I have the latest model of iPhone SE and overnight I updated to iOS 17.4.1. When I open my News app in the morning to scroll the main feed, I noticed that VoiceOver does not announce any of the headings above different sections, such as your areas of interest, publications you follow and so on. VoiceOver makes the clicking sound that it landed on a focusable element, but nothing is spoken. I’ve emailed Apple Accessibility about this but also wanted to share it with the group to see if anyone else was having the same issue. If so, I encourage you to also email accessibility@apple.com . If you found any workaround or solutions, please let us know. Thanks!
By Luke, 22 April, 2024
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
It's not a bug; it's a design flaw
Sorry man. The new and improved news app is performing exactly as intended. We're just the lucky ones who get to deal with their benign neglect.
Bruce Harrell
@Bruce Harrell, I can understand how it feels that way sometimes. However, within an hour or so of emailing Apple Accessibility I got a response in which they asked me to take some diagnostic steps and a screen capture of the issue, so it would seem it’s indeed unexpected behavior and that they take our reports seriously. As such, I want to emphasize again that anyone else experiencing this problem should also contact Apple Accessibility. The more reports they get of this, the better they can gauge the scope of the user impact.
Cool
I don't remember how long ago the news app design changed on my phone. It was quite a while ago when they stopped using headings. I remember there were a number of posts from folks who were just as unhappy about the change as are you and I. Eventually, I started using the favorites feature. Right after the main headlines, the favorites I've identified are listed, stuff like politics, MSNBC, iPhone, consumer electronics and other topics I follow. I have to swipe a dozen times from the top to get to them, but at least I'm swiping through headlines, so it's not so bad.
Good luck!
Bruce
Navigating through News articls
Yes, the News app does not seem to be designed with accessibility in mind.
I also notice the non-speaking headings described by the original poster. I am using iOS 17.4.1 on and iPhone 15 Pro.
Also, as one poster pointed out, navigating by headings through and past a large number of articles is impossible. One has to flick through every individual article just to get to the next heading like "Favorites". Navigating by headings should be an integral part of any UI these days. Why not in the News app?
The other issue I've brought to Apple's attention is that, when closing an article, focus doesn't always return to the title of the article in the list of articles. Again, controlling where focus lands after closing a dialog or article should be absolutely reliable. In News, sometimes this works and sometimes not. It seems to be especially worse when closing a news article that comes from inside a major topic such as "Politico" or "The Guardian" under my favorites.
These bugs aren't hard to reproduce.
--Pete
Focus
I've found the most reliable method for me to return focus to where (or approximately where) it had been on my iPhone 15 pro screen is by a single finger single tap in the center of the screen.
Hope that helps.
Point of clarification
There are a couple of similar but distinct issues when it comes to those headings above sections in the News app. The long-standing problem is that they aren’t all actually tagged as headings, thus when you use your rotor to navigate by headings, it doesn’t work reliably. That said, what I’ve posted about here isn’t that issue; it’s That The ones that aren’t tagged as headings are not only hard to navigate to but they aren’t even spoken allowed at all. So, for example, if the heading says, “Wall Street Journal” and then has the list of Wall Street Journal articles below it, setting focused to where that heading is won’t say anything at all
Resolved in 17.5
I heard back yesterday from Apple Accessibility that this issue should be resolved as of iOS 17.5. I just updated this morning and indeed the News app seems to be functioning normally again.