Apple has releaced RC Versions of iOS 18.3, macOS 15.3, tvOS 18.3, watchOS 11.3, and visionOS2.3

Do you know if the volume bug with VoiceOver on the Apple Watch has been fixed yet or if we got charging notifications back?

The volume bug has been fixed since beta 1.

There are still a lot of issues that should not be present in an .3 update.

macOS

• homepage, new, radio, and search areas in music app are unusable with VoiceOver because after interaction with an area, VoiceOver only jumps to the top heading.
• Braille does not output some content in WebKit-based apps, e.g. Safari
• Braille output jumps around while typing in a text field with many lines of text. This prevents from proof-reading after you've just typed in something. You first have to set the insertion pointer somewhere reliable so that you can be sure that you really read what is currently focused. This can be tested in TextEdit or TextMate, for example.
• Braille cursor is shown at the wrong position in text fields in WebKit-based apps, e.g. Safari. This can be verified if you press right arrow followed by left arrow in a text field after you've typed in some lines of text. If the cursor is set at the beginning of a line of text and you then press right arrow followed by left arrow, cursor jups to the right if left arrow is pressed.
• CLI text editors like Vim are unusable with a Braille display as the braille output shows something completely different than the current line segment
• The Dock cannot be dismissed by pressing ESC key. If you press VO-d, followed by ESC, nothing happens. If you use VO-ESC, focus will jump back to the last focused element, but keyboard commands are not passed to the app in foreground. You first have to press CMD-tab to focus another application and then CMD-Tab back to the actual application where keyboard commands didn't work after the Dock has been dismissed to make keyboard commands working again. This has a negative side effect that the Finder will not open if you press return on the Finder in the dock when desktop is currently in foreground. So VoiceOver focus does not jump to the newly opened Finder window.
• Reduced/expanded controls are not output on the braille display. For example, if you go to About this mac and open system report, the groups in the table are only output as grp without the actual label.
• 8-dot braille input does not work after VoiceOver has started or has been restarted, even if you have added 8-dot braille table as input/output exclusively.
• Keyboard help does not work if arrow quick nav is enabled. No key does work anymore, even ESC to dismiss keyboard help does not work.

iPadOS specific

• Sidebars in all Apple apps are placed at the wrong position in element order when using swipe gestures (Requires iPad to be used in Landscape mode)

iOS and iPadOS

• VoiceOver focus on web pages in Safari jumps to previous element when navigating too quickly using swipe gestures or keyboard commands on many pages (e.g. the menus at apple.com)
• Vertical scroll bar does not scroll all content. It sometimes indicates to be at 100% even if more content is available (scrolling with VoiceOver turned off does reveal more content). I can reproduce this every time in Music app and Sonos app.
• Key repeat with a hardware keyboard does not work. If you hold down backspace, for example, only one character is deleted. This works as expected if VoiceOver is turned off.
• Apple Music crashes on artist pages when scrolling down (happens even with VoiceOver turned off)

And all the other issues that have been mentioned here on AppleVis or are recorded by the AppleVis Bug Tracker.

Wow. Guys we (myself included) should take notes from the previous message about how to report bugs.
Question.
What's the app / context for this?
homepage, new, radio, and search areas are unusable with VoiceOver because after interaction with an area, VoiceOver only jumps to the top heading.
I will update my mac and update here if I discover something new. The watchOS volume bug should never have slipped through the 15.2 stable update and it's a critical one especially considering the use case for a watch as a blind voiceover user.

Note these are all on iOS. I suspect they will also translate to iPad OS but I don't have an iPad to verify this.
•If writing in mail and you misspell a word after pressing space when using a Braille display or Braille keyboard such as the Orbit writer , voiceover does not state misspelled word
•when using a command to go to next keyboard with a braille display or Braille keyboard such as the Orbit writer it doesn't work
•bringing up emoji keyboard using a braille Display or Braille keyboard it doesn't work
•long pressing on buttons doesn't work as expected.,

1. On the braille display, momentarily press space with dots 3, 6, 7 and 8,
the same way that you would press, e.g. space with dot 1 or space with dot 4.
This currently only holds down the record button for a couple of seconds,
but in my revised workflow, it will hold it down until told otherwise.
2. Record your voice message. It can be any length you like, even several
minutes if you need it to be.
3. Once you have finished recording, press space with dots 3
6 or the select button, to send the signal to release the record button. If the current command can't be revised to continuously double tap and hold the button down for several minutes then add a separate command for this. If you use a regular Bluetooth keyboard if you hold Vo,Shift,Space for 3 to 4 seconds when on a button that says double tap and hold such as a record button in WhatsApp, or in The bard app on the rewind or Fast-forward button the button is held down until Vo,Space is pressed to stop it. If you are using the touch screen you have the ability to continuously hold the button down. Braille users need the same access as regular touch screen and keyboard users.

•text replacement doesn't work all the time when using a Braille display or Braille keyboard such as the orbit writer

Oh dear, in 18.2 finally since the launch of iOS 18 notifications acting how I want on the locked screen. Now in the iOS 18.3 RC they have gone back to stacking all the time.

I've just noted down a few things that came to my mind. I forgot the word music app. However, it's clear that such a list would be insufficient for reporting to Apple.
But once I have the time, I can copy in my whole FB reports and you can read through 20 pages of detailed reports for those issues. I've just thought that this would be out of scope of this forum. So I've only written down (very quickly) a few issues that negatively influence the experience.

Well Samantha has taken over. Had Tom but she is in charge. Tried to change voice to lee and nothing. Did restart. Plug the watch on the charger. Will see what happens. Nuts.

At least on my Apple Watch Ultra, I have the problem that I cannot use different voices than the default ones at all.
Enhanced voices are either too unresponsive or crash completely and then I only hear the clicks.
All worked perfectly in watchOS 9 but since watchOS 10 enhanced voices are completely broken.

Sad. watch 9. Hope it fixes it self. Nuts.

Voice came back. Tom is back. Went to setting on watch, accessibility, VO, speech, and tap on tom. Wento select another voice and when I flick up to listen to the voice I was going to select, Tome show up. Nuts.

Does MacOS 15.3 bring us any way to silences this unnecessary and distracting announcement? Or do I still need to keep Apple Intelligence turned off? I filed a Feedback request some time ago, but have received no response from Apple.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no way to disable this announcement in macOS Sequoia 15.3.

@Paul I don't really get it why you disabled completely AI as it's just one announcement and before and after it announces selection normally for me everywhere.
In fact on 15.3 we have and the announcement and a new sound so you won't be happy to hear that :)

I currently use Nathan enhanced on all my apple devices, mostly because I also use Nathan in JAWS, and I enjoy having the same voice experience no matter what device I'm using. i hope the issue with Samantha taking over the watch is fixed. I can't stand the Samantha voice, and losing access to Nathan would be very disappointing. I may hold off on updating my watch until I know that particular bug has been fixed.

I use Alison on my watch on the latest beta and I have never had problem with voices since I first started using my se2 on watchOS 10?

It did. Was able to get Tom back.

For the mac useless feature of renaming voices, it only seems to work for anything other than the primary voice. Can anyone confirm this?

Let me list some reasons why the writing tools announcement should have a switch so that it can be disabled.

One, many announcements in VoiceOver can be controlled in VO Utility, either with general verbosity or speech hints. This writing tools announcement is an outlier, an exception that is not controllable by these settings.

Two, 99% of the time that I select text, I want to cut, copy, or delete it, all of which have nothing to do with writing tools or the action menu.

Three, while writing and editing, repeatedly hearing this announcement takes my head out of the creative process. It is distracting. It reduces my productivity.

Four, when I select text, I expect VoiceOver to read the text I have selected, not make some other announcement. This causes me to have to press VO+F6 to hear the text I have selected, thereby adding one more keypress to every cut, copy, or delete operation.

Five, writing tools is also available from both the edit menu and the context menu. Why the Actions menu is specifically mentioned is unclear and confusing.

Six, After having heard this announcement a couple of times, I was fully aware that selecting text caused writing tools to appear on the Actions menu. Once I became aware of that, there was no longer a need for me to hear the announcement. But I can't turn it off (see item 1).

Seven, actually, I can turn it off. But both methods require me to disable one of the primary reasons I purchased this new, expensive, high-powered, AI-capable M4 computer.

eight, the announcement is pointless. Suppose, for example, every time you selected text, VoiceOver told you that you could press the Delete key to delete. I think you would scream for a way to turn that off.

Nine, sighted users do not have their work interrupted by this announcement.

There are probably more reasons for Apple to provide a simple switch to disable this announcement, or remove it altogether, but I've only had one cup of coffee so far. LOL.

Suppose you have a new mac user. Wouldn't this be helpful to them? I understand wanting the option to turn it off but if you have hints on on iOS its no more annoying to some then hearing the announcement actions available. I personally like knowing that and I've been using an iPhone for several years.

You are too soft on Apple. It's just yet another thing on the mac making the experience less smooth for us.

I sort of feel like I'm repeating what I already said, so let me be a bit more concise.

All I'm asking for is a checkbox in VO Utility.

Suppose speech hints were always on, verbosity was always high, speech rate was always slow, and there was no way to change these settings. The mistake Apple made with the writing tools announcement was that they failed to give us a way to turn it off.

Even I am being too soft on Apple. This announcement was a bad engineering decision, with zero consideration for why users actually select text. I find it impossible to believe this decision was unanimous. I hope those Apple accessibility engineers who initially objected, but were overuuled or outvoted, read this forum topic and use it as ammunition to improve the present situation.

It's another design error. Like do you know that the left-right arrow shortcut for quick is not listed as related to quicknav but it's outside the big table and yet we still have an element for turn single key quick nav and arrow key quick nav, which itself is unassigned by default, plus the default shortcuts vo q and vo shift q respectively? Seeing these I really wonder if the devs actually know their responsibility at all.

I finally figured out what's really bugging me about the Writing Tools in Action Menu announcement.

When I'm creating and working with content, I don't want Apple distracting me by drawing my attention to some unrelated UI element that I don't need to use, especially when that is being done purely for marketing reasons. They are effectively saying that it's more important for them to show me their new AI feature, than it is for me to be able to get my writing done in peace.

Sorry. You all have been incredibly patient, allowing me to rant about this. But I'll drop it now.

This is a perfect example, of why I used to keep for bossy on low, when I was on Mac.

Now's the time for me to say that on windows screen readers...
But I still recognize that ventura and sonoma were the worst accessibility experience I've ever had and I love each subtle bug sequoia patched. Like the one in nstextview especially.
To say something actually useful in this thread, from my experience so far the macos rc didn't bring any new bug, which is always a good news, nor did it break anything, or broke it further :) .

And this language switching not working bug introduced in ios17 I think in the status bar is yet to be resolved, as well as the navigation slider in a video/audio track on the lock screen since 16.

The focus issue with dock where we have to do vo-escape... is also present in the time machine menu from the status bar.