Cannot use iPhone Mirroring with VoiceOver

Category
Other Apple Applications
Severity
Serious

Description

iPhone Mirroring is completely inaccessible with VoiceOver. Even when turning VoiceOver off in order to pass keyboard commands to the iPhone, only the iOS VoiceOver navigation sounds are played through the Mac, not speech as would be expected. As audio from the iPhone can be played to the Mac, and the Mac’s keyboard can be used to control the iPhone, it is our position that the user should be able to hear iOS VoiceOver audio through their Mac, and use their Mac’s keyboard to navigate the iOS user interface.

Bug First Encountered

macOS Sequoia 15.0

How often the bug occurs

Always
Apple feedback #
FB14065878

Status

Active

Options

Comments

By TheBllindGuy07 on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 05:50

for this bug.
This is the most highlited feature on macos 15 and yet we blind users are completely taken away.

By Sebby on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 05:50

Send your feedback to AAPL! Honestly on my 2020 Intel iMac, which would support the feature, realistically this makes the upgrade very nearly pointless, so I'm delaying it there. Such a crying shame.

By Tobias on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:50

Hello,
I am posting this more for the information of anyone who comes across this thread. I have already sent feedback to Apple and would like to hope they do something, though so far, even on beta testing MacOS 15.1, nothing has changed.

The whole point of IPhone mirroring is that the phone remains locked at all times. In fact, if you turn VoiceOver off, then unlock the phone with your mac's keyboard, IPhone mirroring instantly ends.
Thus, I think that the way mirroring works is that it just prints out a picture of what, should, be on the iPhone's screen, and then what you do all happens in the background on the phone.
Thus, what needs to happen is that Apple somehow makes it so that VoiceOver on the mac, not on the phone, can see what you're doing so you can then act.
Given that they made Apple Watch Mirroring on the iPhone accessible, I would like to hope that the same could be said to iPhone mirroring here, but it might take longer than we would like for this to happen. So let's enjoy the ability to see IPhone notifications for now, and with luck, we will get full iPhone mirroring one day.

By Ollie on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:50

It's not a bug, it's just not supported with voiceover in this version of mac OS. It's never worked during teh beta meaning they never intended for it to work. It's similar to side car.

It's frustrating, but we need to ask them to include support instead of siting it as a bug.

By Jonathan Candler on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:50

This is one of the main features that apple puts out and yet they couldn't even manage to get this to work right for us? Yet another example of we're treeted like second class! Cmon apple, get with it! I honestly don't know why this is even listed as a bug at this point. Just sayin'

By Sebby on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:50

Audio is sent over the channel. So Apple can make this work by literally special-casing input while the app has focus such that VO commands go through to the phone. The other side is then that VoiceOver needs to operate correctly, but that's just a matter of someone at Apple making sure it works properly. So yeah, it's not a bug, if not testing for that scenario and implementing the special-case logic counts. Which, for my limited reserves of capital, it doesn't. JMO.

By Joshua on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:50

Apple can’t make this work right mean while phone link on windows and link to windows on Samsung works fine, talkback comes through the computer speakers and everything just works

By Michael Hansen on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:50

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hi all,
Some have questioned why we are listing the inability to use iPhone Mirroring with VoiceOver as a 'bug'.
It is listed as a bug because it is a feature that is part of the operating system... And a headline feature at that... And it is not accessible to VoiceOver users. Regardless of the 'why', the end result is still the same: that VoiceOver and braille users do not have access to the premier feature in a major macOS release. Apple can and must do better.