail, for example, so it isn't the end of the world.

Hi all, bit early to say I know but has anyone so far who have updated, seen any improvements to there battery life on your ios devices? Ever since ios 10 my battery really does drain a lot more than it use to. And before anyone asks, no, I'm not using it more than usual and no, I don't think it is hardware but more of software issues. That's only my opinion though.

Own an iPhone 5 and iPad mini 2

What is your verdict? Is battery life better or worse for 10.2?

I'm not sure. I've not noticed the battery drain issues you speak of Daniel. It might just be hardware. Maybe the battery is failing in your iPhone. It's just my opinion. I'm running 10.2 on a 6S plus.

Does anyone know if the issue with VO reading rows and columns on some websites and in some emails been fixed? I am using an iphone 6 and this appeared to start with IOS 10 or 10.1. When reading emails or on a website (including the Apple Vis website), VO will say things like row 2 of 15 rows and column 10 of 30 columns or things like this. It presumably only happens when the email is in some sort of table but this never happened before. It happens on linked in emails as an example. It happens when reading every line so it's very annoying and makes reading these emails or websites that are impacted nearly impossible.

Hi,
the extra verbosity is still present in 10.2.
I got a useful, perhaps the most detailed response I've ever received from Apple accessibility regarding the news regression I mentioned above.
Hello,
 Thank you for your email. We can reproduce this in iOS 10.2 but not in 10.2.1
In 10.2.1 if an article has already been opened once it will not be labeled as unread if you go back and flick through the articles again.

Apple Accessibility.
Roll on 10.2.1 then.

Hello.

Six months ago, when with two other fellows I brought resolution 2016-04 to the floor of the NFB convention in order to call on Apple to do better testing of its software releases, we were told on this forum that we had no idea of how Apple works and that we ware being ungrateful with the progress Apple has made towards accessibility. I just wish to see more blind iOs and Mac Os users act like consumers instead of justifying whatever steps the company takes even when they go against their own productivity and competence. Hope the next time this concerns are raised to Apple you don't forget the frustrating situations that these bugs got you through.

Best.

I think the reality is that people regardless of any kind of disability can become fans of something, anything, and this predisposes them to become tolerant of mediocrity. Everyone should think like consumers and choose the product/service that works best for them and their individual use cases and specific circumstances.
Apple do a great job, not perfect, could be better, but so do other companies. The reality is that all of these companies want to maximize their revenues, that is their primary objective, so blind loyalty, pardon the pun, usually is counterproductive. Always be critical, self-reflexive and unremittingly empirical.

I am using a Humanware Brailliant BI40 with the UEB setting. In certain apps, including the messaging app and the Bible app from YouVersion, if using that table, certain words are no longer displayed. Random punctuation marks are displayed instead. I found that switching back to the old North American code fixed the problem by displaying the word, but said weird signs are still their. I tried re-pairing the display and restarting everything with no luck. Not sure if this is a compatibility thing or a genuine bug. Any Braille display users out there having this issue as well?

Hello,

the bug where VoiceOver is not reading the first character if rotor is set to lines, described in this post, is still present in iOS 10.2, and, by the way, in macOS 10.12.2 as well.

I am glad to see that text fields in Safari are now read correctly when reading by character or word, but navigating by line in a text field in Safari using the Up or Down arrow keys on a bluetooth keyboard now never reads the lines even though the cursor is actually moving, and in the Notes app, and maybe elsewhere, it repeatedly reads the whole paragraph even though the cursor is actually moving only by line within the paragraph. Therefore, when it comes to reading by line, there is a serious degression in iOS 10.2, however, there are other long-standing issues regarding VoiceOver not reading what it should when navigating by line.

And one new inconsistency regarding Safari, if you move by word using Alt + Right arrow, the cursor is now positioned after the space following the word, whereas before in Safari, or currently in other apps, or when reading by word using rotor, the cursor is positioned right after the word, which seems better to me.

Kind regards

Hello: it looks like they didn't fix the "actions available" announcement when voice over focuses on the apps installed or the preinstalled ones. I even tried to create a dictionary entry to tell to the voice over, to read the line of string "actions available" differently, but no luck.
is there a way around to escape from this issue?it should have been involved in the new verbocity section added to IOS 10.

What does "Region Tracking on" mean? This has appeared in my status bar.

I still have a lot of trouble to add/remove receivers and CCs. Adding them is simple but removing them selectively is not easy to handle.

If everyone here writing about all these bugs wrote to Apple with the same energy, imagine what good stuff you could do? Everyone who writes here should write to Apple as well. and if you've already done it, keep at it! keep doing it and show them that when you've found a bug, you're serious about wanting them to squash it. Don't forget the steps you took to produce the bug and wether or not the bug is re-producible all the time.

I just noticed that if you share a article from the news app, voiceover does not says share. I will let apple know. Anyone has this problem. Also I agreed complaining about problems does not solve it self unless you report it.

I know Samantha isn't fashionable anymore, but I still like her better than Alex.

After updating to 10.2 I found that on the home screen and in keyboards, Samantha now speaks a bunch of extraneous stuff. On the positive side, it does appear that I'm again able to use the HQ version.

On the home screen, every app and folder name spoken by Samantha is followed by the spoken string "s l n c 800"

Keyboards are even worse, with each letter I touch being sandwiched in between "char ltrl" and "Char Norm". For example, if I touch the letter g on the standard on-screen keyboard, Samantha says "Char ltrl, g, Char Norm" with the commas in the previous quotation denoting speech pauses. The same thing happens with on-screen numeric keyboards.

Switching to Alex gets rid of all this extraneous stuff.

I'm also sending a copy of this to the Apple Accessibility team.

Any thoughts?

Again if anyone who shares articles from news via message, and after going back to for you and voiceover does not says share please report it. I did reported to accessibility and they forward my email to someone.

Hello

Ever since I updated to iOS 10, I cannot activate the back button on the my Podcasts tab in the native podcasts app. This bug has not been fixed. Is anyone else having this problem?

I get a kick out of the new item on the status bar. To the left of the bluetooth status, I hear Headphones Connected when I am using my bluetooth audio device. However, when I connect headphones to my iPhone 7 using the lightning port dongle, I do not have the Headphones Connected status.

So, when they are connected physically, nothing, but when they are wireless, I'm told they are connected. No biggie, just a funny addition in 10.2

Regarding the Samantha voice giving additional feedback from what is expected, I am not able to reproduce that issue. I would delete and reinstall the voice, and if the problem persists, restart the device.

Regarding the status icon for headphones connected, this icon is a more descriptive version of the Bluetooth connected icon. The icon replaces the Bluetooth icon, so it is intended to show Bluetooth headphones status, not wired headphones. It makes sense visually, since there is no need to show that headphones are connected when you can see the wire going into the headphone or lightning port. When using wireless headphones, the indicator is more useful since it would explain why there is no audio coming from the built-in speaker. For a blind user, who can already tell from the VoiceOver speech that headphones are in use, this change in the status bar does not really offer anything useful.