iOS 26 and iPadOS 26: A Summary of VoiceOver and Braille Issues and Improvements

I also prefer the clasic layout for the phone app. It is much easier to navigate using VO.

I also notice the bug with screen calls in the settings. Until this bug is resolved, I'm thinking of switching to never screen calls as I get calls on occasion from random numbers regarding paratransit drivers. This usually happens when drivers are trying to locate me. I want to be sure these calls show.

Same like the classic.

So in certain places, VoiceOver locks up on me. Namely, when I get a pop-up to make a phone call or when I get an incoming call or some kind of pop-up menu shows up. It’s happening in the Google results. It’s happening getting incoming Phone call (when banner pops up on top of screen), it happens on Lyft. How is it possible that I’m the only person going through this when I can reproduce the issue on multiple devices?

I tested this myself and can report at least with iPhone 15 Pro MFI support is working ok.

Slate and stylus works for both braille entry and command mode. It's part of single hand mode and the dots are arranged like a giant slate and stylus on the screen. You enter dots like you would a traditional slate and stylus, then swipe right with one finger to complete the cell.

Any podcasts out there about Braille Access? I'm afraid I am a little lost currently.

How does copied speech work exactly? the Rotor setting is selected and active but when going through the rotor say on the home screen copy speech is not appearing

Thomas did a podcast on it. Check it out.

Very odd behavior on my iPhone 15 Pro, when I unlock my phone to my home screen, it goes to the app library, when I open an app and exit the app it goes to the app library, the only way I have found to stop this is when I unlock my phone I move my finger to the dock. This seems to work for a short while until I move to a different screen and then the App Library appears again.

Hi,
I'm on an iPhone 12 mini at the moment, and I'm getting the app library bug too. I used to get it sometimes in iOS 18. I'd unlock the screen, and when I tried to move to the home screen, the app library would come up. But ever since I've updated to iOS 26, it's doing it all the time. I've reported this to Apple because it's driving me mad. The only time I can avoid this is if I swipe up from the bottom left edge of the screen, but it's still really annoying having to remember to do this each time I want to go to the home screen. To get out of the app library to go home, I either have to ask Siri to take me back to the home screen, or swipe up until VoiceOver announces 'lift for home', then wait about ten seconds, then lift my finger, and most of the time I can get back to the home screen. I'm getting an iPhone 17 pro soon, and I hope this bug doesn't follow me there to my new phone. I was hoping it was happening only on older phones, but if it's happening on a 15 pro too? Who knows. I wish I could just uninstall or disable the app library, but not possible. If anyone has got any suggestions it'd be much appreciated. I looked up about the liquid display thing, I know you can't disable it but you can minimise its impact, but the settings it suggests are already selected. Has anybody got any suggestions?

Go to setting, accessibility, typing and turn off external keyboard.

Go to setting, accessibility, typing and turn off external keyboard.

Hi,

Would it help to create a custom gesture for the home screen? I've got a friend who has an iPhone 16, and she uses the one finger triple tap to go home. And she uses a two finger triple tap to access the app switcher. Not saying you have to necessarily use those specific gestures, but she never has issues with the app library.
Just a suggestion. 😄

Hi Holger,
I just tried this and it worked! At least, the last three times I tried unlocking my iPhone and going home, no app library appeared. Such a simple fix too. Thanks for that. I'll have to see if it carries on working.

Hi Brian,
Thanks for the suggestion. I always forget about custom gestures. Holger's suggestion above seems to be working for the moment. But we'll see, if it comes back, I'll try out your suggestion too. It'll be something to remember for when I get my new phone anyway.

Wish I could take credit but a nice person on email group for blind gave it to me. Do not recall his name.

Face ID is improve. Hope you do not have erase data after 10 times.

Excuse my previous post about passcode entry. While it was true that I could not enter my passcode with any braille display or external keyboard, the reason was not an iOS 26 bug. The reason is that single letter quick NAV needs to be off as as well as regular quick Nav. I don't believe that was true in the past or I would've had this problem before. Once I connected a device that was capable of entering the command for turning off single letter quick Nav everything works.

Hello everyone. I want to report on a major issue I am having in the public release version of iOS 26. I use the Apple Maps app fairly often to look up and call businesses that are near me. for example, rather than going into Safari to find the nearest Italian restaurant and having to sift through a bunch of search results, I prefer the simplicity and intuitiveness of the business look up features in the native maps app. However, there is a major voice over accessibility issue in iOS 26 that makes the maps app completely unusable for me. When searching for a place, business, or address, the search results items that populate below the text field as I type are not actionable with voiceover. Voiceover focuses on and reads each search result correctly, but performing a double tap or any other activation gesture does nothing. In addition, there are no rotor options at all when focused on one of the search results in the list. It is essentially impossible to go past the search screen in the native maps app. If I have a certain place set as a favorite, I am able to access the details page for that particular location with no issue. I just can’t activate a search results entry with voiceover. I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue? I have my concerns about Apple‘s timeliness in fixing this issue because they have been slow to patch voiceover problems related to the maps app in the past.

As someone else posted above, this happened to me when I restarted my phone when the update was finished. Using siri wouldn't enable VO, and the side button wouldn't either. It was like VO didn't even exist. However, when my paratransit driver unlocked my phone, we got VO back right away and it's been fine ever since. My primary voice is Nathan enhanced. The only rotor voice I have is Spain Spanish voice 2 in case I feel like working with Duo Lingo. On my watch and apple TV, they restarted using Samantha, but it was simple enough to restore Nathan on both of them. If that had happened with the phone as well, this wouldn't have been an issue. What made it such a critical issue was not having any way to bring VO back independently. I thought that I could unlock my phone through muscle memory, but it never worked. Let's hope that whatever that bug is gets fixed before the next update is released.

Siri is getting worse. When I get notification and VO stop reading after the sound it makes, I ask siri to read it, she tries to call last number, she does not even read the notification any more. Whoever said VO is great well. I am not going to said it.

Yes, this one is missing. To get it, the trick is to find the search button, which is located approximately where the home button used to be, and from there, swipe right. You will first get dictate, and then, compose.

I have also lost speech. It was a while after I updated. My phone died, and when it came back on, VoiceOver wasn't working. I thought the phone was still dead because no audio functionality was working. I reset the phone and the other sounds worked, but I still couldn't get VoiceOver back on and I couldn't adjust the volume or talk to siri using my bluetooth headphones or the side button. My headphones connected fine though. I also had very little haptics.
I am using Ava premium and I have a 16E

For those that use the Podcast regularly, I have noticed the following during the later part of the Public Beta period and continues to the public release.

- Playback speed defaults to 1x. This is annoying and the method to access the controls in the mini player and adjust the playback speed has the same problem related to pop ups disappearing and the action rotor option does not work. One option to adjust playback speed is to double tap, hold, and drag right/left to adjust playbacm speed. The other option is to ask Siri, increase/decrease playback speed or set playback speed to 1x, 1.25, 1.5, or 2x.
- VoiceOver crackling: I have experienced this often and yes it only occurred in the Podcast app or while a podcast was playing. it seriously sounds like a wet old speaker, but it’s purely digital. I have had this happen regardless of the voice, Samantha, eloquence, and Personal Voice. The solution is to close Podcast,, restart VoiceOver, and/or restart your device.

These have been noticed on my iPhone 15 Pro and iPad Pro (2022).

Otherwise I have enjoyed iOS 26. The improvements to Personal Voice makes it almost a usable voice clone, the new Phone app interface actually is pretty easy once you give it a couple of weeks to get use to the new workflows, and Braille Access is awesome.

Hi,
I'm getting no keyboard sounds when I enter text into an edit field, particularly those nice clicks when entering my passcode. Somebody on Mastodon said if you turn off audio ducking completely, you'll get the keyboard clicks back. As for VoiceOver not switching on, has anybody tried connecting their iPhone to iTunes on a Windows or Mac and going to accessibility, and turning it on that way? Does that still work? I know you could do that years ago. I'm thinking of what to do when I get my new phone if it happens on there. So far, it hasn't happened on this phone yet.

I don't know what you used to get for this, but if you triple tap or double tap and hold on a search result, you get a pop-up menu that lets you get directions, call the business and go to the home page of the business. This is on my iPad pro.

This issue was experienced by me long before IOS 26, it used to happen on 18 too. This is not an issue with our IOS and Voice Over it is entirely an issue with the Teams applications accessibility. If you have access to Microsoft Enterprise Disability Answer desk, please write to them. I just sent them a mail since I found out that I am not the only one complaining

I long press the side button to talk to Siri, but now noticed that the phone vibrates when I do this and this only happens when VO is running. Means it does not happen if VO is turned off. I checked under Settings/ accessibility/ Voice Over/ audio/ Sounds and Haptics I have turned Haptics off. Also under Sounds and Notifications I have turned system Haptics Off. I could not find any settings that would disable the haptic when long pressing the side button to talk to Siri. The second challenge I have is again with the haptics, when ansering or ending the call the haptic vibration happens. Are there any settings that would help me disable this kind of behavior on my iPhone 12?

I updated my phone at work because it was a very slow day, so connecting to my computer wasn't an option. More importantly, though, I think my computer's version of iTunes is too out of date for this feature to work. I'm still using a 2011 mac book pro which hasn't been able to update past the high sierra operating system. I'd be curious if others who encountered this issue can use connecting to a computer as a work-around, though.

Regarding keyboard clicks, I'm hearing them just fine. I don't use any form of audio ducking, though, so maybe that's why.

On my personal phone FaceId seems to be working fine. However, on my work phone iPhone 14 FaceId is not giving me any indication it is being used or needed. So, for example to login to teams or MS365 mail at work up until the update I used FaceId. Now, still use this but unlike before VO is givingme no indication of it being used. The only reason I found out it was still using it was when it failed and I had to try again. So, no verbal output, no sounds or anything. Anyone else found this? Maybe on older phones?

I have tried and tried to launch Whatsapp with braille access and it always says "no match." I aalw have to either type to Siri or ask Siri verbally to open Whatsapp. As far as MFI hearing aids everything's find on my end.

Last iOS setup face ID for my mail. Do not hear the sound for it. I turn off and on. Still work but the sound for it vanish. Nuts. Apple focus so much on liquid glass that other things were missed.

I will try this later, as I updated my older iPhone SE 2020, just so I can play around with iOS 26. This device is not my daily driver, just an old phone I had lying around. Alas, I ended up with the same issue others have reported, with no speech upon reboot. The weird thing is, I can hear the sound when I plug in my charging cable, I can also hear the sound of key clicks as I tap on the screen. However, attempting to type in my pin is nothing short of a headache.
So, I will report back here once I have had some sleep, and have had a chance to get my phone connected to my laptop.

On a sidenote, I did learn that my workaround I proposed in another thread absolutely did me no good. However, I am wondering if we can bypass this bug, by disabling passcode/biometrics, just until the update has completed and rebooted?
I realize that would be a headache for a lot of you, but it's just a thought.

Well it isn't just old phones. Just noticed on my personal phone using my banking app same issue no feedback at all. It is the only app on my personal phone that I use it for so only just noticed. Will report as this is a bug that could cause confusion.

Hello,
As a happy user of espeak on an iPhone 13, I can say that the update process went fine. Voiceover just started as normal and espeak came up. Since I use my phone in Russian, usually after restarting, Milena would be there instead of espeak for a couple of minutes, but now, espeak went on right after the start without any problems.
They have fixed the strange bug where espeak would speak as if there was a comma at the end of a sentence where was in fact a period, so thanks to apple for that.
Thanks for reading.

So, before I reported to Apple about not getting any FaceId feedback when using it to login to apps I thought I'd just check they hadn't introduced some odd setting. So went into FaceId and passcode settings. You have to enter your passcode to use this setting and we can't use it. There is now no way of entering a code. No edit box. It tells you to enter it but there is no way to do it which is not good! For info checked on both iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 pro.

Hello everyone!

I am reading reports that some of you could not get VoiceOver working at all upon the first reboot after the update.

Unfortunately I faced this problem last week on an iPhone 16+ running the RC. I could not even get past the 'trust this computer?' screen that appeared on my M2 Macbook Air running Sequoia at the time, as I could not locate never mind tap the trust button! Even tried to enter my passcode but ended up nearly calling emergency services lol. Thank goodness in my region United Kingdom we have to specify the emergency services number. As soon as I heard the touch tones that's when I knew what was about to happen lol. Not even share accessibility settings would work! I would get to where I attempt the press and hold with three fingers on the other device with no results. Fortunately I had another device, iPhone SE 2022, which I used Find My to erase the defective phone, therefore starting from scratch. But at least VoiceOver worked normally and have done ever since., including a reboot a few days ago to see if the problem would rear its ugly head.

But you would think if a particular voice, Eloquence Read in my case, was corrupt it would switch to the voice of the default language, which would be Daniel in my case. But no! I had exactly what you are reporting here.

Just wanted to put this out there.

Same here. Very strange. Had to double check my home screen to confirm it was indeed there.

Is Braille also broken?? Now I am afraid to reboot my phone.

Unfortunately I did not have my Braille display, Focus 14 Blue, at the time so was unable to test.