Using Voiceover and Voice Control together On IOS

Hi
You have to use specific VoiceOver commands to use it in conjunction with Voice Control, but it works super well in my experience. You should be able to find a list of them if you go to the settings for Voice Control under accessibility and look at the command list. The VoiceOver specific ones are under "accessibility".

No problem! Glad it works for you.
One other thing I forgot to add is that you can also use Voice Controls built-in command recording functionality to shorten commands, because the VoiceOver commands are a bit long winded by default. I have, for instance, mapped "go left" to "VoiceOver select previous item" or whatever the original command name is.

From what I understand, VoiceOver and Voice Control were never necessarily meant to be used together . I took a look at the access commands for Voice Control under Accessibility, and they are pretty long. My understanding is that Voice Control was designed for individuals with limited mobility. It wasn't primarily created for someone who is blind or visually impaired, and I don't think it was intended for VoiceOver and Voice Control to work in combination. These are two similar elements that operate in somewhat different ways. As I understand it, on the screen, you have numbers or a grid that correspond to each item. For example, if YouTube is number one on your phone, Twitter is number two, Facebook is number three, Messenger is number four, and so on, you would say "double tap number one" or "activate number two." This entire concept seems very confusing to me. Does it work with numbers or grids, or do you say "tap A," "tap B," "double tap C?" How exactly does that function? It works well for general commands like "open home" or "open YouTube," but the finer details seem unnecessarily difficult.
Shouldn't this feature be powered by an AI system so that the device can know what I want? Shouldn't it be as intuitive as "go home," "open YouTube," or "open Facebook"? The problem is, you have to know what's on the screen to actually navigate effectively. This only works when you already have a visual understanding of the screen's layout. If I don't know what's on an unfamiliar website, and there's a search button, how would I even know it's there? Would I have to say, "read the screen aloud to me," and then when I hear "search," say "stop, double tap search, in the search box type, 'how to bake a cranberry pie'"? Maybe I don't fully understand how it works. I don't want to be negative though. Sincerely hope that you can figure it out and that the person that you're trying to help will get better use out of it than I did.

Use both of them at the same time without a problem It takes some learning but I far prefer dictating with voice control. That way I get immediate feedback

It is perfectly possible to use the two features together and they do work well but you have to memorise both the structure of the app layout and also the particular commands to use as well as making sure you use a headset or earbuds! Here is my current list:
0000 All common Voice Control commands
iOS and Voiceover Commands used for Voice Control

Command Mode.
Dictation Mode
Spelling mode

With phone calls: VoiceOver magic tap
Tap end call
Tap decline.

Open AppName.
Open app switcher
Swipe up
Tap ItemName
VoiceOver Select - Previous Item, next Item, Repeat that
VoiceOver select First Item, Last item.
Repeat 3 times
VoiceOver Activate Item.
VoiceOver Magic Tap - to start or stop Audio

Go to Sleep
Wake Up
Go Home.
Go Back
VoiceOver read all
VoiceOver stop speaking
Move to beginning
Move to end
Move right one word or line
Move down or up one paragraph
Tap space
Hide keyboard
Show keyboard
Select (offending word)
Unselect that
Select next word
Delete that
Tap undo
Undo that

Scroll - Left, Right, Up, Down.

Turn Up Volume.
Turn Down Volume.

Turn on VoiceOver.
Turn Off Voiceover.
* Open Safari, tap address, VoiceOver activate, delete previous Word then dictate search item, tap Go
* If no response: ask Siri to turn off Voice Control then to turn it on again
* If the screen locks, just ask Siri to open an app and that will automatically mean that voice control is again available.

thanks for the great list. i also asigned a shortcut so i can easily toggle it off and on

Is there a way to change the phrase of a voiceover command to make it simpler? Example: the command voiceover activate can I change this to saying double tap? I have a client who gets quite frustrated having to say the words voiceover before each command. She is totally blind and will not be using any of the visual commands such as go left or go right so I would love to change previous and next item to go left and go write. This would make things much easier for her to remember and say. Thoughts, can this be done? Thanks.

Just to reinforce what others have said, yes, Voice Control works perfectly well with Voiceover. As people have posted though, there are specific commands one should use when using Voiceover with Voice control. These specific Voiceover commands are listed at the bottom of the list of commands, so one might miss them. "Swipe left" does not work with Voiceover, but "Voiceover next item" will. That is just one example.

As for using earbuds, I was surprised to find that when I have my Airpods in, the Voice Control commands are not heard by the microphones in the Airpods. One can only speak to the speaker in the phone. This is frustrating for me since I would like to use Voice Control while running on my treadmill and wearing my Airpods to listen to music while cutting out background sounds. Would be nice to be able to control the phone hands free under this situation while the phone is sitting on a table someplace else in the room. I've told Apple Accessibility about this issue and maybe some day they'll do something about it.

Voice Control can be useful for someone using Voiceover even if they don't have any mobility problems since it is a remote way of using the phone without having to use one's hands which otherwise might be occupied or one's phone might not be near them while wearing earbuds.

--Pete

Hi all,
In my experience, if an app doesn't work with VoiceOver, if there's a button you can't activate using VoiceOver, then this won't work when VoiceOver is turned on, you have to turn VoiceOver off, and then use Voice Control.
I posted about this a couple of years back on this site, however, I've got more to add to my original post, so I'm posting it here again, plus some other insights. Firstly, thanks to everyone above for the list of VoiceOver commands in conjunction with Voice Control. I had no idea something like that was available. It's good for those who can't swipe or double-tap, but still need VoiceOver. Does this mean, that with those specific VoiceOver commands, inaccessible buttons or controls can be activated, even when VoiceOver is still turned on?
I used Voice Control for a bit to deal with eTextbooks. My use-case was very specific so here goes.
I sometimes use eTextbooks to learn languages. Some of these books have enhanced content, meaning they have 'play' buttons on a lot of the pages so the learners can hear dialogues and lists of vocabulary etc.. However, these buttons aren't often accessible with VoiceOver unless you're using Apple Books. these buttons don't even show up on Kindle as Play buttons, they're just track listings according to VoiceOver, and with Google Play Books the buttons are visible with VoiceOver, but they don't work by double tapping, you either have to turn VoiceOver off and activate them that way by getting your finger exactly in the right place on the screen, or mess about with Voice Control like I've done in the past.
To use Voice Control (I'm still using VoiceOver at this point), I get to the page I'm trying to read with the Play button, and activate Voice Control. I then say, 'show grid continuously', this brings up a list of numbers on the screen, and each number is associated to each icon. So one of these icons is the Play' button. I then take a screenshot of the page, activate Be My Eyes, and then share the screenshot located in my photos. Be My AI then describes the screen, and states there are numbers. Sometimes it gives indications straight away of some of the numbers and their associations, and sometimes it doesn't. The description works better with VoiceOver turned on throughout because it gives a better description of the text and doesn't complain the text is obscured by a grid of numbers etc.. I often have to ask it something like 'Which number is the Play button', and then it'll say '13' for example. I then go back to the book, turn off VoiceOver, and then say 'tap 13', and then the audio will play. VoiceOver's speech didn't interfeer with Voice Control when I tried this. If it does, you could turn off Voice Control when using VoiceOver to navigate between photos and listening to the Be My AI description, and then activate Voice Control again, and get it to show the grid with numbers again. Provided you're on exactly the same page of a book or using exactly the same screen of an app the numbers associated to an icon don't change. I've tried this several times with the same page and the Play button has the same number associated to it. A few months back, my bank app had a problem: whenever I wanted to go to view my transfers for a specific month, as soon as I double-tapped on the relevant button, VoiceOver would throw me out the app. I suspected this might be a VoiceOver specific thing, and it was. At first I asked Voice Control to double-tap or tap on the relevant button, 'transfers for May' for example, and it still threw me out the app. So this only worked by turning VoiceOver off, making sure Voice Control was still on, and saying 'tap transfers for May', and it activated the button no problem. And then I was able to turn VoiceOver back on, and I could read through my transfers. This issue was fixed in a later update. The problem I've always had with this is Siri interfeering. The easiest way is to turn on Voice Control using Siri, but the problem is, Siri still listens, so if I then give Voice Control a command, Siri gets in the way and starts doing random stuff, performing searches, God knows what else. In other words, Siri still thinks I'm talking to it, when I'm not, or at least, don't want to be. Has anybody found a way round this? I know I could go into settings and manually activate Voice Control, but this takes longer. Is there a command to stop Siri from listening once Voice Control is on? I looked for one but never found anything. If anybody has got any ideas, that'd be appreciated.

Is it at all possible to deactivate the activation of Siri by voice, and then use voice control to activate Siri, when needed?
If so, I think this would maybe solve the listening issue while using voice control.

Hi Brian,
I found a slightly better solution. When I give Siri the command to turn Voice Control on, after it turns it on, my Siri command and a 'listen' button is on the screen, but if I go back to the home screen by swiping up to go home in the normal way, Siri disappears and I can issue Voice Control commands normally. Still wish there was a way to customise Siri so it wouldn't keep listening after a command. But this is better than before. Thanks for the solution though, Your idea made me investigate a bit more thoroughly.

Alternatively, when you're still on the Siri screen, you can simply say, "go to home screen", and Siri will go back to the home screen for you. This is basically the same thing as Tara's recommendation above, only hands-free.

HTH. 😃