VO lags, unaddressed bugs, ETC

By Nuno, 12 February, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello everyone! Since I will need to put an app in the iOS Appstore in a short while, i decided to get myself a Mac Mini M1 2021 or whatever they are called. I have used OSX back in 2013, and I didn't like it then because of strange VO commands and such. From what I have gathered now, VO is laggy and there are no external TTS voices which makes it very hard to code on Mac in my opinion, then there are some Voice Over bugs and missing basic features, such as reading the date and time, ETC. I want to ask, why these bugs aren't addressed? Its not from today that I hear such opinions. Don't people report to Apple or they just don't care? I ask because this company advertises as the pro-disabled one, and my iPhone experience was rather good, even though I have switchedt o Android because of the screenreader. What are your opinions on this?

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Comments

By Cobbler on Monday, February 28, 2022 - 11:24

I share your frustration at how macOS seems to go unnoticed and unloved by Apple's accessibility team.

There are bugs still present which I have reported multiple times over the past few years.

Your Mac becoming unresponsive for anything up to 10 seconds whilst VoiceOver repeated ā€œAppName not respondingā€ would see legal claims against Apple if it were experienced by sighted users just a fraction of the time VoiceOver users have to sit through it.

Considering how powerful my M1 MacBook is supposed to be and its price, these many occasions daily when its unusable are reason alone why I wouldn't currently recommend a Mac to a blind user.

And don't get me started on the little bugs which would likely take only a few minutes of a developer's time to resolve. I simply do not understand why Apple can't even put in the bare minimum to address these.

Like iOS, it seems that if a bug has been around for more than a few single dot releases, you can forget about it being fixed. And, unfortunately with macOS, there's a lot of bugs which have been around for what seems like forever.

I understand that many of Apple's accessibility team are blind or low vision themselves. It's hard to imagine that they actually use Macs. If they did, you would hope that things would be much better.

By Chris on Monday, February 28, 2022 - 11:24

The last comment reflects my thoughts for several years now. Mac accessibility isn't a priority, despite what the Apple apologists say. We can't talk to anyone inside Apple because they're so secretive, and anyone who tells you this isn't true is some sort of very privileged individual who has insider access for an unknown reason. We mere mortals/customers aren't worthy to talk to the almighty Tim Cook or any of his executives/engineers. Well, I guess the exception consists of false PR representatives, but that's not the same at all. I welcome Sarah Herrlinger, Tim Cook, any other executives, or the developers themselves to come out here to publicly apologize and pledge to drastically improve. It's a nice fantasy, right? Vote with your wallet and stop buying Macs that have subpar accessibility. There was a time when VoiceOver was great and had lots of potential, but that ship sailed a long long time ago. I went as far as to email Tim Cook 3 years ago expressing my concerns and requesting more attention be dedicated to the Mac, but of course nothing happened.

By Nuno on Monday, February 28, 2022 - 11:24

Its a pity that such things happen, as VO has a lot! of potential. Since I am rather stupborn, so I will be spamming Apple. Just tell me where. Also, I knew one person who worked at apple, this relation is hidden under lots of dust though, and so I need to find this person online somewhere and ask whether they couldn't do anything

By Ekaj on Monday, February 28, 2022 - 11:24

I just got an M1 MacBook Air for Christmas and really like it. I think the only issue I'm having is that I frequently get an error message upon startup that is not being read by VoiceOver. I've done everything I can think of, and still no luck. I seem to be the only techie around here. Others have iOS, but they can't figure it out either. Other than that, it's been smooth sailing on my end.