iOS 14 Widget Woes

I was all excited about using the new widgets in iOS 14 after listening to the excellent AppleVis podcast on this topic. So I went ahead and put together a stack of widgets using VoiceOver.

Now I wish I hadn't done that and rearranged my home screen to try and get rid of some apps.

First, I thought having all of the widgets stacked would be a great idea to quickly preview some apps without actually finding them and opening them up. Of course you will want to stack them because they take up a two by two area on your home screen. But what a pain to switch widgets! Here is the tedious process one has to use:
1. Swipe to the stack of widgets.
2. Swipe up or down several times until you get to the "next widget" or "previous widget" item.
3. Activate the "next widget" or "previous widget" choice by performing a single finger double tap.
4. Now you have opened the next or previous widget. If this isn't the widget you wanted, you are out of luck and there is more work to do. Unfortunately, since you are now in the new widget, you can't simply swipe up/down to get to the "next widget" or "previous widget". Proceed to the next step!
5. Now, since focus is in the widget that you don't want, you have to flick to get out of it and onto some other folder, app, or screen element.
6. With focus now out of the open widget, you have to go all the way back to step #1 and go through the process again. What a nightmare and waste of time if the widget you want is several widgets from the one that is open!

Much as I love the accessibility of my iPhone, it is this type of workflow that would make me shy away from ever moving from Windows to Mac. Although the above process is Perfectly "accessible", it isn't really "useable", "productive", or "efficient". If one has to initiate an inordinate number of actions to get something done, even if every action and element is "accessible", it certainly isn't enjoyable or fast.

Anyway, sorry for the editorial there, so let me move on.

The second issue I am seeing is that, although I was able to swipe to and from the widget stack after first setting up my stack of widgets, it seems that now I am often only able to swipe away from an open widget to a folder or app on the home screen and then, when trying to swipe to the widget stack, I can only actually swipe back again to the open widget. If one can't navigate to the widget stack, one never gets the option to switch to another widget in the stack. When in an "open" widget, flicking left/right moves as it would within the open widget dialog and stays within that widget. This particularly happens when the Calendar is one of the widgets in the widget stack and one opens the Calendar widget. I find no way of getting out of it.

But wait, there is more!

The third issue I am seeing is that flicking left into an open widget and then flicking right to get out doesn't bring me to the same place from which I started. For example, if I am on my Messages app and flick left into an open widget, then when I flick right to get out of the open widget focus will unexpectedly end up on my Notes app. I expect flicking one way and then back again to land me in my original location. I understand that the widget is taking up a two by two grid, but I do expect the process to be reversible, i.e., flicking right should undo a flick left.

Fourth and finally (for now), although in the AppleVis podcast when Thomas changed from widget to widget in the stack the title or app associated with the widget was spoken, I am often not getting that feedback. Thus, after switching to the next or previous widget I have to flick within the newly opened widget to find out which one it is. If that wasn't the widget I was looking for, you guessed it, I have to go back to the six step process listed at the beginning of this post.

Maybe there is something I'm doing wrong here, but the user experience with widgets and VoiceOver certainly hasn't been pleasurable thus far with this user. Hopefully someone has some pointers that could help. In the meantime I'll probably work on getting rid of these widgets and putting my home screen back to where it was in iOS 13.

As a side note, I'm thinking that Apple didn't take advantage of the one feature of using VoiceOver that would be advantageous for blind users. Since VoiceOver users don't care about the size of print and only use speech feedback, these widgets that take up a two by two grid for sighted users need only take up a one by one grid for us VoiceOver users! Well, that's a bit of tongue in cheek, but on the serious side, I hope there is a solution for some of the above issues.

FYI, my system is an iPhone XR. The widgets in my stack are: Stocks, Calendar, Battery, News, and Weather. Don't know if some of these particular widgets might be individually ill behaved or not.

--Pete