suggestion for alternative to apple news

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯, 31 March, 2019

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hey guys!!

I have a possible suggestion for an alternative to Apple News. I've been having the same issues you all have been having with Vo. having Add. when you ahe using Apple apps. Although I have not had iisues in Safari, I have had it in News. And it's particularly annoying when ever I have Vo. read the story with 2 finger swipe down.

Well, I have 3 news apps on my ipad: News, Smart News and Google News. I love them because they are free, & I heally love the fact that I can get all my news in 1 place instead of having 1,000 different apps on my ipad with varying degrees of accessibility for all the news sources I like reading!! And they were all accessible!!

Well, I decided to try them and see if I could make any the other 2 work. And if not, I'd see what alternatives you guys were using. I tried Google News first. Let me tell you, I played with it for part of the day, and I think this is the 1 I'll use until Apple fixes it's News app. If they ever do. lol It's organized into tabs like News used to be, you can save & share and read stories like you can on News. Plus, I really like the fact that it has Siri shortcuts!! Which I definetely will be exploring later. And I haven't seen any focuse issues with Vo.!! To be honest, I'm EXTREMELY tempted to permanently switch to Google News permanently!! And put it on my 1st page where News is now.

And I'll be honest in saying that when I 1st had this app, I didn't like it very much. So I deleted it. And I thought it was a great app, but it seemed clunky to me. And improvements could've been made to accessibility in my view at least. So, a few months ago, I redownloaded it. It was in Icloud for a while, as I use News as my primary news app.

I just thought I'd share a pojential suggestion (in my view) for an alternative to News for the time being if not permanently. If anyone else has any other suggestions, please feel free to add them!! Who knows? Maybe I might be swayed from Google News?
One thing is for certain. While I may not be moving the app to my 1st page of apps just yet, I'll be getting a list of all my favorites from News and searching for them in the Google News app. Hope this helps you all!!

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Comments

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - 02:21

There is one call braken and news by microsoft. Braken has 2 one is free with ads and 2 which is about $10 without no ads. Microsoft is free and you can get local news. It has more info than apple news. I will be using one or the other.

By peter on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - 02:21

The NFB Newsline app has an incredible number of subscdriptions including many national magazines as well as local newspapers for free if you are certifiably blind. Now the service also works with smart home devices like Alexa and google.

You do need to sign up for the service.

--Pete

By Holger Fiallo on Saturday, April 27, 2019 - 02:21

I just installed google news and like it. I setup my notification for news but I am not getting anyone. I seem to get many from my braken news app than google. I did check setting and it is on. Does google news send notifications?????????????/

By peter on Saturday, April 27, 2019 - 02:21

Thanks for the suggestion about Google News. I finally downloaded it and it works seamlessly with VoiceOver. Like most Google products the interface is simple and clean. What a great alternative to the Apple News app that has been plagues by this VoiceOver problem for so long without apple fixing it for many updates now.

BTW, you can set up Google News to get push notifications. They are appearing on my locked screen several times per day. I forget where I set this up in the app but you could try looking under Settings / Google News.

Thanks again.

--Pete
P.S. I too sent a note to Apple Accessibility complaining about the bug with VoiceOver constantly umping to the top of articles and making it almost impossible to read articles in the Apple News app. Like others have experienced, I got the standard reply that they are "looking into it" and can't comment. Not very satisfying considering how long this problem has persisted.

By Holger Fiallo on Saturday, April 27, 2019 - 02:21

In reply to by peter

Went to notification and it is on for google and when I installed it I said yest to notification. I still not getting any. I know it is on. I check setting, I also check on google news. PS I deleted apple news. I got tire of it refreshing and losing track of what I was reading or which article I was looking at.

By Holger Fiallo on Saturday, April 27, 2019 - 02:21

I went back and check notification in setting and google both are on. In google I saw high headline and so on but I am not getting any.