disappointment from iOS 16.4 update

beings you installed a beta use the feedback app to report and report and report. meaning when 16.4 beta 1 came out if it was present when beta 2 came out if it was present you report again when beta 3 came out you report again when beta 4 came out you report again.

switch to something else or deal with it. As someone who has been a beta tester I will tell you that not all issues are easily fixable. Apple has a pretty good record of fixing bugs.

I am extremely concerned by the sentiments in this message. Firstly it’s the usual and depressingly predictable turning on ourselves that is so chorosive to our community and stops organising against very real issues. It’s incredibly invalidating to the person who is feeling their problems and concerns with what is becoming an enormous part of our life being ignored. Electronic devices are so central to everything we do and have to do. And although I’m looking at things subjectively I’m pretty certain that objectively accessibility is getting worse which means things that are central to our lives are becoming less usable. Lastly of course It’s just wrong to say if you don’t like it use something else. There are 2 options. It’s not like hundreds of options exist and we are gambling through a meadow of plenty spoiled for choices options and basking in the beauty of a world rendered accessible. 2 options, one of which is an even more challenging solution. For these reasons I 100% support the member of my community whose life is being made more difficult than it needs to be by a company who care less for accessibility than they once did. Lastly and I cannot let this go unsaid. Apple are not good at addressing bugs. To say they are is the literal definition of a delusion. I most definitely don’t want to be confrontational but I couldn’t allow your comments to go unchallenged, if you are offended thats fine but I couldn’t not say anything.

It seen that every year VO is getting worse as by this poste and others. Reporting bugs is great but if Apple do not consider them priority what is the point. We pay over $1000 for a phone. Yes, bugs happen but not addressing them ASAP. If this were an issue that affected sighted people apple be addressing them ASAP. When Apple Vis invite Sara from apple hope they ask her about this issue and not let her get away with saying we are addressing bugs. They are not. If they do not feel like doing so, please do not invite her back. We do not need Apple to use this place for advertisement about how wonderful they are.

I agree 100%. Have Bella the Cat go over and scratch out some eyes, and maybe if those with their eyes scratched out are affected, it will make a difference. :)

Bella the cat says no. She did not get me the phone so I have to deal with the bugs and apple. She has my PC which is windos and jaws. I think she likes jaws.

I know it's frustrating. I live as a braille user in android land which, although things have improved tremendously and are indeed almost at parody if you are using compatible displays, is still rife with bugs. I hate reporting them but I do it anyway, there are very few braille users in this world, even fewer on my platform of choice, and I suspect that's also true with Hebrew braille users on iOS. It's possible the accessibility team genuinely doesn’t know about braille bugs because probably very few of them use braille and those that do are almost certainly testing things here and there instead of using it in their daily lives. It's frustrating because there's no guarantee things will get better, I totally agree the accessibility on both major platforms needs serious work and it's often not happening.

Try to do the same thing entering voiceover settings with your phone set to english to see if it still crashes to iron out the bug and figure out the bug to see if its only specific to heebru or its voiceover wide.

I don't think there's a preset time as to how long it takes to investigate something, as some of these bugs can be really hard to pinpoint.

It could be a hard bug to track down. Another thing to consider if you and only 2 or 3 other users are reporting it that could be the issue. At that point it could be a setting on your phone a Phone ETC. There are so many Variables to consider.

Fixing bugs isn't just done in the snap of a finger. Some bugs can be really hard to fix. I do, however, wish apple was a bit more transparent in fixing bugs, instead of sending the usual canned responce, though.

Agreed fixing bugs is a significant part of what Apple has to do to stay in business, the unfortunate thing for voiceover users is they aren’t doing enough. Things are only hard when they don’t have a sufficient amount of resources being allocated to them. If non voiceover users were expected to cope with the number and severity of bugs with the impact on their lives that we do there wouldn’t be many iPhone users.

Agree with you.

Although I'm greatful to have a phone I can use, I wish apple would give VO the attention it deserves. This is why I am still on IOS 14. I paid over 1200 on my phone and it works ok under IOS 14. I don't want to mess things up by upgrading.. I get that bugs take time to fix. But long standing issues like the phone app losing focus and the problems with braille have been around for a year. There's no excuse for that! If apple doesn't have enough resources to pollish VO, maybe they should either outsource their accessibility features or allow for third party AT companies to create a screen reader for the iphone. After all, we have narrator, jaws and NVDA for windows, so why can't we have more choices as apple users. I'm willing to pay good money for an IOS equivalent to jaws,

Question since Apple release VO, do we know if a major upgrate was made to VO, I am not counting the features that was added to it. I do not consider them fixes to VO. People get happy if Apple throw them a bone by adding a nice feature, like new voices and elequence. Bella the cat is not amuse.!

Hey, I understand your puddy cats concern. The way I see it is that VO has never really had any major upgrades, more incremental feature additions but I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. Remember how much people lost their minds when iOS 7 changed the design of a few icons and introduced the flatter design language? Now make changes for the VO community and watch the fireworks. Understandably people who can’t see whats going on kind of want things to stay the same or close to the same which is great because once you learn VO, you pretty much know it forever however it does mean that potential innovation could be held back and that innovation could have really improved some lives. I kind of think about it similarly to aviation. There is so much more capability to automate aviation and implement massive safety improvements but at the same time nobody wants to mess with something that works and cause accidents. I’m sure there are probably people at apple who have great ideas planned out for VO on their machines but implementing them would piss a certain percentage of users off so it doesn’t get done. It’s a difficult line to walk for Apple IMHO. Where I think they have failed is adapting to changes in web standards, API’s and app design in a way that allows VO users to keep up and of course in dealing with bugs. Not saying this is definitely whats wrong but it feels right to me. The right line to walk with innovation is a tricky one but the lack of resource to fix bugs and adapt to new ways of designing and using iOS is a flat fail that needs addressing. ASAP. I’m sure there are great people at Apple who want to get this stuff done but like any organisation they’re probably fighting for priority. I think they need a little higher priority to bring VO back up to a standard they and we can all be proud of. Maybe their are fundamental changes they could make, perhaps VO isn’t considered along side OS changes but the accessibility team have to adapt later to changes for example, I don’t know but whatever needs to change has to change quickly because I’m definitely falling out with my phone and iPad regularly. It stops me, inhibits me and makes me avoidant of things I could have got done. Thats not what the devices, OS’s or VO were designed for. Apple makes money when their users are happy and significant numbers of VO users aren’t. Maybe the day will come when instead of iOS being the gold standard, best available accessibility solution there is, maybe its just an also ran. Maybe then its Oh do you remember that VO thing I used back in the day? Whatever happened to that? All it needs is an appropriate amount of resource to get the job done. Nothing else. All this is written humbly and with full knowledge it might not all be the full story. Anyone disagree or wants to add anything? I’d love to hear it. Maybe if we can think and act as a community with a common goal instead of a few individual voices endlessly reporting bugs, we could get somewhere? I’m sure we all want this to work as I hope do Apple.

Bella the cats like using jaws. You get fixes every 3 months and they do address bugs. VO does so not. Every year we cross fingers but apple does not address them, such as VO stop working when ending calls, Braille issues, now focus for some, and so. Bella could do a better job of running their accessibility program.

I can understand her thinking Whiskers are better but not JAWS lol. Yeh JAWS is very capable but its had its issues too. I wish they’d prioritise making JAWS never stop speaking. VO seems to do that pretty well. Very often on JAWS though the TTS just shuts up and won’t speak again. Thats the equivalent of the screen going off and not coming back on to a sighted person.

Well she likes VO but she would prefer it works better. When she uses her paw or noce to touch the phone it works. Go figure.

Just get your cat to use your phone for you. She’s got an obvious advantage. She’s probably fully sighted right? Hehe.

Dogs do what you want, cats do not. People own dogs, cats own people.

No matter what, it is very important to report these issues to Apple accessibility either by emailing them or calling them. Whether or not they fix it is really based on how many people make the effort to reach out. There are 26 comments in this post. I wonder if Apple received 26 calls/emails About this issue.

A lot of bugs do get resolved. It does take time and it does take our willingness to be consistent. In some cases, they only take notice if multiple people are out reaching about the same thing.

I will say this. I’ve had multiple conversations with different representatives, who have generally reported hearing about the issue for the first time when I’m calling about it. There doesn’t seem to be any record of other people calling about it. And the representatives are generally surprised because “if it’s a big deal, why aren’t people reaching out?” That’s what they say. Also if only one or two people are reaching out about an issue, they might be taking the premise that it’s only affecting the one person based on their specific use case scenario.

This has never been a forum for resolving accessibility issues. It has only ever been a forum for interacting with other users of voiceover. If others can come to a consensus that there is a bug, I think it’s important that as a community, people reach out to apple and reach out consistently. Many of the users on this website behave as if this is the one place to report an issue. There’s a possibility that some of the accessibility reps and engineers are monitoring this. But they’re not using the website as a platform to decide what to fix or what not to fix. That’s based on specific direct feedback that is received. And the importance level is based on the number of people that are sending out feedback.

Major iOS issues that are not based on accessibility are usually fixed based on millions upon millions of people sometimes reaching out and submitting feedback. At the very least moderately frustrating issues get hundreds of people reaching out.

In all honesty, I would love for jaws or NVDA to come to Mac and iOS. I’m more than happy to utilize those services. But again, as I spoke to freedom scientific representative, one of the biggest reasons why they’re not coming onto the platform is based on the idea that people are generally satisfied with iOS. So they have no reason to come. The question they’re going to ask themselves always is “is this investment going to be something that results in a bigger return? “. They’re not doing this because they really care about everyone having Accessibility. Maybe on some small level, yes they do. But ultimately, VoiceOver exists, because Apple thinks they can make money off of the people who buy their products. Jaws exists because freedom scientific is making money off of it.

There are literally millions of people that use voiceover around the world. The vast majority have not a clue about this website. And they are mostly going to be very basic users. I’m going to go get a new guy dog on Monday. I will be around 30 people who are Using iPhones and voiceover. I will say that probably 28 out of those 30 are using their iPhones for basic phone calls, text messages, some emailing, and maybe some YouTube and social media. They’re not experts, and they have no interest in being experts. They’re genuinely grateful to have accessibility at all. They don’t know what a focus bug is. They literally think it’s because they made a touch mistake and forget about it. And even if they’re aware that there’s a bug, they’re not really worried about it getting fixed because they got other priorities. They just assume that Apple will get to it at some point. Most of those people aren’t calling Apple accessibility or emailing Apple accessibility because there’s a bug. They’re literally calling or emailing because they’re trying to figure out how to make a phone call or send a group message.

As always:

Accessibility@apple.com

18772043930.

I apologize for not providing email addresses and phone numbers for outside of the United States. I honestly don’t know what they are.

As far as jaws fixing bugs before vo, I disagree with that. I don't know how many times I've reported a bug to fs and they blame my pc, and then a million years later the same bug that I previous reported turns out to be an actutal fixed bug. Maybe things have gotten better since Eric Dumbow left but my point is at least apple does not blame ones phone for a bug like fs blames ones pc for a bug. Once 16.4 is released I'll just look at the blog post on this site like I always do with any ios release and go from there.