The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 16 for Blind and Low Vision Users

By AppleVis, 9 September, 2022

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Apple has released iOS 16 to the public. This post contains details of the VoiceOver, low vision, and Braille bugs which we believe have been introduced in this release; as well as details of the pre-existing bugs which we believe to be resolved.

As is our routine practice, each new bug has been given a severity rating; these ratings are based upon what we believe to be the implications for accessing and using features and functionality and the level of impact on the overall user experience, as well as whether or not there is an effective workaround for the issue. However, as these ratings are subjective, it is very possible that they may not reflect your own opinion or use case.

As we always stress, we can make no claims on the completeness or accuracy of our testing. We have only a small team of testers, and it is simply impossible for us to test all devices, configurations, applications, and use cases.

Some of the bugs listed below will be specific to a certain device, configuration, or use case. Consequently, it is entirely likely that you will not encounter all of what we list; and it is also probable that you will encounter bugs or regressions that we did not identify during our testing.

We strongly recommend that you read through this post and any replies before updatingā€”as this will allow you to make an informed decision on whether to install iOS 16 or to wait for a future release.

To help us ensure that the information on this page is as complete and accurate as possible, we would appreciate feedback from those who have installed iOS 16 ā€” both 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, itā€™s even more important that you let Apple know of any additional bugs that you find (they already know about the ones currently listed below). This post explains why you should report bugs directly to Apple, as well as the best ways to do so.

With all of the preamble out of the way, here are the new bugs for blind and low vision users which we believe to be present in iOS 16:

Serious Bugs

We are currently aware of only one new issue that we would consider to be serious, and this involves the use of Invert Colors in combination with VoiceOver seemingly causing the App Switcher to not work.

If you have Invert Colors enabled system-wide, you are likely to find that the App Switcher cannot be activated.

If you use per-app settings to enable Invert Colors for specific apps, you will likely find that the App Switcher will stop working when you open one of these apps.

When this issue presents itself, your device will still provide the normal and expected feedback whilst performing the gesture on iPhones without a Home button to activate the App Switcher, but it will not be activated. Additionally, if you have assigned the Back Tap or a touch gesture to activate the App Switcher, these also won't work if you are effected by this issue. If triggered by an app set to use Invert Colors, the behavior will persist until you restart your iPhone. Turning VoiceOver off and then on again does not return the App Switcher to normal behavior.

The App Switcher is believed to work as expected if you use Invert Colors without VoiceOver also enabled.

We have not been able to test whether this issue is also present on iPhones which have a Home button. If you can confirm if this is or is not the case, please let us know in the comments below.

We do not know if they are related issues, but some people have reported problems on iOS 16 with VoiceOver focus whilst using the App Switcher and VoiceOver on occasions behaving as if there are two instances of the same app in the App Switcher.

Our thanks go to Eglė, who enabled us to determine that Invert Colors is the cause of the App Switcher issue.

Moderate Bugs

Minor Bugs

Other Reported Bugs

We recommend that you read the following threads in our forum, as they mention some bugs which have not been encountered or yet reproduced by any of our team so are not included above:

If you encounter any additional VoiceOver, Braille or low vision bugs in iOS 16, please let others know by posting a reply below. When doing so, please provide as much information as possible so that others know exactly what to expect; when and where the problem occurs; and any possible workarounds you have found.

Accessibility Improvements in iOS 16

Our testing suggests that the following pre-existing accessibility bugs have been resolved or significantly addressed in iOS 16:

If you encounter any additional fixes or improvements during your own use of iOS 16, please let us know by posting a reply below.

In Closing

We have been compiling these lists of new bugs for every major iOS release since iOS 7. In our opinion, although iOS 16 introduces a number of new bugs for VoiceOver and Braille users, it should be a stable and usable update for most use cases. However, there are certain to be more issues discovered and shared; so, if you haven't already upgraded, we would strongly recommend that you take a few moments to read through any replies to this post before doing so. You may also want to consider that in recent years, Apple has typically fixed a significant number of VoiceOver and Braille bugs in the first couple of updates to follow major iOS releases.

When posting in the comments, we ask that you please keep discussion on-topic and related specifically to accessibility bugs introduced or resolved in iOS 16. Our announcement posts about yearly major iOS updates usually receive a significant number of helpful replies; making it all the more important that readers be able to quickly navigate through the comments to find the information they need. Additionally, when posting, please remember that the decision about whether or not to install a software update is personal; and that everyone's situation is different and there is no right or wrong answer. Posts criticizing others on their upgrade decisions are not constructive and do nothing to add to the discussion. You should also accept that not personally experiencing a bug mentioned above or in the comments does not mean that the bug does not exist. As stated above, bugs can be specific to a device, configuration or use case. Telling somebody that the bug they are experiencing does not exist on the basis that you haven't encountered it is not helpful.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Apple's Accessibility Team for their timely response to a majority of the bug reports filed by our team during the beta cycle. It continues to be clear from our experience that the Accessibility Team has strived to ensure that iOS offers the best possible experience to blind and low vision users.

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By Mitchell on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

So this has been an issue I've had for a while, but when in a call (using Oticon OPN s1 hearing aids and BrailleNote Touch+), the mic mode for standard, wide spectrum, and voice isolation can never be changed. Does this have to do with the bluetooth problems that seem to exist with the BrailleNote, which likes to hogreconnect even when it's connected?

By MrBrokenEyes on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Upgraded on 10S and nearly all native iOS voices are gone, including all advanced options and ability to use SIRI voices as regular voiceover options. This is infuriating beyond words.

By Mitchell on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I had that issue until I rebooted my device.

By MrBrokenEyes on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Was this in reference to my issue with voices?

By Magic Retina on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I thought the issue with focus jumping to the top of the screen couldn't get worse but I seem to have been wrong there. Not only is this still happening whenever a link is clicked on a page and opened in a new tab, now it will just happen at random. So far I've been in the process of actively reading something when the cursor jumps back to the top of the page for no reason I can detect. Seriously how is this not a big problem for anyone else?

By Lily Rose on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I go to Messages > Stickers, and go to the bottom to change my avatar. But it just go to Expand button, and this is closer to the top and I have to scroll through all my stickers to get to Avatars. Of course, I have to pass "New Memoji" button on the way there, but VO don't give any indication it's there, I can just swipe through stickers and straight to avatars.
I try clicking on one, and it doesn't do anything. I swipe in and out of the Avatar section, try clicking on it again and the whole darned thing crashes and I have to reopen it and do all of that scrolling again. Also, I might have to do alot of swiping forward and back because some random ones are skipped.
I still have to go to Avatars then swipe back to get to "New Memoji" but if I accidentally skip it (which, trust me I will and have done), I can't swipe back to Avatars. The only thing that gets them back is close stickers and reopen it.
Then when I open expand there's usually a More Options button at the top, which you can use to access options like New Memoji, Edit, Delete, etc, but it's not there.
Has anyone experienced these issues?

By Igna Triay on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

For me atleast, elequence is sounding great. I'm using reed, US, not reed UK, the UK version of elequence is horrible, imo. I get that this is highly subjective though so yeah. But for me at-least, I'm Liking elequence.

By Jason White on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

After the upgrade, the VoiceOver voice was reset to the default for the configured language/region. This did not happen immediately. After the first boot, the voice that I had configured was used, but when unlocking the device later, I noticed it had reverted to the default voice for the language and region.

This was easily fixed in VoiceOver settings.

By Troy on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I'm wondering with those of us who have or are currently experienceing the no speach after reboot are using Samantha? I switched to a different voice other than samantha until the ios16 install was complete on my SE3 and didn't have the problem on reboot like I did on my 8 when using Samantha.

By Brooke on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

The passcode has to be entered right after the phone restarts. That's where the problem happens. Yeah, if iOS allowed for either face or touch ID to work at that point, it would be all good.

By Troy on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

While this bug was off and on it seems to be very frequent in ios16. When you hang up from a call and this includes aira, voiceover will go silent and only make the clicking sounds. I just lock and unlock my phone again and it comes back. A friend and I both had this issue. She has an SE2 and I have an SE3.

By JLove on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

And iTunes cannot connect to the server... Every time I press update, either it does not do anything or it says Contacting Apple server or something, then it comes back to update. Not even a restore, it comes back the same. When it gets passed this, it says extracting software then it says the iPhone could not be found.

By MrBrokenEyes on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

The iOS Twitter app is totally broken with 16. Canā€™t scroll, access the menu bar or anything. Can someone let Twitter a11y know so they can fix?

By negi4a on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Of course, I have reported them to Apple's accessibility. If you can reproduce, please report to Apple.
1. With notification summary turned on, only app names are pronounced, and Voiceover does not announce notifications themselves. It happens on the lock screen, as well as in the notification center.
2. Choosing a voice for an activity overrides the Voiceover setting for recognizing different languages. It is an old problem, at least from iOS 15.
3. There is no way in activity settings to return to the ā€œdefaultā€ global system userā€™s speech profile. deleting the chosen voice only removes its data from the device and Samantha takes its place, but no language recognition is done. Choosing the default voice takes Samantha's place but does not recognize languages either. There is no control allowing the default. The chosen voice still is shown to the one before Samantha. Choosing voice of a Cyrillic language does not much good, because none of them is reading well English or other languages. The only option is to delete the action and set it up from the very start which is not a good option if it holds many changes. Is seems that the settings for different voices in an action is not possible. Both voices speak
with the same speed for example. It surely is a problem for a people who learn a new language.
4. It is impossible to rename an activity from the keyboard or by dictating. Entering the first letter, the keyboard hides itself and the focus is somewhere on the activity options screen. Dictating does not help neither. After dictation there is no way to confirm the new name. Pressing enter does no good;
pressing the back button or with z-scrubbing VO gesture goes back without saving the changes. I don't see a "done" button anywhere.
Problems 2 and 3 are very serious for multilingual users
Here is the link to the demo video:

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AoV-jzT5_MuTi5xZp-0Y0KqFFoLNUA?e=LTcESK

Whinston Chen tweeted that if you use iOS voices in VoiceDreem reader app, better do not update to v16.

By Andy Lane on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Has anyone else had issues with Siri voices? Only American female voice is available. My phone is also running very slowly, typing this for example, I need to press keys maybe 1 second apart on Bluetooth keyboard so it can keep up. Iā€™ve tried resetting, re-installing voices so far. Premium voices arenā€™t even available. Itā€™s just low quality versions. Very frustrating, it happened first thing this morning while my phone was locked. Anyone else found a way to get them back? Thanks.

By Fayaz Pasha on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hello Apple vis community, Need some help. I today updated to IOS16 on My I phone 11 and since then voice over is not switching to reading in other languages other than default. In other words automatic language detection is not working. I have verified in VO settings this functionality is appearing ON. I also checked in voiceover roter the language button appears to be disabled not sure why. Any guidance will be helpful. Best, Fayaz Pasha

By Lily Rose on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

This might be a little unrelated, but because it's what I'm updating to ipados 15.7 to wait for IPADOS 16. So what's it like? Any big bugs? Is it the same as ios 16?

By Rob on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hi, I have noted two bugs after updating to iOS16 on my iPhone 13::

1. Direct touch for apps such as Blindfold Games is broken. Focus is lost within the direct touch area of the app in question. Further, if you then go to settings, none of the buttons work. The only way to get things back to normal is to restart your phone.

2. If you ask siri what song is playing, she won't tell you. The work around is to use the music recognition feature found in control centre.

By Amir on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

@Rob and all, I can duplicate this. In fact, it started with iOS 16 betas but managed to find its way into the final 16.0 release. If I ask Siri to recognize music, it says that it can't do that and that I can try in a little why. As Rob mentioned, the work-around, which is rather uncomfortable and a bit time-consuming, would be to use the Music Recognition button in the Control Center.

By nikos daley on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I found a bug when using live captions and a braille display. Once captions is on, go into any text field and start typing it types all kinds of odd symbols rather then words. Changing the input or output does nothing and the only way to fix is to turn VoiceOver off and on again. Is anyone else seeing this?

By Roxann Pollard on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

As a lover of the Eloquence Reed voice, I can confirm that it is a miserable fail on the iPhone. The voice is exceedingly muffled and I am forced to drop my normal speed of 85% all the way down to 60% for him to be understood. Something when wrong, when transfering this one from a Windows platform over to the Apple platform. On Windows, Reed is clear, clean, and not choppy. I use it at a high rate of speed and don't get listening fatigue. Of course, I realize that all voices are subjective and all have their own particular preferences. It just confounds me how something so seemingly simple can be messed up so easily.

And since I'm on the topic of voices... I am disgusted with Apple for even adding the novelty voices on to my device. They are a waste of time, not productive, and I couldn't imagine anyone actually using them in their daily workflow. I have written of my experiences using the Gester voice on another thread here. suffice it to say, I was forced to ask for sighted assistance to turn off the Gester voice. All it would do is make a creepy laughter sound, no matter what icon was touched. If Apple thinks that blind people would prefer to listen to laughter, without any words to be found anywhere, then they don't get it.

I'm sorry for ranting here, but shame on Apple for taking up our valuable memory space and for including the Gester voice, in particular.

Here's hoping that the Eloquence Reed speech qualities will be improved in the near future.

By Scott Davert on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I'm not finding this, no. Just the issues I documented above. What iPhone are you using?

By nikos daley on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I am using an iphone se third gen. For me, as soon as i press the "next app" command and I see the caption panel expand or collapse that is when it goes nuts. Am I doing something wrong, how do i get the caption thing to go away?

By Curtis Chong on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hello. I am using the new Eloquence on an iPhone 12 Mini. It is very very snappy, and Braille Screen Input, is faster than it has ever been with Alex. I am using the Reed voice. I am sorry that others have not found Eloquence to be quite as positive as I have.

By Curtis Chong on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

In the App Switcher, VoiceOver appears to be speaking both the preview icon and the text associated with that icon, giving one the nonvisual impression that the app is in the App Switcher more than one time. You might, for example, hear something like "Messages" and when you flick again, "messages, active". I reported this problem to Apple only to learn that it has already been identified. It will probably take months to get fixed<smile>.

By Curtis Chong on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hello. Apple has made it a bit more difficult in iOS 16 to record an audio message directly from the Messages app. You have to bring up the list of apps available in Messages and then double tap on Audio. The positive here is that you no longer have to hold down the Record button when creating an audio message. But having the apps show on one's screen does create more than a little clutter which I would just as soon not have there.

By Matt on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hello. I am currently using eloquence in iOS 16. I have found that using the eddie voice sounds a bit less muffled than the reed voice.

By Moopie Curran on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hi,
I didn't experience this bug until I updated bitlife just to make sure the update to bitlife was accessible before updating to the new bitlife on my iOS 15 main bitlife device (that's how important bitlife is to me). Anyway, I'm impacted by the direct touch issue, but I didn't have to reboot to fix it. I just went back to bitlife and went to direct touch with my rotor, and turned it off, and knock on wood, regular iOS features function as normal. It's a good thing I don't play bitlife on my iOS 16 device, but that teaches me I'm not updating my gaming device to iOS 16, that's for sure.

As for identifying music, it's no big deal for me, I always identified it from the control center, because when I'd ask siri to do it, I'd have nosy people around me thinking I was talking to them, from the control center, I can do it stealthily, but that's neither here nor there.

But maybe if you don't want to reboot your device, and you need a direct touch app, try turning direct touch off when you're done with the app. I didn't have a focus issue in bitlife for the two minutes I played, but I couldn't activate settings in the settings app, and apps on my home screen would act like they were editing. It's almost like it gets stuck in a state of direct touch. You might have to be patient to get the rotor to work within a direct touch app, but just try it, that's going to be easier, at least for me, than rebooting the phone, that's just a royal pain to me.

GOOD LUCK!!!!

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

How do I ad a widget in the lock screen with VO?

By Zoe Victoria on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

I've already made this a separate topic, but I thought I may as well post it here as well. All of my pronounciations have ceased to work. The voices speak the words as though a pronunciation entry was added. Also, dictating pronunciations no longer works, though I think that's been around since iOS 15.
Alex has also changed. His intonation is now weird on a lot of words, such as link and button.

By tripolice on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

The bottom toolbars like Back, Share, Tabs etc. collapse arbitrarily at any time during the web browsing. Imo this is a regression from IOS15 where they remain active at the bottom of the page unless collapsed manually.
There is no volume slider on the playing controls on the lockscreen while audio is playing. Since other controls are to be performed onscreen, it would be more handy to have the volume slider also present, as in IOS15.

In IOS15 turning of focus from the lockscreen did not require touch ID, whereas in 16 first touch ID has to be entered before turning any of the focus off.
Ava ENHANCED, which was my go to voice in IOS15, is now sounding weird, don't know how to explain this, but the differences are clearly there if the voice is compared between the two OS.

By VivekP on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hi all,
Iā€™m using IPhone 12 Pro with ios 16 since last night.
I use backtap to go to app switcher usually. It doesnā€™t seem to work anymore. I cannot even go to app switcher from sliding from the bottom screne.
Any solutions?
Thank you and have a smashing day ahead!

By Cobbler on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Scroll back to the the post that you are replying to and check what's said under ā€œSerious Bugsā€. This should answer your question.

By kool_turk on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Looks like you can't delete Siri voices even when switching to a different region.

They keep returning once you change back.

Obviously, you can't delete voices while you're using them, before you could and it would default to Samantha or another default voice.

Now, if you download a Siri voice, good luck removing it because it'll keep coming back.

By VivekP on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Hi, Thank you so much for your assistance. I am aware of the fact that the app-switcher bug is present with enabling invert colours systemwide or with per app settings. I do not have systemwide invert colours turned on, neither do I have invert colours turned on with per app settings, hence I posted the issue here.
Surprisingly, even when VO is turned off, the BackTap gesture does not perform as it should, point in question being my mom's Phone 10R, she is sighted and does not use VO.
I have contacted apple about it.
Thank you and have a good day!

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

Try to reset it again, turn it off and on to see if it helps. You never know.

By Lily Rose on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

After ios16 update Iphone SE home button has started making a whooshing sound sometimes? Does anybody know what this is?

By Siobhan on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

It's thesound to bring the screen lower on big devices to make it easier to access something. People with a large phone use it a lot.

By gailisaiah on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 17:02

One thing I've noticed with the App Switcher is when flicking up with three fingers to close an app, the gesture doesn't work the first time but does after the second.