Apple Releases iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1; Bringing New Bugs and Some Fixes for VoiceOver and Braille Users

Apple Intelligence isn't available here either which as we are not in the EU is disappointing.

Very disappointing.
You're right.

is call recording available on IPhone se 2020?

Prior to this release, asking siri to "turn on do not disturb" would always elicit the response, "do not disturb is already on," regardless of whether it was on or off. In 18.1, this is now fixed. When focus mode is off, asking siri to turn it on generates the correct response, "okay, I turned do not disturb on."

However, siri remains unable to deal with custom focus modes. I have one named comatose. If I say, “turn on comatose,” siri responds, “sorry, I don’t know how to do that.”

Last week I got the RC, saw the post and I am getting another update. Go figure. Curious if will be the same with watch. Last week got the RC also. Will see.

I have Iphone 13 pro max, so, what features will i get after updating? i will not have any Apple intelegence thing, so, should we through our phones or what?

Under the setting for Apple Intelligence and Siri, there is a notation that Apple Intelligence is not available when Siri is set to English Canada. Does this mean that Apple Intelligence is not yet available in Canada, or would it be available if I change this Siri setting to English US? Thanks.

I'm updating because I'd like to try these AI features out for myself, however, with that being said, some of these AI features that are not fully accessible to us VO users just shows apple how much they prioritize accessibility. proves my point hmm? It's yet, another main (advertised) feature. Talk about being treeted like second class Lol. I'm sure all of these will be fixed however, you can't tell me that this time around it's too complicated to get right, (upon release). I ain't complaining, just, stating facts. Oh yeah and before yall spread round misinformation because yall love to do so, a direct, quote from this here post just so people do not miss it.

Unfortunately, our testing suggests that results generated by the 'Summarize' feature are currently not accessible with VoiceOver. At this point, it is worth clarifying that the issue discussed below specifically relates to using Apple Intelligence to summarize text. Notification summaries, as well as summaries in the message lists in Mail and Messages, are not affected. To reproduce this issue, with Apple Intelligence enabled, open a message in the native Mail app. Navigate to the 'Summarize' button at the top middle of the screen. After activating this button, VoiceOver says, "Loading," but does not speak the summary that is generated and displayed onscreen. When focus is placed on the 'Loading' item and one uses the Rotor to navigate by character, VoiceOver reaches a series of elements that it speaks as "Unpronounceable." It is our best guess that these elements are the AI-generated summary text that is displayed on screen. Furthermore, if summarizing text in an application such as Notes, the area where one can preview the results before applying them is subject to the same issue. In our testing, this issue occurs when using the 'Summarize' and 'Key Points' options, but that output from the 'List' and 'Table' options can be navigated successfully with VoiceOver. It is incredibly disappointing that yet another headline feature in a recent Apple software update is not fully accessible to VoiceOver users at launch. As Apple continues the introduction of Apple Intelligence and other new features in the coming year, we call on Apple to prioritize ensuring that all features are accessible to all users upon public release.

I completely agree, I was just talking about this with a friend a few days ago and we pretty much came to the same conclusion.

Think it's bout that time we start holding apple accountable where, and when, needed and I think, the time is now. These are actually simple fixes that apple could have gotten right in beta, not upon release. They had months testing out these AI features to make sure they work for, oh, I get it, the sighted. unlabeled buttons, and other factors that are in this release, does not, make any cense at all. Again, I bet ya money, get a sighted person to look at said screens and they're able to read that just fine. I will most deaf make a screen recording and send it right off to the proper team. Little things like this is making my faith dwindle, little by little. Am I glad that bugs are being fixed. Yes, with that being said, I'm starting to recognize that even, beta testing isn't enough to get apple back on track. A couple years ago I was all for beta testing because I was confident that apple will fix before production and it's mostly worked, however, during these beta cycles for 18 apple has been dropping the ball, (so to speak) in regards to accessibility. First it's the IPhone mirroring not being accesible, and now it's this. Remember, these are two, (big) (main) (advertised) features that apple dropped the ball on as far as accessibility is concerned. How far are we willing to tolerate this before sh** hits the fan so to speak. I really am starting to wonder if apple really, indeed, truly cares about accessibility. These last major releases tell me differently, (unfortunately). It's indeed quite sad and things use to be near perfect every, single, release. These were back in IOS 4 or even 5 and 6. Let's make Apple great again!

I can use these features on many default iOS apps, but on some apps, such as WhatsApp, YouTube, or ChatGPT, I either can’t find the writing tools using the rotor or in the keyboard area when some text is highlighted. Or, when I activate a tool like proofread, it doesn’t seem to do anything. Sometimes, there’s also a bug where VoiceOver says ‘loading’ when I try to use the proofread feature, and it never goes away or works. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? If so, let’s create some feedback.

I've done the update, although, apart from possible security fixes, I have no clue if it will do anything meaningful for me. That ultramarine iPhone 16 is sounding more and more tempting, but I'm still going to wait and hear more about how useable the Apple Intellegence stuff is for VO users. The most tempting part was the image intelligence, or whatever they're calling it, but I've got PiccyBot and Seeing AI for that on my current phone, so I just don't know. I'll be watching this thread for sure. One of my Apple TV boxes failed to update, so I guess I'll give that another try. Other than that, I think all the updates have gone about as well as they ever do for me.

That “loading” thing sounds like the issue with Apple Intelligence summarization, where VoiceOver does not work with it, and it just says the word “loading”, but cannot actually read (with VoiceOver) what the summarization is. This proofreading issue sounds pretty much the same.

I can confirm that AI writing tools are not available in Scrivener. I expected this to be available in any text field. I should be able to simply select text then triple tap to access the AI writing tools. Unfortunately, that's not how Apple implemented it, which makes the tools much more tedious to use.

I have a friend who has been using it successfully.

Updated my iPad to 18.1 and audio ducking no longer works, I have it on but it doesn’t do anything, worked on 18.0.1

At first, I also thought this was not working either.
I found that I had to readjust the VO volume while it was on.
This fixed it.
HTH

I just updated my iPhone 15 ProMax to iOS 18.1, and I noticed that, whenever I perform a 3-finger gesture to close an app and then immediately slide my finger up to go back to the home screen, another app in the app switcher also closes. Using VO's rotor to close apps works normally though.

Now I can move applications to the dock part. Applications can be deleted from the dock section in ios 18, but applications could not be moved to the dock part, this has been improved. I still can't move applications by double touching and holding them. Another problem is unfortunately, the folder contents in the application library are not readable.

After updating, I used the new gesture to turn on BSI, but it did not seem to work.

I went into Settings>Accessibility>VoiceOver>Braille>BrailleScreenInput, and found that the switch to use the new gesture had been set to off.

Turning it back on fixed my issues.

I figured I'd give people the heads uphere.

Yes. Call-recording is available on my SE 2020 iPhone. I was sort of doubting it’d be on all iPhones with iOS18; I thought it’d be part of the Apple Inteligence suite of function.

The bug where voiceover was incredibly slow navigating in Spotlight seems to have been fixed.

How do i change voiceover volume? Just pressing the volume buttons didnt fix it

Time is not announced when I press the unlock button or whatever you may call on my iPhone. Also screen lock message is not spoken too.

To adjust VoiceOver volume compared to other media, do the following:

1. Go to Settings, then Accessibility, then VoiceOver, then Audio, and finally Audio Ducking.
2. Here, you’ll find a slider to adjust VoiceOver volume compared to other media. You’ll also see three options for Audio Ducking:
• Off. Audio is not ducked.
• Always. VoiceOver volume is always louder than media.
• When Speaking. Media volume will reduce when VoiceOver is speaking.

Along with doing what is outlined in the last comment, you can add audio ducking and VO volume to your VO rotor and/or quick settings to adjust them at any time.

As far as I can tell on my Se-2020, audio ducking doesn't do a thing. I've played around with voice volume with AD both on and off,and if it makes any difference, it is probably my imagination. Hopefully this is just my phone, otherwise, it is going to be hard to sell me a new one.

On iPhone 15 pro 18.1. When going through roder and turning VO volume up or down it does nothing and it now goes past 100%. Is this a bug or anybody else seeing this? Restarted my phone and made no difference.

The changes to audio ducking took me a little while to understand, so in the hopes that this will help someone else, let me try and describe what's happening and why VO's volume can now be raised above 100%. Assuming you have audio ducking set either to while speaking or always on, the volume option in the rotor does not actually change VoiceOver's volume as you might think. What it does is to change the ratio between VoiceOver's volume level and the background audio's level. For example, if I have audio ducking set to always and I have the volume set at 100%, then VoiceOver and background audio are effectively at the same level. Now, if I raise the volume from the VoiceOver rotor to 150%, VoiceOver does not get louder. What happens is that the background audio level gets lowered so that voiceover is 50% higher. This makes it easier to hear VoiceOver. If I lower the VoiceOver volume to 125%, VoiceOver does not get quieter, rather the background audio gets louder since now there only needs to be a 25% difference between it and VoiceOver. In my mind at least, this would make a lot more sense if the volume rotor option were labelled to something like VO/Audio Ratio, but then the option wouldn't make sense if audio ducking were turned off.

I hope this clarification is helpful to someone out there, Thomas also did a fantastic demo of this on the podcast.

Thanks for the info. Seems that if I set the audio volume high enough and turn on audio ducking while speaking, it works pretty much like it used to.

I can confirm that audio docking works just fine on my SE3 running iOS 18.1. 🙂

I'm having an issue where I can't activate BSI with the gesture assigned to activate it by default. Even if I'm in a text field, BSI refuses to activate. Anyone else have this problem? If so, what'sa good fix for it?

iPhone 16 Pro
In iOS 18.1, the new capture camera button stopped working with VoiceOver enabled. It is no longer possible to launch the set application.
When I change it to double-tap, it works.
With a single tap, VoiceOver reads the name of the current application.
Can someone confirm this?

I'm having the same issue here too with the camra button. I never use it but just now noticed it. Running IPhone 16 here.

agreed, there are some issues here. one interesting thing i noticed by mistake, is that when i tried to get the summery on an email, it did exactly as this post says. but when i went back by mistake, and then had to load the email again, suddenly the summery was visible to voiceover. so it's almost like voiceover fails to load the content on the spot, but on a reload of the email, it fixed itself and showed it to me.

You probably have to go back into settings and reenable the gesture. I had to do so after updating.

I went into the audeo ducking settings and the slider was set really lo, at 90, i brot it up to 160 and it works now

Always thaught this option was super pointliss, like just fix all the long standing bugs but thats just me, at least they finally added a tutorial but i am getting off topic now

Thanks for the help