Does anyone know the split between partially sighted and blind folk on android compared with IOS?

I don't have any concrete data that answers your question unfortunately. However I think it's a worthwhile topic of investigation and hopefully there will be some further insight in the future. Anecdotally, all the blind people I've met use iPhones now, however there were 2 or 3 who used Android. The Braille users who were on Android switched to iPhone as soon as their means allowed for it, and the blind people using Android had enough vision such that they didn't need TalkBack, only slight screen magnification. In the US where I'm based, iOS devices are typically provided to blind students by their state Commissions for the blind or their schools (if they are enrolled at schools for the blind). However the opposite is usually true for laptops, as Windows is much more popular among these institutions than MacOS and the blind Mac users I know are either audio professionals or young tech-savvy people who took the initiative and switched of their own accord for ecosystem integration or Apple clout (the latter is especially pertinent to students). Hope this helps.

Just saw this topic. I'm actually primarily an Android user, so I thought I would chip in here. I'm 30 and just got my first iPhone a few months ago, so I had no idea how good VoiceOver was. LOL I'm actually struggling to choose a primary device now that I have both since my Android phone is more customizable and integrates better with my Windows laptop, but VoiceOver is definitely ahead in some areas. In my teens, I always had Android phones since it's what my family could afford and I didn't know how accessible iPhones were. I had experiences with both a school for the blind and my VR program here. VR hardly ever gave me anything and the school didn't give out laptops or phones, just Braille displays or notetakers, but all the computers ran Windows. I think Texas, the state I live in, is somewhat an outlier though.

I'd honestly say that if you get a clean android settup running android 12, I think it is, (the latest version,) it's accesssible.

I personally prefer IOS because of the youtube app, I can flick down to hear what a video is called. instead of reading through the entire 13 minutes, video about Brad, title I can just flick down and hear, video about Brad.

There's other aps too like soundscape, blindsquare, and distopia that make IOS my platform of choice.

Having said that, android is definetly accessible, you just have to find the write build to make sure it works, I think anything running android 12, or perhaps it's 11, i'm not sure, should be fine.

Another thing about android devices vs IOS ones is that with IOS once you get used to some jestures, you can use them on every phone where as with android, some of the taps and flicks are difirent depending on the make of phone, for example; a google pixel will be laid out differently to a sampsung phone but you can download the phone launcher you are used to and have your phone up and running the way you want.

So it comes down to custamisability, for me; I just want my phone to work but for others they like tinkering.

As for a graph kind of thing, I don't think that exists but I can say that in countries like India, android is cheeper so is the prefered platform for most people.

Like others I don’t have any data, but anecdotally I think iOS is the more popular among those who use a screen-reader, and Android is the more popular among low vision folks who use features like large font and magnification. At least in our part of the world Oliver, it may be different in the US where iPhone is generally more popular even in the mainstream than it is here.
While TalkBack and Commentary on Android are good, I personally think VoiceOver is stronger overall. Whereas I get the impression that Android, and especially Samsung, have the edge in the low vision space.
It would be interesting to see data though.

I didn't think they were interested in this kind of stuff?

I know they have their own map app but don't actually know if it's any good, but I didn't think they'd care about this kind of stuff.

I thought they were more interested in pushing products for older people and not so much the younger croud.

I just took a look at the results of the last WebAim survey. It has a split of 71% for iOS and 25% for android. However 90% of respondents use a screen reader, so I don’t think it’s necessarily giving a good view of the low vision side.
Perhaps somewhat helpful for what you’re looking for though.

I do wish sometimes you could just reply in the reply box and not have to ad a subject line each time, I know it's off topic but sometimes I just can't think of things to say.

Hi Oliver, David and all,
Webaim is a great way of determining what us relatively affluent blind tech consumers use. It isn’t, however, representative of any data really outside our circles where people know what WEBAIM and WCAG are. I don’t have exact numbers but I’ve heard from my friends working on android accessibility it's probably something like 3 or 4 to 1 more blind android users worldwide when you look at all the markets apple hasn’t gotten much of a foothold in because of their price and brand values. If you’re blind in, say, Thailand or Nigeria or India you almost certainly use android because there are just very few iOS devices for sale there at prices most people can afford.

Such good phones. Why back in my day you could plug in a good old N95 and get a week of charge, try doing that with a fancy smancy IPhone.

Oh sure there's more on the Iphones but you could brows the internet pretty nicely on the n95 and honestly? I'm sure it would be faster than my crappy core i 3 intel prosessor in this lenovo pc of mine, i'm going to buy a much better one next month on credit and honestly can't wait.

Working as an app dev I see much more usage out of iOS than Android for the blind community. More folks are likely to test on iOS we’ve reached out to the Android lists and folks usually ignore us which is sad as they often desire for more devs to work with them.

I think one other thing is where does someone live. I’ve heard folks say overseas folks may use Android more do to cost. Anymore here in the states everything is pretty affordable these days.

Good topic I would like to see what is peoples main device and why? I like Android but it’s braille support is so far behind it is just sad at this point. Folks complaining here on Applievis would poop a brick if they saw what Google has done with braille in the last 4 years which has been crickets.
As Brad said Apple really has the custom actions down. Even something as simple as the scroll bar just works and I can get to somewhere so fast within an app or webpage. On Android scrolling is so inconsisstant and I never know how much I am going to move by at any given time when using 2 fingers to scrool up.

Most modern Braille notetakers run assorted versions of Android with accessibility services running on top of them. For instance, the BrailleNote Touch Plus (what I use on a daily basis for school) runs Android 8.1 with HumanWare's Keysoft accessibility service that enables seamless Braille input, output, speech output, and many other features from previous Braille notetakers that were running mobile versions of Windows. I also know that HIMS and the makers of the NeoBraille (not sure who they are or if they're still making that product) use Android on their notetakers as well. These notetakers are certified by Google so they are technically officially supported Android devices and TalkBack can be used on them if desired. However accessibility is spotty in some apps because of the aforementioned disparity in developer support for accessible Android software. Hope this helps.