Text editing on iPad with a hardware keyboard, has it improved in the past couple years?

Nothing has really improved. I used IAWriter, VoiceDream Writer, Scrivener, Pages, Notepad for iPad, and many other editing apps. The longer the text gets the more problems you will have navigating, editing and selecting. VoiceOver focus keeps jumping, and it may mean bashing your iPad into the nearest wall. Formatting a text was a nightmare, you can not reliably go through comments and revisions if they are provided in a Pages document. However, if you are getting it for web browsing and media consumption it is great for that, for basic editing and writing short text this may be fine but not that comfortable experience,.
I have used the iPad Pro for long time and this is an opinion based on long experience. I am myself tempted to go back to the iPad for its weight, versatility, great battery, amazing speakers and wide selection of apps, still the nightmares of typing and reading long texts are driving me away.
If you are really tempted, get the iPad mini 6, it has lots of the features of the larger siblings, but in a smaller budget. Find a a compact Logitech keyboard that can go with it.
HTH!

Just got iPad 9 with an Apple smart keyboard.

I'm on an M1 iPad Pro running Scrivener. Navigating by line works fine. But of the three - line, sentence, and paragraph, navigating by line is clearly the least useful. There is no way to navigate by sentence that I know of, As for navigating by paragraph, once upon a time I was able to do this with Option+Up or Down arrow. It sort of still works, but only reads the final line of the paragraph.

I wrote a blog about using an old 2012 iPad running iOS 10.3.3. Navigating by paragraph worked quite well on that platform. But anytime I tried to do serious work, the iPad bogged down and became sluggish, so I replaced it with the M1 iPad Pro. While it's much snappier, I'm sad to report that editing in Scrivener has become much more tedious, primarily because of the paragraph navigation issue.

Agree with above comments, it should be a company wide embarrassment that something as basic as text editing is almost always frustrating and often just not practical for a sizeable group of their customers. Even just basic use of arrow keys to move around a document often misses half a line here and there and its been like that for around 10 years. Its not good enough.

Oliver, I hope you do take the time to write a blog about your setup. I'd love to read it.

I have been using my iPhone with a bluetooth keyboard and Voiceover when traveling and I don't have access to my desktop computer.

I agree with the above comments. Although typing short notes and replies to e-mails works well, if any document is longer than a few sentences the experience is very frustrating.

Here are just a few things:

- Arrowing up and down a line at a time often only reads partial lines. This makes it very difficult to read a line at a time.
- Highlighting / selecting text seems to work erratically. Sometimes as I select a word at a time VO will speak each word as it is selected. Many times, however, when I select a word at a time, the first selected word is spoken but then words that are subsequently highlighted are not spoken as they are selected. Thus I can never have 100% confidence that I havbe selected the correct text.
- Even with the latest software and hardware, navigation is often sluggish.
- Spell checking is a nightmare and almost impossible. Doesn't make it easy to create documents one would like to share.

By the way, I first started observing such problems when using the MS Word app. I finally gave up on that and started using Apple's standard apps such as Notes, and Mail. Amazingly, I ran into the same issues!

Yes, this is not good. Can't believe Apple can't make simple editing and reading a pleasurable and easy experience on iOS devices.

--Pete

Yes, it is important to also contact Apple Accessibility about such issues. That is the first place I usually post such problems or bugs. It is also important to post to this forum, however, since (a)It makes other users aware of the issues, and (b)Apple Accessibility must monitor these forums.

...and just to make it easy for people to contact Apple Accessibility and provide important feedback, here is their e-mail:
Apple Accessibility:
[email protected]

--Pete

all problems I encounter I report to Apple, and let me tell you all, I know most people do the reporting, still Apple is not listening. Some bugs are longstanding and have been reported numerous times. The funny thing here is some bugs have become part of my iOS experience, I can not imagine my iPhone or iPad without them.

While I too strongly advocate filing accessibility bugs I can't help but feel the energy behind previous comments admonishing us that we’re the problem because we don’t do this is … misplaced would be putting it mildly. Most companies, including apple as of late, seem to treat accessibility like a one-time project. You make voiceover, you add features here or there, on to the next line item in the development cycle. Probably apple’s accessibility team knows this is an issue. Probably that's irrelivant. Voiceover has been a robust screen reader for years after all and iOS 16 has to be tested. I’m betting problems this persistent can't be solved by apple accessibility because, as far as higher priority teams in the dev cycle are concerned, accessibility’s done and the accessibility team exists to test upcoming product releases. It's just as bad on the android side of the fence but at least there you have other screen readers if google won’t fix your problem.

I have never tried
https://ulysses.app/
before myself, though many people swear by that app when it comes to writing things (especially if it's Mark Down)! Though many would be put off by it, since it's subscription based.

I also wonder if Google Docs and its siblin of apps has improved with the latest iteration of the iOS family, for both Google's iOS/IPadOS app and using it via Safari on the web.

I stopped using Pages for the most part after trying to report issues with navigating between misspellings in long documents, and having to send several screen recordings, then getting gaslighted by Apple Accessibility. I also stopped reporting issues all together because the process seems much more trouble than living with most of the bugs.

As far as word processing and editing, I've always used navigate by line word and character, but never paragraph because I learned on basic text and RTF editors that only used the simple navigation keys on the keyboard, going back all the way to the Apple IIe in the 80s. I also break long documents up into small sections in separate files, then merge or compile them, like Scriviner and other writing apps do.

As I've said on this subject before, I have to admit I've never really had the frustrations everyone seems to have with editing on an iPad. I'll say that in general I hate using an iPad with only a keyboard, and almost never do it unless I'm in a weird situation like I have to plug the iPad in somewhere and I want to still work somewhere else. My usual tactic is to type and edit text with the keyboard and do almost everything else involving navigating using the touch screen. Don't ask me why, but for me it's just way faster.

Anyway, the thing I try to remember with the up and down arrows in particular is that what they speak when you use them depends on a lot of stuff, like where you are on the line and how big the text area is that you're using. As with a lot of situations on iOS it's sometimes hard to tell what's happening unless you can actually see the screen or have someone with you who can, but I think often when it's doing things like not speaking the whole line and such, it's possible what you want it to speak isn't visible. With iOS in particular I've had to watch that. So I've found that if I can't read line by line properly, making sure I'm at the beginning of the line and then moving down often sorts it out.

I think part of this is because in most text areas, it's not using word wrap. So essentially every paragraph is just one long line wrapped to the size of whatever it's being displayed in.

It also helps that my primary editing environment is Drafts. Not only does that have nice things like arrange mode and navigation mode and link mode that let you do things more easily, a lot of people have written actions for it. So if you do need a navigate by paragraph keystroke, you can write one. I don't, but I do have a keystroke that can jump between markdown headers that I use quite a bit.

As @Holy Diver said above, VoiceOver was implemented as a feature, then developers moved on. Personally, I feel this was a mistake. VoiceOver isn't just a feature, it's a user interface system. Developers would never, for example, introduce mouse clicks as a new feature and then move on and forget about it.

Whether enough of us report bugs is moot, because we need more than a bug fix. We need developers to design and test the accessible user interface to the same extent as the sighted user interface. The naive response is that we can't possibly expect Apple to devote those kinds of resources to such a niche use case. But I disagree. It should not be unreasonable to expect developers at a major computer company that charges a premium price for their products to design for and test all supported user interfaces.

So I haven’t worked at Apple but I’ve done enough accessibility testing and work at other large corporations to know how easy it is for companies to know when you’re calling them for the tenth time about the same issue. I file accessibility bugs. I do my best to follow up on them in the subsequent days and weeks as life allows. I’m confident if I filed the same bug 5 times and called about that same bug thrice daily it wouldn't get addressed any faster.

One does wonder if there's a black list of complainers... Something changed in my experience of Apple accessibility a couple of years back. I sent them a longish document with many spelling errors, and a screen recording of Pages only being able to navigate between the first few errors, along with a couple of other minor issues I was having, including Pages not reading a whole document with the two finger swipe down, which would have been too large a screen recording to email. Whoever I was dealing with focused on the least of my issues, and wanted more screen recordings. One of the minor issues turned out to be with how I was handling the order of gestures. All of my report was dismissed because of that single mistake on my part, without addressing the spelling navigation or the full document reading problems.
I don't want to play that kind of game, and it's easier to just find some other way to do document editing that isn't subject to the latest problems any given platform is having.

As @Peter mentioned above, when selecting by word, often the first word is announced and subsequent words are not. I could work around this if I had a way to announce the current selection, like VO+F6 on Mac. I just checked Apple's VoiceOver keyboard shortcuts and could not find a way to do this.

Checking on a solution for the read-by-paragraph problem, that same list of shortcuts has Option+Up/Down arrow listed twice: Once for "Go to the beginning or end of the paragraph" and once again for "Go to the previous or next paragraph". I would assume that, implicit in going to the next or previous paragraph would be reading that paragraph, as that's how pretty much all the other element navigation works: Focus moves to the element, and the element is read. But what we see in current iPadOS is that only the first or last line is read.

Rambling soapbox about the inherent problems of designing products based on user bug reports, deleted. Thankfully. LOL.

Hello,

I am not having an issue with text selection on my 11 inch iPad pro running the latest version of iPad OS. When I am selecting word by word it reads each one as I select it. It works both when using a keyboard or using text selection from the rotar. I wonder if you could reassign the keyboard command to move to beginning and end of a paragraph so option plus up or down would read the paragraph like its suppose to. Just some food for thought.

I don't have the problem with it not speaking selected words either, sorry to say, but I do have a couple of suggestions. Three finger tap on the text area seems to read the selection, which help says is read item status. No idea what the keystroke is, did I mention I'm hopeless using a keyboard for anything but typing? ☺️. The other thing that seems to work is leaving the text area and coming back in.

Tested these in the Notes app and Drafts.

The word selection issue is intermittent. Thanks for the tip about moving VO focus out of the text box, then back in, to get it to read the current selection. That will come in handy next time I encounter this problem.

The original post mentioned a problem with "select or navigate by paragraph". Selecting paragraphs doesn't seem to be an issue for me: Shift+Option+Up or Down Arrow does the trick.

In 1 way its certainly got worse. Now using Notes. Each paragraph or block of text appears to act like a single line. This means, when you enter a block of text with arrows up and down, each new cursor up or down reads the first line of the paragraph instead of the line you are on. I haven’t tested the weirdness with it sometimes missing words or lines randomly but it’s just another way a device advertised to enable is actually disabling. I honestly think this is a worthwhile narrative to put around these bugs. If you can’t even write and edit a sodding text document then we aren’t exactly breaking new frontiers of capability. Let’s sort out the basics and leave gimmicks like point and speak for when the device is at least functional for everyday basic expectations. IMHO. BTW, I haven’t tested 17.1 beta 1 yet as its the first beta after a major update I thought it would be worth waiting for beta 2.

Editing with the iPad is still a nightmare, if you are really tempted to get the iPad for whatever reason, then consider getting the cheapest. I am not expecting a serious writing work on it, Scrivener on the iPad is much better compared to Pages and other word processors.

On iOS, I have noticed that every app that allows text entry seems to act just a little bit different. Editing a mail message, versus editing in Notes, versus editing in Scrivener, for example. Where does your cursor end up when you move by word - to the end of the word, or to the start of the next word? It's anyone's guess, and that's just one example.

I don't have an iPad any longer, but I wonder if it suffers from this same lack of consistency between apps?

I realize that there might be bugs from time to time, or ways we wish text editing worked differently or better. But what I'm having trouble understanding is why each individual app has its own set of quirks and idiosyncrasies that we need to memorize and master.

It should be a matter of deep shame that something as simple as entering text on a device is buggy at best and practically speaking just not realistic. Maybe bugs are acceptable for short periods of time but something as fundamental as entering text should be rock solid. Can you imagine sighted users just saying yeh well you can’t enter text in any meaningful way but I’m ok with that. It’s a bloody joke and a disgrace that premium products can’t even do this simple thing.

Same here. text entry and proofing has always been problematic. I always thought I was doing something wrong because I don't do a lot of text editing in iOS. That's probably because every time I try, there is an issue of not being able to consistently read what is expected, not being able to hear highlighted material reliably, etc. So then I just go someplace else to do my editing.

If iOS worked better, I would probably use it much more and become better at it.

--Pete
But agreed, text entry and editing is so basic that it ought to be rock solid and very reliable (not to mention, intuitive and repeatable).

I’d be up for that. I tried writing to him a few weeks ago. Obviously I knew it was going to be read by someone first but I tried to make a case to them to pass it on to him. These are all fixable problems with resources. My starting point was that the products that Apple design to be enabling to people with disabilities are in some cases disabling them further which is obviously not Apples intention but a result of bugs not being fixed that make everyday tasks that should be simple incredibly difficult and sometimes impossible. The net result of this is over time I find myself attempting to do less and less things instead of more. The frustration and feelings of hopelessness caused by a buggy OS really are debilitating. I have a feeling you might be local as you’ve spoke about Loughborough uni in the past if I remember correctly. I’m in Leicester. If you’d like to get together and draft something we could put to the community and see how many signatures would be forthcoming. I think it’s time to be firm but fair. IOS 17 is a vast improvement for me but things like text editing being so difficult, Safari being a joke etc. These things need attention and visibility at the right level could bring the resources needed to fix things and keep them fixed.

If we could clip out maybe 20 - 50 hard hitting quotes of frustration from applevis and compile them to show the impact of bugs, I think that would be a good addendum to any open letter. Real people showing real emotion about the issues their Apple devices are causing. Obviously carefully selected.

I did it the other way around. Grew up in Uppingham, Oakham, Stamford then moved to Leicester for work. Living in Thorpe Astley but Leicester really isn’t Stamford. I think thats a great idea. create a thread for ideas and see if you can get offers from people who are expert at writing.

Mainstream publications won't publish anything negative about Apple.

Remember the point isn’t to shame Apple, the point is to get enough attention that appropriate resources are allocated to fixing the problem with voiceover. If a letter with 100 or more signatures doesn’t do it then maybe we try and find somewhere to publish but theres no point shaming if the same result can be had without. IMHO.

If you’d like to speak about how best to organise this, my phone is 07828833327 email [email protected] Do you specifically want to set it up or would you like me to do it? Whoever does it can submit then update the brief based on feedback. The initial brief isn’t set in stone. I have quite a few ideas about how to structure something they won’t be able to ignore but I’d want input from others. I’m off to bed now but leave your thoughts and I’m happy to go with whatever you prefer. I’ve tried to get these things going in the past and nobody has really been interested. It always descends into more complaining then someone usually comes in and voices doubt that anything needs doing at all then the whole thing has lost momentum. Let’s get this going this time.

I am with you, ANdie and Oliver.

We should create a dedicated topic. I'd be happy to contribute in any way I can, and I hope we can come together as a community and do what this website was designed for. I know I lost my temper a while ago concerning the Mac mouse issue, but we can and definitely should present this in a respectful, yet firm manner. I have no idea how we're going to get this to the attention of the mainstream.

Remember, the purpose of this endeavour is to make the people within apple realise how broken things are and the very real affect that has on our lives. If we have to go public with it, it will be because Apple wouldn’t pay attention to the nice way. I think we’ll get attention if we ask for it in the right way. I’ll create a thread later with some thoughts that we can edit as a brief as we go along then we’ll collect ideas about what to present to apple and how. Then get signatures and see if Apple will pay attention at a level that will make a difference. If not then we’ve tried everything they’ve asked and more and frankly, they’ll deserve the public shaming on a subject they claim to care about. I think that will hurt. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Success, I think will be achieved when Apple commit to fixing the problems that are realistically fixable and explains where things just can’t be improved. An example might be Overlay sheets on the web.