Spearheading The Accessibility Agenda: iOS 14

By Clayton Jacobs…, 22 June, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

For iOS, iPad, and for any Mac, Apple TV, and Homepod users, what accessibility changes do you want to see in the next update? I'm going to send this post to Apple's accessibility division.

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Comments

By DrewWeber on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

First and for most, thank you for taking this task to get the Apple Development team a post showing what the community would like to see as far as accessibility. I appreciate it. In later versions of iOS13, with some Bluetooth audio devices, (speakers) Voiceover speech can still come through the handset, IPhones speaker. I would like to see this become a universal feature, where one is able to choose the audio rout for VO speach for any connected BT auio device.

By Geoff on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Given that iOS 14 went into Developer beta today, and will be going into public beta next month, it's a bit late asking for new features now. Maybe if you ask for new features now you will get them in next years release.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

The post title speaks for itself. I'm hoping that Macs finally start getting better treatment, now that Apple has officially announced the transition to ARM.

Great suggestion. Sometimes, VoiceOver will speak when I have my iPhone connected to the Bose Sound link. When I'm listening to music or watching a video, I want to be able to send texts and use my phone without the VoiceOver audio coming through. Having the choice of routing VoiceOver bluetooth audio is important.

By Clayton Jacobs… on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Unregistered User (not verified)

It's been a few years since I paired a braille display, which was a Braille Note Apex to the Mac. What are the issues you are experiencing, and what do you want fixed?

By Justin Philips on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Transfering text or clipboard from IOS to and from windows should be easier. Right now, it is cumbersome.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

I would like to see the voice of Karen the Australia voice to be used for the US, or United States English voice for voiceover. Thanks for making a post to be send to the Apple disability division.

Yes I agree. I just started using the Google notes app Google keep. I use the IOS app on the apple side and the windows web version on the Windows side. It's ok so far. Also, I go to select text using the text selection option on the rotor and it's not there sometimes, even though I am pretty sure text is there. I realize I can do a three finger quadruple tap and that copies whatever VoiceOver says to clip board but that scenario does not work for me sometimes because it only copies one line or 1 string. Sometimes I want more text copied to the clipboard than that.

By Michael Feir on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Apple needs to build a tutorial for VoiceOver into iOS. The ladder to competence is too steep for newcomers who are unlikely to know about helpful resources like this site. It should teach VoiceOver from scratch to a high enough level of expertise to allow people to browse the web, use Apple books well enough to obtain and read the user guide for their product, and generally navigate the app store.

In said app store, I would also very much welcome a way to steer searches to apps known to work with VoiceOver. I wouldn't want anybody permanently limited to that but I'd like the ability to do such a search. The collections of accessible apps which Apple curates in the app store are too hidden away and desperately need more constant attention. So many splendid examples of good accessible apps remain unincluded and many which are in there have slipped in their accessibility. Flipboard comes to mind for instance.

By Ishkabibble on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Ever since I switched to UEB for braille screen input on my iPhone I have noticed the translator mishandles contractions and symbols frequently. For instance, I can’t enter the "for" contraction (I need to spell it out). Also, I can’t use contractions before apostrophes (can’t, it’s etc). Finally, the translator mishandles contractions before parentheses. These are quite serious braille translation bugs that only seem to be present on iOS at this point in time.

Indeed, and this is long long overdue. I've been using Apple products for 10 years, and I can remember my first iOS device, which was the first generation iPad. I thought it was similar to the Mac. I was wrong. I ended up taking back the iPad because nobody showed me how to use it, and there was no VoiceOver tutorial whatsoever. Then, when I got my first iPhone, I decided to stick through it, but I remember keenly throwing my iPhone across the room in frustration. Nobody at the store knew how to do the gestures, and getting accessibility support back then was more of a nightmare than it is now. I mastered it with time, but nobody should have to be frustrated after they just bought a new phone. I will also add that I have sighted friends who don't even know how to use their iPhones because Apple doesn't have an onboard tutorial for them either, which is also needed.

By Clayton Jacobs… on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Ishkabibble

Switch the braille table to English U.S. UEB has eliminated the contractions you are trying to type, which is why your iPhone is responding the way it is. The one issue I notice that does come up with BSI is that sometimes, for some strange reason, when I switch into braille screen input, the contracted mode turns off, so I have to enable it again, even though I have it set to contracted. Sometimes, I can't change it back in that particular text field. For example, when writing text captions for Facebook stories, BSI actually doesn't work at all.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Clayton Jacobs…

Translation is fine, but connection to a display is so unstable that it's useless. You can't Braille more than a few lines without characters being transposed. Eventually, the connection just resets and you lose a line or two or more of content. According to other users, it's been like this for years.

By Trenton Matthews on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Two things, which are more or less fixes than new features:

1. Siri Shortcuts with VoiceOver keyboard commands activating properly. They currently do not activate when I want to use one. E.G.ViceOver+A for the Google Assistant Siri Shortcut.
NB. If you have Full Keyboard Access turned on,
Settings>Accessibility>Keyboards>Full Keyboard Access
, there are no issues with using custom Siri Shortcuts. E.G. CTRL+1 for Google Assistant.

2. Making Full keyboard Access work better in the Apps Switcher and system applications.

By Wayne Scott Jr on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

I wish they would fix the well-known braille display bugs. Also, I wish they would fix the bluetooth. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, my bluetooth will just drop. I can't remember the braille display bugs; I bet you braille display users can figur
those out. I have tried BSI and cannot get the hang of it. I'm not really efficent in typing with the onscreen keyboard; therefore, I us
braille display.

By GeorgeStark on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

hello, i really want see third party sinthesisors on iOs 14, for example eSpeak.
If they will add eSpeak, more blind users will transission onto iPhones, because it supports so many languages.

By Robin on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Hi, It's probably too late to get this into #iOS14 but I’m writing to request that Apple extend the haptic and audible feedback that signifies that a device has successfully powered up while plugged in to also occur when a device is on battery.
This would not only benefit those who are blind but also those who are deaf blind with the haptic feedback in addition to the audible tone to know that powering up has completed when not plugged into a charger cable thus alleviating the uncertainty of knowing that the process has completed. Many competing phone models have this, and it would be very beneficial to have this on iDevices as well to be more certain that the device has successfully powered up. Thank you for your consideration.

By Bingo Little on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Clayton, UEB has not deleted the 'for' contraction, nor contractions such as c't for can't, etc. The problem is the Liblouis table Apple uses. if you switch to the UEB system table with a two-finger swipe upwards (or is it downwards?) you'll find those translation errors are fixed. But it would be very good to be able to update the Liblouis Braille tables mannually. The reason is that the Liblouis tables used by Voiceover are now several versions out of date. I don't imagine this would be too difficult to implement so I hpoe that can be achieved.

As for other accessibility features I think by and large Voiceover works really well and I'd rather time were spent squashing the bugs that have been identified. UK Siri female also needs somewhat of a makeover.

By Ishkabibble on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

I just switched to the system UEB braille table. The contractions for can't, there's etc work now. The contraction for "for" still doesn't work though, but BSI is so much better now that I can actually type properly. Thanks. :)

By WellF on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Adding the possibility to create your own voiceover sound packs, for example inside an activity, would be nice.
Also fixing that weird gesture which doesn't work on iphones and adding some new ones and, finally, adding the possibility to assign gestures to specific function inside apps. For example a 3 fingers sweep right to send messages on whatsapp, twitter and so on.

By Orlando on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In Apple‘s WWDC 2020 conference they did mention that there was supposed to be more transparency between Apple and Apple developers for consumers. I would like to see in the App Store when I select an app if it has been tested for use with voiceover or not. It doesn’t have to necessarily be accessible. But it would be nice to know if it has been tested with voiceover or any other accessibility functions that the app could possibly use.
Just my two cents.
I hope everybody’s doing well!

By Dennis Long on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

third party TTS ability to customize caller id how often it repeats and vo to have its own accessibility volume.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

I thought about this suggestion, I don’t know if it could be possible but it doesn’t hurt to throw it out there. My suggestion is to allow people to label photos with in the photos app so in the near future people could know what photos they are by the name that the person titled the picture as.

By burak on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

For a while now, when you add a rotor language and set it to a different speed than your original speed, it does not change speed when you switch to that language. I would like this to be fixed.

By Blinddean on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Being able to rout the voice-over track to headphones so it doesn’t disturb the non-visually impaired/blind community

By sockhopsinger on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Dennis, VO already has its own volume. IT is in the accessibility roter.

For the "for" contraction, it does work. All you do is hit five dots at once, and then lift one finger and hit the sixth dot while continuing to hold down at least some of the original five dots. As long as you don't lift your fingers off the screen completely before hitting that sixth dot, the "for" contraction will work.

By Nawaf Allohaibi on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

On iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, the voiceover switch voices between languages automatically on all the system, this feature is available mini years ago on previous OS; but sadly on macOS it’s not available for all the system, on recent macOS it just available for web.
This is the most feature I request to made auto language switcher on all the system; It’s useful for a multi language user.
Some people say auto language switcher or multi language detection.
If Apple add this feature and made it customizable with Activity feature is too powerful, this is how I want…
if I typed something wrong forgive me because the English it’s not my main language.

By roman on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Hello. I got my apple watch yesterday from my brother, and I tried to use the air-pod second gen. but it is lagging inconsistently. and I also hope that they will add the aanhanst voice of vocaliser.

By charles on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Rather than siri telling us that she found this on the web, I would like her to actually read it aloud. If she can open apps, why can't she close them? Fun responses are, well, fun, but I would like for Siri to actually be more of what she is claimed to be; a personal DATA assistant.

By Clayton Jacobs… on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by charles

Yes indeed. Also, the time between issuing the summoning command for Siri needs to be instantaneous. If Siri was the personal assistant it should be, I would use it for everything. Siri capabilities need dramatic improvements.

By TJT 2001 on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

The reason that Apple has the limitation on only five simultaneous touch points for iPhones is that many people keep their phones in pockets with the screen on, and it would be quite easy for someone to unknowingly do things when the phone is brushing against their body.

By BlindGayVegan on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Would love to be able to set a non-american English voice as my standard English voice. Prefer to use a British English voice instead. Use my phone in Swedish, but English websites for example are automatically read in American English, really want a British voice to read it instead.

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Check the many youtube videos on it. Siri is faster and more responsive. Remember this is the first release. Also apple does not check applevis so I do not think making suggestion will go far. You have a better chance to win the million Dollar. I just want all bugs gone. Is that to much to ask? Planning to get iPhone 12 pro. Hope be good. Long live the apple.

By Clayton Jacobs… on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

Apple accessibility did respond to me when I sent the link to Apple accessibility. They are looking at this forum. I was able to get it done.

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Clayton Jacobs…

Maybe someone did once. They may look but not listen to those who have so many issues with Braille. Bugs tend to be fix when a major release is out. I am just looking for the bugs to be history. I payed $1000 for my 11 pro max and I expect it to work well. No one gave it to me. My money. Hope iOSs 14 is much better.

By Wayne Scott Jr on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Unfortunately, if you're looking for bug-free software, forget it! There will always be bugs. It's just learning how to work around them. There's no such thing as perfect software. That's my final say on that.

By charles on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

Yes, Holger, a bug free first version of an operating system certainly is too much to ask. You send the same complaints out each thime we get a new operating system for the iPhone. Maybe the $1,100 phone does not have issues, but the new OS does, and based on the extreme complexity of such a system, bugs are bound to exist. The more beta testers who use Voice-Over there are, and the better they do their debugging during the beta process, the better the result will be. I do not expect immediate perfection, and I think that those who do expect it are being totally unrealistic.

If a bug happens that affect sighted people, is fix ASAP. I expect the same. I know perfect OS will not happen. We are not second class citizens. We pay for the iPhone or any other apple product.

Holger has been a naysayer for years. I had the unfortunate displeasure of dealing with him on Vorail. Instead of doing what I did, putting this thread up to spearhead changes, he tries to disempower the blind empowered ones and then simultaneously complains. There's too much of this garbage in the blind community, and I'm tired of it. I'm going to do what I do, and I'm not going to ask permission from the blind community to see what they think as to whether my approach will work. I know what works and what doesn't, and I have the knowledge and experience to back it up. With all that said, here's my take on bugs: be proactive about mentioning them and demand fixes. Be persistent and consistent with it. Also, just because there's a new OS version doesn't mean you have to download it right away. I was hesitant to download to iOS 13.5 because I didn't want Apple to annonymously track me with the contact tracing for the Coronavirus. I didn't update until iOS 13.5.1, once I found out that the tracker doesn't work unless you have the accompanying app installed. So you don't have to update until you feel like it. There's 2 things you can do to stop auto updates, and you have to do both things. Turn off automatic updates in the software update area. At night when you go to bed and you have it charging, turn on airplane mode.

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

In reply to by Clayton Jacobs…

I do not kiss apple ...

Doesn't existing audio routing option allow you to do this? Or are you saying that it doesn't work for some devices? I've not actually tried it, but this is what I would expect it to do.

The only way I think you could do this is to set the default voice-over voice to your desired English voice. This means that voice-over would actually be working in English, hopefully it would still read your phone that is set to Swedish. But it should at least read English content in the voice you prefer.

By Clayton Jacobs… on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

VoiceOver improvements to photo editing are needed. When using the handles with cropping, information about the background, colors, parts of images, and text need to be spoken with VoiceOver when moving the handles. With the filters, having a more info button next to them, with the more info box containing a description of how the filter would affect the visual quality of the photos would be helpful.

By Bruno Prieto on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

I would like that voiceover read indentation, very useful for programming or making schemes. It could be done with tones, from lower to higher, as the indentation of the line increases. It could also be reported with amount of spaces or tabs.

By Devin Prater on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 01:33

Hi all. I'd love to see VoiceOver describe formatting information, and show it in braille using braille codes, not the inaccurate status cells. VoiceOver could also use speech, pitch, intonation, stuff like that to show formatting, like bold and italics. For blind people that say that we don't need all that sightie stuff, when an author writes something, isn't that important? Yes. Every little word is used for something. And, so is the presentation of the text. And, if you're in school, many textbooks bold the vocabulary words you're looking for to complete that "hunt the definitions" assignment. So, I think that we should be able to view that formatting. And yes, I've submitted feedback to Apple. If anyone else is with me and wants more than the blind status quo for reading text, mention "FB7725196."

Of course, this may be fixed in iOS14. It may be one of the reasons why they went with the Liblouis braille tables in the first place. At least I know they support formatting, as BrailleBlaster does great with it. As an aside, one can load BRF files into BARD Mobile, so if I can, I just convert EPUB books into BRF with Braille Blaster on the Mac and read them in BARD Mobile. Now Apple, you want everyone to use your Books app, right?

I'd also love it if Apple made some games. I know, it'd just be an Apple Arcade exclusive, but goodness I know at least Apple would try to make it accessible, unlike all other games on Apple Arcade. And no, Dear Reader isn't because having VOICEOVER announce text changes isn't accessibility, it's a workaround.