VO handwriting cannot be exited with a 2 finger scrub

By Brian Negus, 9 November, 2019

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

In both iOS and iPadOS 13.2.2 a two finger scrub gesture will not exit handwriting. This certainly worked in iOS 12 and is stated to work in iOS 13.2 in the Apple iPhone User Guide. I have reported this issue to Apple. I know, of course, that handwriting can be exited by turning the rotor. I'll explain why the scrub is important. I have trained many people to use VO and an inability to perform the standard rotor gesture effectively is common. It's also common that people are not familiar with the layout of a QWERTY keyboard, so that handwriting is the only available solution when dictation is inappropriate, either because of impaired speech or because dictation simply isn't accurate enough for some words. Fortunately, many people can handwrite in spite of limited dexterity. iOS 13 lets me redefine the rotor gestures to the much easier two finger left and right swipes, but iOS 13 does not allow the rotor gesture to be redefined within handwriting, where the two finger right and left gestures are already defined as space and backspace, anyway. So anyone who needs both handwriting and a simpler rotor gesture is stuck. As soon as the two finger swipe right reaches handwriting, there is no way out except for the standard rotor gesture. I do hope that Apple can fix this. It will make a big difference to VO users with impaired dexterity who are unfamiliar with keyboard layout. If the Applevis editorial team spot this post and can reproduce the issue, I'd be grateful if it could be added to the known bugs list. I have reproduced it on several devices here in the UK.

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