VoiceOver focus may jump to the first UI element on the screen after you have interacted with another element on the screen

Category
VoiceOver Announcements/Feedback
Severity
Minor

Description

On occasion, you may find that VoiceOver focus will jump to the first UI element on the screen soon after you go to that screen, but after you have placed VoiceOver focus on another UI element.

For example, after using View from the Actions menu on a notification and then placing focus on to the Delete button, focus will jump to the Dismiss button. If the timing is right, this may happen just as you double-tap on what you expect to be Delete. Similar behavior can routinely be reproduced after selecting to ‘react’ to a message in the Messages app, where VoiceOver focus will initially be on the ‘Heart’ tapback, but then jump to the Back button.

These are just two examples. Similar behavior is present system-wide.

Bug First Encountered

iOS/iPadOS 13.1

Device(s) bug has been encountered on

iPhone
iPad

How often the bug occurs

Sometimes

Status

Fixed

Fixed In

iOS/iPadOS 14.0

Options

Comments

Submitted by John on Sunday, October 27, 2019

I’m surprised people haven’t reported experience this. It has happened for quite a long time over several versions of iOS. I find it incredibly bothersome. Yes it doesn’t harm anything and if I was a very slow user I probably wouldn’t encounter it. But it bites me often. And I really hate this bug.

If this is an intended behavior then I really wish it was optional. Maybe there’s some reason people liking it jumping to the top left element on your screen. But I would choose to disable that feature.

Submitted by Oliver Kennett on Thursday, January 23, 2020

Hi, I'd like to suggest that this is upgraded from minor. Though I understand it doesn't actually stop us from using the phone, it does, for me at least, mean I can't use the phone effectively. I'm encountering this a lot in most apps as well as the notification centre which is incredibly frustrating especially after scrolling through a long list which I must then go through once again.

I believe that the screen is simply refreshing once everything is loaded, I'm on an iPhone 8 so it might be a little slower, and VoiceOver therefore resets to the start position.