The Accessibility Bugs in iOS 8: From Serious To Minor

By AppleVis, 17 September, 2014

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

***Update 17 November 2014: More of these bugs have been fixed in iOS 8.1.1. See our post for more details: Apple Releases iOS 8.1.1 with Fixes for Blind and Low Vision Users***

***Update 20 October 2014: A number of these bugs have been fixed in iOS 8.1. See our post for more details: Apple Releases iOS 8.1 With a Number Of Fixes And Improvements For Blind And Low Vision Users***

Detailed in this post are possible accessibility bugs which members of the AppleVis Editorial Team have identified during their testing of iOS 8. If you have not already updated your iDevice to iOS 8, we strongly recommend that you read through this post and any comments before doing so, as we believe that there are a number of bugs in this release which might have a significant impact on the user experience for some blind and low vision users.

However, we do need to stress at the offset that our testing of iOS 8 has been somewhat limited. We are only a small team, and in most cases have only installed and used iOS 8 on a single device. Also, some of the bugs listed have not been encountered by all members of the Team. So, please bear in mind that it is possible that problems mentioned below will not be present on all iDevices or in all use cases. It is also possible that, in some instances, we are simply mistaken. Accordingly, we would really appreciate feedback from those who have installed iOS 8 - to confirm whether they are encountering the same problems (or have found workarounds), as well as to let us know of any additional issues that are not on this list. Of course, it’s even more important that you let Apple know of any additional bugs that you find (they already know about the ones currently listed here). This post explains why and the best ways to do it.

With all of the disclaimers out of the way, here are the problems that we have encountered to date. For this release, we have grouped them based upon what we believe to be there likely level of impact to the user experience:

Serious Bugs

  1. In Braille options (Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Braille), changing the setting for Status Cell from "off" to either left or right will cause VoiceOver to stop working completely. The only way to get VoiceOver back is to set the cell back to "off", and to do that one will need sighted help since VoiceOver is completely inoperative. Toggling VoiceOver with the shortcut, telling Siri to turn VoiceOver off and back on, restarting the device - nothing works except changing the status cell option. Additionally, it now appears as though this bug will also present itself when upgrading from an earlier version of iOS if the status cell is set to either Left or Right-necessitating that the VoiceOver user turn the Status Cell to "off" before the upgrade.

  2. In many applications, the screen does not automatically scroll to follow the movement of VoiceOver focus as you swipe through the page. This causes problems when focus lands on an actionable element which is not visually displayed on screen, as you cannot interact with it. For example, the screen does not scroll when flicking through an email. So, if there is an attachment at the bottom of the message, double-tapping on it may not open it as you would expect. One exception is links, where the screen will scroll to their location when focus moves to them. However, moving focus beyond the link will cause the screen to scroll back to its previous position. This behaviour has been encountered in a large number of apps. When this results in VoiceOver focus landing on actionable elements which are visually not being displayed on the screen, it is likely to be confusing and extremely frustrating to users who will not know why a gesture isn't working. The only workaround is to use the 3-finger swipe up/down to bring the desired element on to the screen, locate it by touch, and then double-tap.

  3. Various problems have been reported when using a bluetooth keyboard, including duplicate and skipped characters; conflicts with QuickNav when accessing text fields; VoiceOver-specific controls not working; and VoiceOver occasionally crashing and restarting.

  4. When using the Share option to send a message from outside of the stock Messages app (such as sharing a recording from Voice Memos), double-tapping on the "Send" button does nothing. To successfully send the message, one must disable VoiceOver and attempt to find the "Send" button with no spoken feedback.

  5. Once in awhile if one uses the Keypad to dial a number, they may encounter a stuck key. For example, as you press a number you will hear the DTMF tone for that number. At times, a number will seem to get stuck in that the DTMF tone will keep playing. One must do a reset of the phone to make it stop. We have also found that pressing the same key a second time or removing the Phone app from the App Switcher is sometimes enough to fix the problem without resorting to a complete restart. Reports suggest that this problem is only present when using Touch Typing Mode.

  6. QuickNav appears not to work with a Braille display. Enabling it is supposed to be done with space and Q, but VoiceOver always reports that it is on, thus suggesting it's never on. Pressing H for heading, F for text field, etc, yield no results. This problem has been seen on a Braille Sense Plus and Vareo Ultra.

  7. Using the Handwriting mode crashes VoiceOver. VoiceOver will restart itself in a few seconds, but this does make handwriting unusable.

  8. In Safari, using the Back button or Scrub gesture to return to the previous page will result in VoiceOver becoming near unusable. VoiceOver will read an item if you locate it by touch, but flicking will not move focus. The only workaround it to locate the Reload button and double-tap.

Moderate Bugs

  1. In the lock screen, when a user receives a new Notification, VoiceOver sometimes does not announce the Notification nor the content of the Notification. You will only hear the chime or the default sound for that Notification and nothing else is announced. Conversely, sometimes VoiceOver speaks the entire notification instead of announcing the time and the number of pending notifications.

  2. VoiceOver fails to read the caller ID for incoming calls on the iPhone, whether on the lock screen or while the phone is unlocked. The information is still displayed, and you can touch the screen to find it, but it is no longer announced automatically. A temporary workaround is to enable “Always Speak Notifications” in Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver. However, note that this will have privacy implications.

  3. When in a message thread's details screen, if the thread has attachments, VoiceOver is sluggish and may even crash when flicking right through the attachments for the first time. Flicking left, or even right past any attachments VoiceOver has already encountered, works fine. It is only attachments VoiceOver has not yet seen that cause the problem.

  4. On the “All” tab of the Notification Center, the "Clear Section" buttons are announced as "Confirm Clear Section", even if you have not activated them. You still must double tap twice to clear a section, but you will hear "Confirm Clear Section" both times. Additionally, VoiceOver gives no audible feedback to indicate that the gesture was successful.

  5. In the Featured Tab of the App Store, VoiceOver focus will loop continually through a carousel of highlighted items displayed near the top of the page. The only way to force focus out of this loop is to tap elsewhere on the screen.

  6. When double-tapping on the name of a contact in App Switcher to reveal the available contact options, VoiceOver does not announce the identifying label when there are multiple options for the same contact method - for example, home, work and cellular telephone numbers will all be read as simply "phone call".

  7. When first opening the App Switcher you can move through all of the listed contacts by flicking left/right. However, after double-tapping on a contact to reveal the available contact options, flicking will no longer move VoiceOver focus through all of the contacts. Instead, you have to use the 3-finger swipe left/right to make VoiceOver see all of the listed contacts.

  8. In some apps the screen will auto-lock whilst VoiceOver is in the process of reading text (generally when reading a long block of text). If you have disabled the auto lock in Settings > General > Autolock, this will not affect you.

  9. In some circumstances it is not possible to move app icons on the Home screen. This seems to be particularly problematic for those located in the row of icons directly above the Dock.

  10. When browsing the list of subscription options available in Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive, VoiceOver announces only the price, not the amount of storage space that you get with the package. For reference, as of the time of this writing, the $0.99 per month is 20GB, $3.99 is 200GB, $9.99 is 500GB, and $19.99 is 1TB.

  11. If you tell Siri to add a reminder or Calendar event, it will display your event along with the cancel/confirm buttons. However, Siri speech may be silent or speak a couple words at most, and the prompt for you to speak the action you'd like is never given. This is with Siri's speech feedback set to "always", which works when using Siri for other tasks.

  12. Upon first downloading the Alex TTS Voice, VoiceOver fails to switch automatically from the voice in use while the Alex download was in progress. One must turn VoiceOver off, then reenable it.

  13. The button to purchase an item from the iTunes Store does not always respond to a double-tap. It is reported that in some cases a double-tap and hold on the button may work, followed by another double-tap and hold to confirm the purchase.

  14. When using a Braille display, using space with F prompts you to search for text, but this only works like the search box in the item chooser. It is also case sensitive.

  15. On occasions, VoiceOver will not announce that an email folder is empty when you tap or swipe onto the area of the screen where any email messages would be listed. Instead, the only audible feedback is a muted ‘clunk’ tone. The behavior has been seen in both smart folders and regular folders.

  16. When writing a draft email, flicking left past the "cancel" button will not move you to the "minimize draft" button (which is visually located directly below the status bar). Similarly, touching the minimize button will focus on it, but you cannot then flick right to get to the rest of the page. This is doubly problematic as the button is small, so many users may not realize it is even there since they cannot flick to it and touch exploration can easily miss it.

  17. The VoiceOver Keyboard echo setting is unreliable. It does not take effect in 3rd party apps and some stock asps such as Messages. As a result, keys are always echoed. The only noticeable difference is that the pitch of the echo appears to vary based upon the setting selected.

  18. There are some issues with iBooks created using iBooks Author. Notably, the drag and drop widget does not work with VoiceOver; VoiceOver does not announce if a selected answer is correct in iBooks reviews; and the reviews widget does not show the letter buttons to VoiceOver users.

  19. In Braille screen input, the space (one-finger flick right) does not register roughly half the time. It is not misinterpreted as a dot 4, since no dot 4 is entered, it is simply ignored. This makes Braille very frustrating to use.

  20. In Braille screen input, when deleting or entering text, a sound sometimes plays, the same sound made if you try to flick past the end or start of a screen. The character is usually deleted/entered, as far as we can tell, but the sound precludes any speech feedback so users will have no idea what is going on. Plus, sometimes, the character is not deleted and you have to use the on-screen keyboard to delete it instead.

  21. Occasionally, when using the 2-fingered double-tap to answer a call, audio playback will resume rather than the call being answered.

  22. Some users have reported that the 2-fingered double-tap does not always answer or end a call (most likely related to the above bug).

  23. When searching the App Store, the Clear button will remove any previous search from the text field, but VoiceOver will continue to read what was previously entered in the search field … even after you enter a completely new search. The same happens if you delete characters individually.

  24. Some users have reported problems using the multitasking gestures available on the iPad.

  25. In Safari, VoiceOver will not speak the accessible name of HTML input controls that have a programmatically associated label, whether implicit or explicit.

  26. If you have your device set to use the 24 hour time format, when viewing hourly forecasts in the Stock Weather app, VoiceOver only reads the time for the hours between 0:00 and 11:00.

Minor Bugs

Setup

  1. Updating the device from iOS 7.1.x to iOS 8 will not remember the VoiceOver Typing Preference.

General

  1. When automatically switching languages, VoiceOver triggers compact voices even if the premium versions are installed.

  2. When in a Group Message, at the top right hand corner is the "Details" button. Flick once to the right and you will land on an Unlabeled button. This button seems to do the same thing as the "Details" button.

  3. When using the Group message facility, the button to add a title to the conversation is not detected by VoiceOver.

  4. When you have issued a say all command (a two finger flick up or down), VoiceOver ignores all incoming notifications instead of pausing to speak them. This is a feature, but notifications from the Messages app are an exception. In other words, VoiceOver will ignore all notifications except incoming texts; those usually cause VoiceOver to stop reading entirely.

  5. In the Mail app, when you have a draft minimized, VoiceOver's focus is affected. Elements are out of order as you flick left or right, you suddenly get stuck and cannot move past an element, or you get into loops where VoiceOver keeps moving between a few elements as you flick left or right, and never moves beyond those few. Sending or canceling the draft, so the "x drafts in progress" message is gone from the bottom of the window, is enough to restore things to normal.

  6. In the stock iOS Calendar app, you can double tap and hold on an event, then move a finger up or down to adjust its start or end time. However, VoiceOver offers no feedback as to the new time as you move your finger, so you must move, lift your finger, check the new time, then try again to make this work at all.

  7. When VoiceOver focus is on an item in the Dock, a 3-fingered swipe to the left or right will no longer move your through Home screen pages (It is possible that this is by design).

  8. When browsing the Still Photo Wallpapers available in Settings > Wallpaper > Choose, VoiceOver reads what appears to be the internal file name for the picture.

  9. When using some third-party keyboards, the status bar is duplicated directly above the top row of the keyboard.

Options

Comments

another issue with using a bluetooth keyboard is that in IOS7 you could press the VO keys with the letter H and that would take you back to the home screen. Now in IOS8, it doesn't do anything and I can't find a way of getting back to the home screen after I've gone back to the start when opening an ap from the home screen. Any help would be appreciated. I have an iPhone 5S, 64 gig with an appel bluetooth keyboard.

By Engin Yilmaz on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

it is not possible to use screen braille input on form files on the web sites

By Jesse Tregarthen on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Thank you to the Applevis team for doing a great job on this list. Despite the largely disappointing list of bugs, I think I am going to update anyway. I read this list last night and spent quite a while talking out the good versus the bad. I came to the conclusion that for me at least, the good outweighs the bad. I don't use iBooks, I keep auto lock turned off on my phone, I never share things to a message from another app, I use my braille display for convenience or for entering large amounts of text or for when I am on a particularly long phone call so I don't worry too much about longer response times and I have never had Quick nav so how can I miss something I have never had? I am rubbish at hand writing, I don't use a Bluetooth keyboard and the list goes on. Point being, I think how severe these bugs appear to a user depends on his or her needs. For example, somebody who uses their braille display with their iOS device all the time may be significantly more annoyed about the bug associated with braille displays than I am. I have concluded, although it is sad we have to think this way, we use and sometimes pay for apps that may be inaccessible or only mildly accessible. The difference with this being that the update was free and that we can hope that Apple will care enough to iron out these bugs where some app developers may not therefore rendering that particular app forever not quite as accessible as we would like. Sure, the fact that the focus jumps around or the fact that using magic tap when the phone is ringing will sometimes play music or the fact that it will not read the caller ID when the phone is ringing are all quite irksome to me but I can probably live with them. Already focus jumps around in Safari so it jumping around everywhere else will not be completely horrible To me. when the phone rings, it is usually one of my contacts and I have custom ring tones for all of my contacts. Otherwise, it is usually just a scam anyways and it is not that hard for me to touch around to find out who is calling. Although I use magic tap to answer the phone all the time, I can grit my teeth and use the answer call button instead. I think if the Applevis team were to write up a list of bugs we are currently experiencing an iOS seven.1.2, I believe we very possibly might be slightly shocked. It would definitely not be nearly as bad as this list of bugs but I think it would still surprise us. I say this because the bugs that we are currently dealing with have just become part of our daily life. It becomes second nature for us to do whatever work around we might have to do to deal with a bug. If we saw them on paper it might be kind of a rude reminder of what kind of bugs we still have to deal with. I apologize for my long-winded post but I really wanted to give you my perspective. Maybe it is just me justifying my impatience to update and maybe it will come back to bite me when I do but I feel very strongly about all of this. Kindest regards to all, Jesse Tregarthen

By joanne macgregor on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I have noticed when using the calender with voiceover and swiping down to delete an event, when double tapping it, it doesnt register the request and doesnt delete the event.
Also my partner who has the 5s does not appear to have the option default dialect under speech to down load Alex????

By Engin Yilmaz on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

On a Phone Call swiping two fingers to the up to read windows from top to bottom is not working. for learning who is calling practically this method was very useful but it is not working on iOS 8.

Well, I have not sent the report yet. Safari has crashed Voice Over 3 times in the last two days. It doesn't matter if I am using Alex or Samantha. Voice Over just will not speak. Voice Over is still running, just not talking. Restarting the device resolves the issue, until I look at a large page again. I am using an IPhone 5s.

By Irlanda on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hi, I don't know if this is part op the bugs. But when I go to youTube and I do the voice search it goes as if I am going to talk on the phone. Hope I explained myself. Thanks, and God bless.

By Siobhan on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hi all. I wrote to Apple about the following.
1. The key echo is set to characters and words no matter what the user has set it too. Except, I didn't see this until later, the setting works in Mail strangely enough when I write a message.
2. I find it sluggish on my phone, VO freezing, as well as crashing at least once hard core so I had to rest the phone.
3. Bluetooth keyboard not able to unlock the phone anymore, characters being spoken or written twice.
4. incoming caller ID not read aloud with voice over but the information i still there. Anyone that wants a work around, just touch ont he screen then flick around, you'll find who's ringing you.
So did I do good? You'd think so. except... I write this well thought out email, get the accessibility spelled wrong. Write another email, this one riddled with spelling mistakes, spaces not in words that kind of thing, I click spell check, decide i wasn't finished hit Escape. What happens, I sent the four year old wrote this not me, email. Oops? Haven't gottena response yet.

By Troy on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I just wanna add to the issue where a 2 finger double tap doesn't work to answer a call when audio is playing bug. I have also reported it to apple as well. On my 4s, it doesn't matter if I'm listening to audio or not, the 2 finger double tap is not working at all for me. Does this include when a ringtone is playing as well? Also on my 4s vo is a bit sluggish but I have a feeling that it's because it's the 4s and not a newer phone. I was actually surprised that 8 was released for the 4s. I have reported the sluggishness anyways to apple just to see what comes of it. I also read where the battery life is better with ios8, and I agree with that. I did roll back to ios7 as of yesterday because of the bit of sluggishness I was experiencing along with not answering calls. I may try again in a later release to see if it runs better. One thing I should of tried was a full reset of the phone to see if that helped but maybe at a later date, I had to reset anyways to install the ios7 file anyways so we'll see what happens when I give this a second chance. I'm not due for a upgrade until January so by that time there probably will have been a few more updates by then.

By gailisaiah on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

After reading about the bugs in IOS 8, I too will follow this tread and wait with hopes of fixes before I upgrade my phone. Thank you Applevis team for the heads-up.

For those who were trying to enable Fleksy, you need to navigate to certain options for it to work. In truth, I wasn't aware of these until my experience yesterday. Although I hadn't read the directions necessary to make Fleksy part of the set of keyboards, I attempted to perform the process myself. What I neglected to do was to allow it to work as it should. A Tech Crunch article indicates that you need to go into settings, general, keyboards, then select Fleksy from the list of keyboards. Fleksy has to be given "access" in order to work. The author calls it a "slider," but from a VoiceOver perspective, the way to do it involves double-tapping on the Fleksy keyboard once it has been added, then the button that says "allow full access." Once that's enabled, the keyboard would become useable. I've read on Twitter that activating voice feedback is important. VoiceOver must also be disabled. Hope that helps.

Unfortunately, I couldn't have the keyboard on my phone for very long because I didn't know how to switch. I sometimes use different keyboards in different circumstances, so if anyone knows how to switch the keyboard back to the built-in ones, I'd greatly appreciate it.

By Krawn on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I was exploring settings for the first time using IOS 8 when I noticed VO was not announcing whether a particular option was currently on or off. This is not the case for every toggle, but quite a few of them, including Wifi on/off, Bluetooth on/off and many settings in General. Anybody else experience that, or did I perhaps enable something I shouldn't have?

This happened to me as well the first time I used the settings app. For some reason, Restarting the phone seemed to fix it. I've not had it happen again since the initial bug which I fixed with a restart.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

In reply to by Unregistered User (not verified)

In spite of the largely negative reports on ios 8 from the Applevis community, my experience has been fairly positive.
I have experienced several minor bugs, no show stoppers as of yet though.
Here are a couple of bugs I have found particularly agrivating:
Voiceover, when navigating through some apps, will select links from the rotor. No matter what was selected previously, the rotor will go to the links setting when you swipe over a link. This happens in the reddit client I use, along with a few other apps.
Helariously, voiceover also has a problem where it sometimes defaults the rotor to the language setting. Even though I have language left off of the rotor, voiceover will sometimes include it in the rotor. This makes the compact Samantha voice come on with an up or downswipe. Fortunately, triple tapping voiceover off and on takes care of the bug and brings back Alex.
Speaking of Alex, anyone else notice how sometimes when reading a large block of text, Alex talks way way faster than usual? I have had to slow Alex down considerably so it doesn't run away from me on longer paragraphs. Strangely, it only reads too fast on the long paragraphs or when using the read all two finger downswipe jesture.
Conclusions:
Thanks to the applevis editors and the community for all the bug reports, commentary and feedback.
I know a lot of folks are seriously frustrated with ios8, but I would urge everyone to take a minute to consider the community's response to ios7 when it came out. Looking back through the forum, it's easy to see the frustration and many troubles people had with that release. Many of the responses to ios8 are just repeats of what people said about 7.
Everyone swore they weren't ever going to upgrade, talked about how far behind Apple was on accessibility, and so on.
Eventually though, most everybody upgraded and figured out the new system.
Apple will take care of the major bugs, just as they always do, and life will go on.
I would also urge everyone to be polite and courdious when emailing and talking to Apple about accessibility and bugs.
Judging by the tone of hysteria some of our community has taken in this forum, I would not be surprised to discover that the same tone has been taken with Apple itself.
Taking an angry or defensive tone won't help us advocate for ourselves as a community, and will only serve to break down communication with Apple.
Though we should absolutely submit bug reports and inform Apple of our findings, telling Apple they don't care about accessibility is unproductive at best.
Thanks to anyone who has stuck with me to the end of this ramble.

By Moby on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I have an iPhone 5 and an iPad Air. I foolishly downloaded iOS8 to both devices. Now I can't scroll in Safari, Mail, or any other app like the New York Times when I am using Voice Over. Moreover, when I have Voice Over on and I try to use the three finger swipe across the screen to switch from one home page to the next, Searchlight comes on instead.

I just sent a full account of this problem and others reported on the present site to Molly Wood at the New York Times. I hope she runs with the story. I find it either scandalous or grossly incompetent for Apple to have ignored and (most likely) sacrificed the needs of the blind/low vision community in their rush to release their software on their announced date. Their reputation may not suffer a long-term hit if they release a bug fix update in the next week or so. But if they don't release a fix soon, they will lose the reputation for quality and reliability that allows them to charge a premium for their products.

Incidentally, I too thank the site team here for their great article. But they seem to imply that some of the scroll problems may be by design. Is there any design reason why the scrolling problems are intentional and here to stay?

By alex wallis on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hi all, at time of writing September 19th 2014, one of the noted jailbreakers has just tweeted that apple is still allowing downgrades from ios8 back to ios 7.1.2, we have no information how long apple will allow people to do this for, so I would suggest all those who want to run away from ios8 should download the firmware files and do this straight away, once again we don't know how long apple will allow downgrades for so I would hurry if you want to run away back to 7.1.2. Personally I am not even going to try ios8 in case apple suddenly snaps the window shut and I am stuck. It is very unusual for apple to allow downgrading for this long usually they stop it almost instantly so anyone wanting to go back I would hurry. because the signing window is still open all you should need to do is download a copy of 7.1.2, then put it in the right folder in iTunes, after deleting the file for ios8, and then tell iTunes to restore so no need to mess with recovery or DFU modes.
for reference on windows 7 the path to where ios firmware files live is as follows,
c:\users\computer user name\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
and that's where your ios 7.1.2 file nees to go but delete the ios 8 file before trying to restore. You just need to download the 7.1.2, copy the file to your clipboard and then paste it to the path I told you, obviously replacing computer user name with the name your logged on to the computer with like john smith for example.
In fact just to make sure nobody gets any nasty viruses buy going to a scam site use this link the site is reputable, just extract the zip file after downloading.
http://www.redmondpie.com/download-ios-7.1.2-for-iphone-ipad-direct-download-links/
then copy the extracted ipsw file to the location I told you above.

By PaulMartz on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I can confirm at least one bluetooth keyboard issue. With a Verbatim "Wireless Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard" in iOS 7, the control + alt keys acted as the VO key. After upgrading to iOS 8, this key combination no longer works, and there are no VO keyboard shortcuts. I've experimented with multiple key combinations, but no luck. Normal typing keys seems to work fine. I've reported this issue to both Apple and Verbatim.

By blind springbok on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hi, someone wanna tell me why after the download of I IOS 8 has caused Voice Over to constantly refresh.
This makes life unbelievably difficult when trying to type or look at facebook etc.
Also why do we have to press either the home button or the lock key to restart the screen when it goes to sleep?
Come on guys I've sung your praises over the last years of having my I products so why now has it all gone tits up?
Hope someone can help with the constant refreshing of Voice over as it's driving me nuts.

By Siobhan on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Someone must have told her to be quiet, she hardly answered anything i tossed at her. Except the crucial, "Where can i hide a body?" "Very funny." As for someone above saying something but apple having gone "Tits up," couldn't you have phrased that a bit more adult? We all get frustrated, I just thought that was a bit harsh. The strange thing is safari doesn't do that key echo thing, only message and to my knowledge facebook. Twitter might, but I don't know. As for downgrading, even though I have the option, I am not. I made the bed and most of these bugs are things i can deal with, escept the key echo that annoys me. :)

By Pat on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

When trying to use serie with ios 8, I have noticed that it works well with texting. However, if you try to send e-mails it will not say all words. serie cuts off sentences. Therefore, emailing is now a nuisance.

By dvdmth on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

A few commenters have complained of VoiceOver not speaking when using Safari. If you're using Safari and VoiceOver stops talking, just press the Home button once, then wait. After several seconds, VoiceOver should return to normal.

I actually experienced this a couple of times under iOS 7 on particularly complex websites, but it appears the issue is far more likely to occur under iOS 8. I just encountered it on a simple text-only webpage, which never exhibited any issues in the past, so if the problem can occur on that page, then I suspect it can happen anywhere. I also noticed VoiceOver speech was choppy before it quit altogether. In any event, I hit the Home button, and things returned to normal after waiting a while.

While VoiceOver is in its stuck mode, the VoiceOver cursor on screen also gets frozen, not just speech, but VoiceOver itself is still running. It would be better if it simply crashed, since it automatically relaunches when it crashes.

I already don't do much web surfing on iOS because VoiceOver has problems on various sites I frequent, and I am now even less likely to use my iPad to surf the web.

By Josh on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Sometimes, when I am trying to invoke an action on an interactive notification when on the lock screen, I am unable to do it. For example, if I get a message, most of the time, I can flick down and get the available options like reply, delete, etc. However, every once in a while, Voiceover will start spelling the word when I flick down. A quick way around this is to turn on and off Voiceover, but obviously the issue shouldn't happen at all. I am running iOS 8 on an iPhone 5. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks.

By Neo on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

The most annoying bug I've noticed is that voiceover keeps restarting. I'll be walking along with my iphone in my pocket and it randomly says voiceover on screen curtain on. It also does that a lot whilst using the iphone also. Fleksy VO doesn't work which has slowed down my typing to a crawl and I don't get the difference between the touch typing keyboard and the direct touch keyboard? Also, I've not noticed anyone mention this but every time IOS is updated the voice inflextion of the voices changes slightly. In IOS8, I'm using the English Austrailian voice and she sounds much more robotic than in IOS7 and it doesn't sound like she's pronouncing certain words right like 'clock' sounds like clockp or clockb to me

By Serena on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hi guys. I'm going to cut bits of the text from the original post here, so as my responses have context without people having to refer back to it to know what I'm on about. also makes it easier for me to track my responses. LOL.
notes: I have been testing iOS 8.0 since the final release, so we're talking about 2 and a half days now. so not long. I've been testing it on my iPhone 5, and my iPad mini retina.
I've not been able to, or needed to, test all functions, as some of them I don't use, or very rarely. but those that I have tested, I'll comment on here.

Serious Bugs
2.
In many applications, the screen does not automatically scroll to follow the movement of VoiceOver focus as you swipe through the page. This causes problems when focus lands on an actionable element which is not visually displayed on screen, as you cannot interact with it. For example, the screen does not scroll when flicking through an email. So, if there is an attachment at the bottom of the message, double-tapping on it may not open it as you would expect. One exception is links, where the screen will scroll to their location when focus moves to them. However, moving focus beyond the link will cause the screen to scroll back to its previous position. This behaviour has been encountered in a large number of apps. When this results in VoiceOver focus landing on actionable elements which are visually not being displayed on the screen, it is likely to be confusing and extremely frustrating to users who will not know why a gesture isn't working. The only workaround is to use the 3-finger swipe up/down to bring the desired element on to the screen, locate it by touch, and then double-tap.

I can't confirm this one. all scrolling appears to be working for me at this time.

3.
Various problems have been reported when using a bluetooth keyboard, including duplicate and skipped characters. Disabling the Predictive option in Settings > General > Keyboard has been reported to improve things. The problems also appear to be less prevalent in native iOS apps and those which have been updated to provide iOS 8 compatibility.

yes, I've seen some problems with this. disabling predictive text does not, how ever, appear to improve things at all.
like with the software keyboard, all characters pressed are echoed. I have not had any problems with using VO commands as of yet, though I don't use many. I can confirm that the VO h to return home works as expected.
I do note though, that text entry can not be performed at all, unless quick nav is switched off. annoying, but not a huge bug.
keyboard still unlocks the screen as expected as well.

5.
Once in awhile if one uses the Keypad to dial a number, they may encounter a stuck key. For example, as you press a number you will hear the DTMF tone for that number. At times, a number will seem to get stuck in that the DTMF tone will keep playing. One must do a reset of the phone to make it stop. We have also found that pressing the same key a second time or removing the Phone app from the App Switcher is sometimes enough to fix the problem without resorting to a complete restart.

I have not experienced this as of yet.

Moderate Bugs
1.
In the lock screen, when a user receives a new Notification, VoiceOver sometimes does not announce the Notification nor the content of the Notification. You will only hear the chime or the default sound for that Notification and nothing else is announced. Conversely, sometimes VoiceOver speaks the entire notification instead of announcing the time and the number of pending notifications.

I can confirm this. again, annoying, but not a huge bug, unless you like hearing your messages and alerts from the other side of the room from your device, in which case it's probably a good thing, as it now makes me get up and walk over to the phone, to see what alert just came in.
is apple attempting to help us get fit here? :P

2.
VoiceOver fails to read the caller ID for incoming calls on the iPhone, whether on the lock screen or while the phone is unlocked. The information is still displayed, and you can touch the screen to find it, but it is no longer announced automatically. A temporary workaround is to enable “Always Speak Notifications” in Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver. However, note that this will have privacy implications.

I can confirm this. how ever, I have always speak notifications turned on, and it still doesn't seem to want to read the ID most of the time. perhaps related to the alerts bug?

4.
On the “All” tab of the Notification Center, the "Clear Section" buttons are announced as "Confirm Clear Section", even if you have not activated them. You still must double tap twice to clear a section, but you will hear "Confirm Clear Section" both times. Additionally, VoiceOver gives no audible feedback to indicate that the gesture was successful.

I can confirm this one too. how ever, it's the notifications tab. not a major bug, just a little odd.

5.
In the Featured Tab of the App Store, VoiceOver focus will loop continually through a carousel of highlighted items displayed near the top of the page. The only way to force focus out of this loop is to tap elsewhere on the screen.

This one I can confirm as well. perhaps apple is attempting to get our focus onto apps in that area? LOL

6.
When double-tapping on the name of a contact in App Switcher to reveal the available contact options, VoiceOver does not announce the identifying label when there are multiple options for the same contact method - for example, home, work and cellular telephone numbers will all be read as simply "phone call".

Yes, I can confirm this. very annoying. similar to the old bug in iOS 7, where favorites did the same sort of thing.

7.
When first opening the App Switcher you can move through all of the listed contacts by flicking left/right. However, after double-tapping on a contact to reveal the available contact options, flicking will no longer move VoiceOver focus through all of the contacts. Instead, you have to use the 3-finger swipe left/right to make VoiceOver see all of the listed contacts.

Yes, I have seen this. I don't, how ever, think this is a bug guys. it may seem so at first, but think about it for a moment, and you'll see why. the iPhone screen, isn't very wide. so if you tap a contact in the app switcher area, you want all the space you can get to display contact icons for the one you have pressed. my guess is, a sighted person using iOS 8, would see the same thing happening. they tap a contact in the app switcher, and the top half of the screen populates with the info for that contact. the persons name you have tapped, even if it wasn't before tapping, is to the far left. then, to the right of that, are buttons for the different usable parts of that contact.
they would then swipe their finger over the top half of the screen, to look at other contacts once more. much like we do with VoiceOver with a three finger swipe.
to see what I mean, double tap a contact in the app switcher, then explore with a finger, in the top half of the screen. you see, guys, swiping with VoiceOver is only useful for navigating in certain ways. you really do need to explore the screen to understand how things are laid out, and why VoiceOver perhaps does things that may seem strange or buggy at first, until you see the screen as it really is.

8.
In some apps the screen will auto-lock whilst VoiceOver is in the process of reading text (generally when reading a long block of text). If you have disabled the auto lock in Settings > General > Autolock, this will not affect you.

I have not had this happen, though I don't tend to read text that's long enough perhaps. I also have my auto lock set to 5 mins. so perhaps I just don't read long enough articles.

9.
In some circumstances it is not possible to move app icons on the Home screen. This seems to be particularly problematic for those located in the row of icons directly above the Dock.

Yes. I can confirm this. all other icons, I can shift without a problem, just that line of icons above the dock. annoying, but not a major bug for me, as I already have my screen laid out how I want.

10.
When browsing the list of subscription options available in Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive, VoiceOver announces only the price, not the amount of storage space that you get with the package. For reference, as of the time of this writing, the $0.99 per month is 20GB, $3.99 is 200GB, $9.99 is 500GB, and $19.99 is 1TB.

Yes, this is true. how ever guys, I don't think this is actually a bug in iOS 8, rather a bug with how the apple guys have configured this to display. after all, this happened in iOS 7, and that had started to happen, as soon as the new iCloud drive pricing went live. and that was without an update to iOS. so this is not, it would seem, a problem with the OS, but a problem with there end. as this is a dynamic screen, that they can update on the fly.
Hopefully, they will fix this soon. as it should take nothing more then an update on the server to fix this one.

11.
If you tell Siri to add a reminder or Calendar event, it will display your event along with the cancel/confirm buttons. However, Siri speech may be silent or speak a couple words at most, and the prompt for you to speak the action you'd like is never given. This is with Siri's speech feedback set to "always", which works when using Siri for other tasks.

I can confirm this. how ever, this is not the only time this happens. it seems to happen a lot, with all sorts of interactions. it appears that VoiceOver keeps getting in the way. as you don't seem to see this happen when VoiceOver is turned off.

12.
Upon first downloading the Alex TTS Voice, VoiceOver fails to switch automatically from the voice in use while the Alex download was in progress. One must turn VoiceOver off, then reenable it.

Yes, this one I can confirm.

15.
On occasions, VoiceOver will not announce that an email folder is empty when you tap or swipe onto the area of the screen where any email messages would be listed. Instead, the only audible feedback is a muted ?clunk? tone. The behavior has been seen in both smart folders and regular folders.

I have yet to be able to reproduce this. it seems to be working just fine here.

16.
When writing a draft email, flicking left past the "cancel" button will not move you to the "minimize draft" button (which is visually located directly below the status bar). Similarly, touching the minimize button will focus on it, but you cannot then flick right to get to the rest of the page. This is doubly problematic as the button is small, so many users may not realize it is even there since they cannot flick to it and touch exploration can easily miss it.

Yes. I can reproduce this consistently.

17.
The VoiceOver Keyboard echo setting is unreliable. It does not take effect in 3rd party apps and some stock asps such as Messages. As a result, keys are always echoed. The only noticeable difference is that the pitch of the echo appears to vary based upon the setting selected.

Yes. this is very annoying.
Happens on both software keyboards, and hardware keyboards.

21.
Occasionally, when double-tapping on the screen to answer a call, audio playback will resume rather than the call being answered.

I have yet to see this happen. though I have not had many incoming calls as of yet, it has worked every time for me.

Minor Bugs
Setup
1. Updating the device from iOS 7.1.x to iOS 8 will not remember the VoiceOver Typing Preference.

I can't confirm this. it seemed to carry over just fine here.

General
1.
When automatically switching languages, VoiceOver triggers compact voices even if the premium versions are installed.

I can't confirm this one. seems to be switching to advanced one every time so far.

3.
When you have issued a say all command (a two finger flick up or down), VoiceOver ignores all incoming notifications instead of pausing to speak them. This is a feature, but notifications from the Messages app are an exception. In other words, VoiceOver will ignore all notifications except incoming texts; those usually cause VoiceOver to stop reading entirely.

This is an awesome feature! I hated having notifications interrupting my reading.

4.
In the Mail app, when you have a draft minimized, VoiceOver's focus is affected. Elements are out of order as you flick left or right, you suddenly get stuck and cannot move past an element, or you get into loops where VoiceOver keeps moving between a few elements as you flick left or right, and never moves beyond those few. Sending or canceling the draft, so the "x drafts in progress" message is gone from the bottom of the window, is enough to restore things to normal.

Yes. a little bit of playing, also produced another bug with this. the button to restore and continue your email, appears, to be at the top of the screen in the flicking order, even though it's actually right at the bottom.

6.
When VoiceOver focus is on an item in the Dock, a 3-fingered swipe to the left or right will no longer move your through Home screen pages (It is possible that this is by design).

no. incorrect. I can confirm, that while focused on the dock, three finger swipes, do, in fact, switch pages. both on my two devices, and at least three other peoples.

As you can see, I'm tending to find that one or two of these so called bugs, aren't bugs at all, but normal functioning of the OS, that people have not explored correctly to understand the layout.

A lot of them how ever, are confirmable, and regularly reproducible.
on the other hand, a couple of them, are, ... just not true. for example, the paging while in the dock. not sure why the team was having problems with that, or how long ago that bug was written about, but perhaps that was fixed in the gm, and not tested again to find out if it was still there.

I will note here though, that there actually appears to be a fix, at least in one or two things. for example, navigating by headings in a web site in safari, appears to not be having focus problems any more. yeyh! this one will require more testing, but so far, I have yet to see the problems we had with this in iOS 7, iOS 6, iOS 5, .... you get the idea.

I'm compiling a report to email apple about my findings as to the bugs I am seeing happening a lot.

hope this helps a few of you who have decided, perhaps hastily, to not update to iOS 8. it's not bug free, but please, somebody, point me to an operating system release, on any computer in time, that's not had bugs. I mean, come on people, seriously? yes, there are bugs. there always has been, and always will be bugs with a newly released operating system. this comes with the territory of working to put software on nearly a billion devices around the world.
of course, if any of these bugs are deal breakers for you and your daily usage of your devices, don't update to iOS 8 right now. but if most of these are minor to your usage, then perhaps you might want to think about it. the things iOS 8 can do, are very nice. and on the hole, I've had few problems.

By Missy Hoppe on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I'm still trying to decide if I should risk the update. A part of me would love to start trying to learn the new features, but since I already know that a bunch of apps I use, most noteably all of the titles from Choiceofgames, aren't going to work under IOS 8, I'm thinking that waiting would be the smarter option. A few of my friends have taken the plunge, and I'm getting mixed reports. Some confirm at least a few of the bugs I'm worried about encountering, while others say that everything is great and that they already like it better than IOS 7.

I'm curious if some of these bugs are less noticeable or possibly non-existant on the new phones, although new hardware shouldn't make that much of a difference.

I know that if I update, I can make myself useful by helping report the bugs I encounter to Apple in hopes that one more person reporting will get them fixed sooner, but on the other hand, I'm a little bit nervous about taking one for the team, so to speak given that downgrading isn't possible in light of my skills so once I upgrade, I can never go back.

I will be visiting with my mom tomorrow, and she has already updated her IPad. I might have a quick play with that, but it won't be a very fair test given that I've never been good at using an ipad. Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm posting this, but I'm just so conflicted on what to do. I will continue watching this space with interest.

By Serena on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

hi. the only difference you would see from newer hardware, is obviously, it's designed for this software out of the box, and that it's a new install. that's the other thing. i've only tested iOS 8 via OTA, and the next thing to test in terms of bugs, is to fully reinstall the OS, and start from scratch, with no data left from the old OS on the device. my guess is, some, not all, but some, of the bugs may not appear on a newly installed system.
obviously, some bugs will still be there, as they are really bugs. but others, may simply be, because of files left over from the iOS 7 installation.
so if you want to have the highest chance of a good install, restore to iOS 8, not update, and set it up as new, not from a backup.

By J.P. on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Ok Guys,
I only upgraded my iPod 5th gen. I won't my phone or iPads.
I encountered HUGE issues with VO.
I will make a suggestion which corrected many issues, but not all. I did complete restore and setup as new. Don't use saved backup. I think update is corrupting many files which are important to accessibility settings.

By Steve Matzura on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Have these been reported (I HOPE)? How old is this list and what, if anything, is being done to rectify these problems?

By Michael Hansen on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Steve,

All of the accessibility bugs on this list are current as of the public release of iOS 8. They have also all been reported directly to Apple.

With that said, for anyone reading this list who has not done so, please, please contact Apple Accessibility regarding any issues you're having with iOS 8. Every use case is different, and it is completely possible that the information you provide Apple could lead them to look at a bug from a different angle than what was being done previously.

I am so sick and tired of being a second-class consumer. I don't care that Apple is giving VoiceOver away at no extra cost to the consumer, that is absolutely no excuse for such a shoddily-prepared release of an operating system as this one clearly is. I knew we were in trouble when iOS 7 came out, which is why I'm still on 6. We should all camp outside One Apple Way's front door in Cupertino, or whatever that address of theirs is, and demonstrate each one of the thirty-plus bugs, major, minor, or in the middle, and ask any Apple executive we care to, would they live with them? Guaranteed they'd all say no. So if they wouldn't, why should we? Dammit, give me back my Samsung Haven. It just plain worked. Access technology isn't supposed to get worse with each revision. ... Is it?

By alex wallis on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

also, have people tried going into general, reset and resetting all settings? if you do a full install via iTunes so not over the air update, then restore from a backup, it might be worth going in there and using the reset all settings option, that way you can still restore from a backup but all your settings will be on a clean slate, but you will still have all your messages, contacts etc. and doing a full install from iTunes makes sure everything is in the right place.

By Usman on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Is anyone else finding they are not able to hang up calls with the two finger double tap?

Good news: I have a solution for the Fleksy issue I previously described. A friend was able to switch her keyboard to the built-in iOS ones by double-tapping and holding a particular button. After some testing, I found that you have to double-tap and hold the "123 globe white button." It should revert back to the iOS-specific keyboard. Sometimes I find that it's a bit laggy, but pressing the delete button or a letter on the keyboard should resolve that.

By Siobhan on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

How exactly are we second class consumers? It's already been established that Apple is probably not aware of half of these bugs. Why? Because I'm sure not everyone the hundred bucks to toss their way, and, besides that normally you don't have two IOS devices to use, especially a phone. So there are two reason why Apple shouldn't be blamed for this release. Yes, it has bugs, we knew it going in, although if they are ever comfortable letting people use a public beta as they are with Yosemite, and we go install it knowing it's a beta, who do we speak to then when something isn't right with Voice over, or another part of the OS? No one is forcing the upgrade on anyone. Now, my theory of just why some of these bugs are here is interesting. Apple is stretched to thin. Beats music, Yosemite still in beta, trying to get album sales to increase, the Apple Pay getting it ready for not only us but other countries probably, and of course the Apple watch. Is it any wonder there's little worry as to how bad the bugs are, jsut that for the majority, it's ok? Like I said, I will not down grade. The more I use the OS the more I am not as perturbed as I once was. Now here's a point: Without going into details, I reported feedback to apple on more then one occassion. I said running your finger across the dock, nothing was happening, I also said using a USB headset, as you raise or lower the volume, a strange window appeared then left. I'm happy to report that all of these issues were resolved. Dismal writing of my email asside, remember the old saying, what they don't know won't hurt them? So did they know the caller ID wasn't being read? Maybe not if no one turned on voice over. Apple takes it's share of the blame but we need to as well. If we stand here and be upset about what is going on with the IOs if no one says anything? I'm not sorry i upgraded, if you choose not to, if you're unwilling to deal withthe bugs of the release, that's fine I'm glad you want to stay with it. but please, don't wait for us, others I mean, to do your work for you if you're not willing to take the time to politely speak to apple saying, Hi I have a problem with...

Hello, I have actually had troubles with this since about iOS 7. Usually I have to do it a few times or The other party would hang up before I could successfully do it.

By Michael Fink on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

When AppleVis finds these bugs, I imagine they're reporting ten?
Is it helpful to have everyone report them separately? The squeaky wheel and all.
If so, where can we go to report these things?
Thanks for all the work you've done.

I've come across many of the listed bugs. I am rely hoping for an 8.1 SOON

By Steve on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I stick with IPhone because it had the best out of the box accessibility. I bet Steve is turning in his grave.

By dvdmth on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I saw that somebody here has better luck with Bluetooth keyboards and is actually able to use commands like Control-Option-H that don't work at all for me. I sure would love to know how to get my keyboard working like that

The last time I tried to use my Bluetooth keyboard, every key I pressed registered twice. That's the first time I had that particular issue.

I want to comment about a couple of items on the original post. The issue mentioned about the screen auto-locking while reading text is interesting to me, for I've always had that issue when I had auto-lock enabled. That's why I have that feature disabled, except that I do allow the iPad to lock itself when closing the iPad case. Even so, I still have the issue on occasion when checking notifications on the lock screen, but again that's nothing new. I even run into this issue on my Mac on occasion.

I can definitely confirm serious bug #2 now, the one about the screen not scrolling properly while flicking through the content in some apps. I have observed this in Team Stream HD while flicking through an article. The screen suddenly jumped down when I hit an embedded tweet in the article, then jumped back to the top when I flicked past the tweet. There were other weird jumps that happened while navigating through the article.

I think someone mentioned that braille screen input doesn't work in text fields in Safari. I just tried it, and I only get bonk sounds while trying to use the feature, so that does appear to be the case. When I left the input mode, I checked the text field and there was nothing inserted, so I know nothing was actually typed. Incidentally, you can use braille input to navigate through a webpage similar to using the keys on a Bluetooth keyboard, such as inserting an H for next heading.

When trying to use braille input earlier, I was having trouble with certain dot combinations, such as dots 123 for the letter L. I discovered the culprit—the Zoom tool was interfering. Disabling Zoom solved the issue.

There is an unlabeled button in the Clock app, in the Timer section. When flicking, it appears directly before the Start button, after the button where you choose the alert sound to use for the timer. Visually, the VoiceOver cursor appears in the upper left corner of the screen, to the left of the word Timer. This unlabeled button cannot be found by touch, since moving your finger there only announces the timer heading. With the vision I have, it doesn't look like there's anything displayed in that portion of the screen, so I have no idea what that unlabeled button is doing there. This is on an iPad, so it may be different on other iOS devices.

Someone posted that the longstanding VoiceOver focus bug when navigating by headings on a website appeared to be fixed. I also tried to reproduce that old bug, and it does appear to be better, though I'm not yet sure if it's truly fixed. Since I can't use my Bluetooth keyboard worth anything, I can't surf the web as effectively as I normally do, so it's difficult for me to get a feel for how VoiceOver is holding up.

I haven't yet tried resetting my iPad settings to see if it makes a difference, but that is a good idea. I may try that tomorrow, and if I notice anything improved, I will post back.

Hello, I can understand your frustration. I was also a bit frustrated about those bugs. At first glance it does seem quite annoying that Apple would allow these types of bugs to slip through the cracks. I don't believe it is fair to think that Apple Has dropped the ball on us. I think we all need to remember the things they have introduced in iOS 8. Sure, they were misguided in their efforts. Instead of adding new features, they should have been fixing old bugs but it shows that they Were making an effort however misguided it might have been. We need to look at the view improvements that were made to Accessibility and iOS 8 especially for the low vision community and also some of the cool new features like brails green input. Of course that is going to have a few bugs because it is a whole new concept for Apple to tackle. It seems to be that when something new is created, usually a bug crops up. If you look at jaws or braille note takers or probably any type of technology, they update and create bugs and maybe sometimes add new features instead of fixing all the bugs like they should. This is why I can't understand why people are saying that Apple has ignored us or that we are not a priority to Apple when they obviously did do some stuff with accessibility. I am in programming class and I have learned that there is a bug For every thousand lines of code. We can't expect Apple to be able to squash every bug that would be in that code especially when they had a deadline for releasing the OS. Yes, I am sure that bugs that big should not exist but if anything, it shows that Apple is making an effort in the fact that they extended the period during which people could downgrade to iOS 7 .1 .2. Now all we can do is hope that Apple will come out with a new update. For some that means waiting to upgrade until they are fixed and for some it means upgrading because of all the great new features and dealing with the bugs and then upgrading to the new update when these things are fixed. Also, as sad as it is, Accessibility really is a small part of all Apple is about. Sure we should be given equal attention but I could imagine trying to squeeze in all this stuff to do with sharing in hand off and all that kind of stuff like that could potentially put us on the back burner. That shouldn't be an issue but I could see how easily it could be. Maybe they can focus on an update that would Squash accessibility bugs and that would be okay because they would be able to focus on Accessibility. I am just stating my thoughts on this and some people have commented similar things. kindest wishes, Jesse Tregarthen

By Seanoevil on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hello again,
This question has been asked and answered many times already just in this one thread, but for the sake of getting these bugs fixed...
If you have a problem, please email a detailed report to:
[email protected]

HTH

Sea no Evil.

By Troy on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Well said Jesse! Jaws has bugs in it from years ago, and I don't see fs being attacked like apple is. It's all about patients.

By Zaina on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I'm finding the typing feedback bug very annoying.
In voiceover settings, you might have the typing feedback for software keyboards switched off or just set on words. In all cases the voiceover always gives us feedback on characters when typing in an app.
I hope those bugs get fixed soon in the next update.

By Carol P on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I switched on the "Hey Siri option to see if it really worked. Well, it does, but just when you don't want or expect it to! <Smiley>
With phone plugged in at the other end of the room, yesterday he obviously listened into the football scores with us and said he didn't understand what was meant by one of the results! Then again today he was chiming in all over the place, usually telling me he couldn't take calls right now!
Needless to say, I've turned that little feature off now and probably for always!

By alex wallis on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

I wouldn't use that feature anyway, I mean imagine the privacy concerns. In fact I don't use siri or dictation at all, call me old fashioned but I don't like the idea of apple storing my queries etc.

By Carol P on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

In reply to by Neo

I would agree that the voices seem to get worse in every upgrade. They just change a little, getting a bit more synthetic. I've switched off the pitch change thing this time around to improve the English male voice and perhaps it's just a little better for me that way!

By Carol P on Monday, October 6, 2014 - 01:30

Hi all! I've eagerly delved into making comments for the first time on Applevis and it shouldn't be the last. However, it occurs to me that I'm now off the computer and away for a little while and am not sure when I'll be well enough to return after a little surgery; so if I don't answer anyone's messages, I do sincerely apologise!