Hi everyone,
I’ve had the iPad Pro (4 years old model) with the official Magic Keyboard, and I feel like each major iPadOS update keeps making accessibility worse — at least for my use case.
I originally bought the iPad to read Kindle books and take notes, as well as to send the occasional email. From the beginning, text editing wasn’t great and felt unstable. For instance, when using Split View with Kindle and a note-taking app like Drafts, the keyboard wouldn’t even work properly in the notes app.
Since iPadOS 18, things have gotten worse. Focus randomly jumps to the status bar while I’m typing, especially when pressing VO + Space. Navigation with VO + Right Arrow is also unreliable and inconsistent.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
Any workarounds or solutions?
Right now, I’m seriously considering selling the iPad and just using my iPhone with an external keyboard — it’s more stable and gives me fewer issues with VoiceOver. That said, I’d really like to have a dedicated device just for reading and writing. Maybe it’s a mental block, but I don’t enjoy doing everything on my phone; it doesn’t feel like I’m disconnecting.
Thanks in advance!
By alexr, 12 May, 2025
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
My Experience
In my experience, the iPad is very little more than a device for reading and basic text editing when it comes to accessibility. I could list numerous issues with text editing—many beyond those already mentioned—but I’ll spare everyone the details with that summary.
Yes, text editing issues go way beyond that
Totally agree with you.
I only listed the issues that annoy me the most or that I could remember at the time, but the list is definitely much longer — and it makes the experience really frustrating overall.
iPad.
Now that I'm reading the editing difficulties you all are having, I am re-considering purchasing an iPad.
Be careful if you have a trackpad!
Hello:
I have an iPad with the Magic keyboard and trackpad. I've noticed the trackpad is very sensitive and often jumps me to the menu bar when I am editing text and accidentally touch part of it. I've gone under settings and set the response to slow, which helps a bit, but it is still really annoying. I wish I could disable the trackpad as I don't use it, but it is part of the keyboard case and I don't know of any way of totally turning it off.
Hope this helps.
Jim
@Jim D
There is now a new option in VoiceOver settings to ignore trackpad. Activate it and you're good to go
Jim: Thanks
Thanks, Jim.
I actually disabled the trackpad too, since it was indeed causing some issues at times — but unfortunately, it hasn’t improved my experience much overall.
Re: iPad (to gailisaiah)
My advice would be to buy the iPad from a store with a good return policy, so you can test whether it suits your specific use cases and how much tolerance you have for something that isn’t always stable or reliable.
For example, if you're mainly planning to use it for watching Netflix, it’s great — and most of the issues probably won’t affect you.
But if your tasks are more productivity-oriented, I’d be cautious before buying.
I had an awful experience
I had a really bad experience with iPads and it sucks, because ideally I'd like an iPad/tablet to complement my desktop as a laptop replacement. I had an iPad Pro 10.5 that I've had since before I lost my eyesight and I was using the Smart Keyboard I've had since 2017 and the Logitech Slim Touch keyboard I think? No matter what, if I had QuickNav on or off and Full Keyboard Access on or off, the keyboards would act up - for example, pressing H would go to Home instead of heading and the keyboard would straight up stop typing in the middle of writing. I even tried with an iPad 9th generation, and the same thing happened with the Smart Keyboard. It's really, really shameful.
I really like to use my i pad
Since i started with the i pad a few years ago i have had no problems using it. Right now i am using a i pad air m 2 i use it as a replacement for my lab top i find it easier to use and plus it is portable as well
I've sworn off the iPad
I had an iPad 4th gen that maxed out at iOS 10.3.3. In spite of that, it was a great device. Text editing worked flawlessly. But it was old hardware. I needed it to run Zoom, Google Docs, and Google Drive all at the same time, but it wasn't up to the task. It ran slow and heated up when I tried it.
To address the multitasking issue, I traded in my old iPad for the M1 iPad Pro, and this came with a new OS upgrade that totally threw text editing in the toilet. Sadly, the 4th-gen iPad was gone as part of the trade-in deal, so there was no turning back. I ended up giving my M1 iPad Pro to my spouse, who uses it as the world's most expensive eBook reader. I've been without an iPad ever since and haven't looked back.