macOS Tahoe: New Features, Changes, Improvements, and Bugs for Blind, Deaf Blind, and Low Vision Users

Apple has today released macOS 26 Tahoe to the public. As usual, we won’t cover the mainstream features here, concentrating instead on what's new and changed for blind, deaf blind, and low vision users. For an overview of the mainstream changes, we recommend this in-depth review by MacStories.

Please remember to check the section about bugs to see if now is the right time to upgrade. There’s no harm in holding off a few weeks or months to let Apple address a problem you may find too disruptive to deal with.

A note to braille users: the AppleVis team members doing testing with macOS Tahoe are not heavy braille users. We have no information as to how well braille works in this release, so please keep this in mind when upgrading. If you are a braille user who has experience with Tahoe, please share your findings in the comments to help the community.

Changes for VoiceOver and Braille Users

Last year Apple brought a more extensive command customization facility, a customizable voice rotor, and an overhauled VoiceOver tutorial to macOS Sequoia. This year, macOS Tahoe brings some more changes and a handful of bug fixes.

VoiceOver support for Screen Sharing

With macOS Tahoe, VoiceOver users can now control another Mac, also running macOS Tahoe, remotely using the built-in Screen Sharing facility, either through FaceTime or Messages for controlling Macs over the Internet, or Finder or the Screen Sharing app (located in the Utilities folder) for controlling Macs on your local network. Settings for how VoiceOver behaves when controlling another Mac versus your Mac can be changed in VoiceOver Utility > Screen Sharing. For an audio demonstration of this feature, check out the AppleVis Podcast episode "A Demonstration of Screen Sharing with VoiceOver on macOS"

Braille Keyboard Input

If you prefer to type in braille or control your Mac using braille commands, you can use Braille Keyboard Input to mimic the experience using your Mac's keyboard. With Braille Keyboard Input, the home row is treated as braille dots, with the letters F, D, S, and A mapped to dots 1, 2, 3, and 7, respectively, and J, K, L, and Semicolon mapped to dots 4, 5, 6, and 8, respectively. It can be toggled on and off by pressing VO-Y from anywhere in macOS, and settings like the input language and table can be changed in VoiceOver Utility > Braille.

In addition to text entry, Braille Keyboard Input can be used to control your Mac with braille commands, similar to the sort used on refreshable braille displays, by pressing the Space bar in addition to one or more dots, a braille chord. A list of commands can be viewed and customized by going to VoiceOver Utility > Braille, selecting "Braille Keyboard Input" in the table of displays, and clicking the "assign commands" button.

Improved toolbar customization

With macOS Tahoe, you can now use the VoiceOver Actions menu (accessed by pressing VO-Command-Space) to add and remove items from app toolbars, such as those found in Mail and Safari. After opening the customization dialog for a toolbar, you can locate an item in the collection and choose "Insert at beginning of toolbar" or “insert at end of toolbar" from the Actions menu. When not in the customization dialog, you can remove an item from a toolbar by focusing on it and choosing "Remove from toolbar" from the Actions menu.

Braille Improvements

While it is not something we have been able to test, we are aware of the following improvement for braille users in macOS Tahoe:

• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, Braille Access, a custom interface that replicates braille notetaker functions, has been introduced with macOS Tahoe. With Braille Access, you can take notes, perform Nemeth calculations, create, view, and sync Braille Ready Format (BRF) files, view the date and time, and use Live Captions to transcribe and summarize audio in real time on a braille display. Braille Access can be toggled on and off by pressing dots 7 and 8 together on a Perkins-style keyboard, or VO-Shift-Y on a QWERTY keyboard, from anywhere in macOS. Settings, like the functions to include in the main menu, as well as settings for individual functions, can be changed in VoiceOver Utility > Braille > Braille Access.

New language support

As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe adds new Pan-Indian voices for Gujarati and Marathi that can be used with VoiceOver and Read & Speak.

Improvements for Low Vision Users

While it is not something we have been able to test, we are aware of the following improvements for low vision users:

• The new Magnifier app, located in the Utilities folder, allows you to use your Mac or iPhone's camera, or another camera connected to your Mac, to get an enlarged view of text, objects, or your general surroundings on your Mac's screen.
• Accessibility Reader allows you to read and listen to text from any app in a fullscreen view with the ability to customize font, background color, layout, and playback speed. It can be turned on by going to System Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak, and toggling the "Accessibility Reader" switch on; press Command-Escape from anywhere in macOS to engage it for the currently focused window.

If you are a low vision Mac user, we would love to hear in the comments your experience and thoughts on these and any additional enhancements you encounter in macOS Tahoe.

Other Changes

• Accessibility nutrition labels allow developers to provide information about the accessibility of their apps, such as what accessibility features are known to be supported. As on iOS and iPadOS, accessibility nutrition labels are currently voluntary; however, they may be required in the future. This label can be found below the privacy nutrition label in the Mac App Store for participating apps.
• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, creating a personal voice in macOS Tahoe is faster and only requires 10 spoken phrases, as opposed to the 150 that were previously required.
• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, the "Spoken Content" area of Accessibility Settings has been renamed to "Read & Speak."
• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, Name Recognition in macOS Tahoe can notify you when your name is heard in your vicinity. This can be configured in System Settings > Accessibility > Name Recognition.
• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, new "Babble," "Steam," "Airplane," "Boat," "Bus," Train," "Quiet Night," and "Rain On Roof" background sounds have been introduced with macOS Tahoe.
• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, Live Captions in macOS Tahoe add support for English (India, Australia, UK, Singapore), Mandarin Chinese (Mainland China), Cantonese (Mainland China, Hong Kong), Spanish (Latin America, Spain), French (France, Canada), Japanese, German (Germany), and Korean.

Change List

In its support documentation, Apple lists the following changes for VoiceOver users in macOS Tahoe:

• you can now use VoiceOver when you’re controlling another Mac in Apple Remote Desktop or the Screen Sharing app. When you use VoiceOver while you share your screen, VoiceOver is temporarily enabled on the remote device—original settings are restored when screen sharing ends. VoiceOver changes its pitch so you can tell whether you’re interacting with the remote device or your local device.
• With the new Screen Sharing category in VoiceOver Utility, you can customize the settings you share your screen with another Mac in Apple Remote Desktop or the Screen Sharing app.
• After you connect your braille display, you can use Braille Access to turn your Mac into a braille notetaker that can easily open any app by typing with a connected braille display. You can perform calculations, open Braille Ready Format (BRF) files, transcribe conversations with Live Captions, and more.
• You can now use your Mac keyboard to type in braille.
• When you’re navigating in Apple Maps, you can press VO-shift-H to get information about nearby places, including directions and distances.
• Korean Braille Input—Korean (2024, Uncontracted English) is now available for Input and Output in VoiceOver Utility Translation settings.

Bug Fixes and New Bugs for VoiceOver Users

Below are lists of the bugs we believe to have been resolved in macOS Tahoe, as well as new bugs introduced in this release. We strongly recommend that you read through the list of new bugs and any replies before updating, as this will allow you to make an informed decision on whether to install macOS Tahoe or wait for a future release.

While we are confident in the status of issues contained in this post, we do not claim that our bug list is definitive or that our assessments are infallible. Some issues may manifest only under specific conditions; this is all the more likely as software continues to add more features, and the number of available configurations and use cases in Apple's ecosystem continues to grow. You likely will not experience every bug that we list, and it is also likely that you will encounter issues that we did not experience during our own testing and daily use of macOS Tahoe.

To ensure the information here is as complete and accurate as possible, we would appreciate input from those who have installed macOS Tahoe. Please confirm if you are encountering the same problems listed or if you have found workarounds. Please also let us know about any additional issues not mentioned here. Of course, it's even more important that you report any new bugs directly to Apple - they're already aware of the ones listed here. For an explanation of why and how to report bugs to Apple, see this post.

Accessibility Bugs Resolved in macOS Tahoe

Our testing indicates that Apple has resolved the following bugs in macOS Tahoe:

• As on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, the Eloquence speech synthesizer now uses the proper inflection when encountering a comma in macOS Tahoe.
• The Weather status dialog can now be dismissed with the Escape key.
• The button to choose a custom icon in Safari web apps' Settings windows is now clearly labeled.

New Bugs for VoiceOver Users in macOS Tahoe

Our testing suggests that the following bugs have been introduced in macOS Tahoe:

• It is not possible to use iPhone Mirroring to navigate the iOS user interface with VoiceOver, as the only elements visible in the window, besides the window controls, are the Home Screen and App Switcher buttons.
• VoiceOver does not automatically switch to website-specific activities when visiting their specified websites, requiring you to manually select the activity from the Activity chooser menu.
• When the Text Checker identifies an issue in typed text, VoiceOver does not speak the sentence where the issue is present, instead speaking from the beginning of the text area. This occurs in a wide variety of apps and occurs regardless of whether or not the text has been interacted with prior to opening the Text Checker.
• After typing a search term in Safari’s address and search field, VoiceOver focus does not move automatically to the web content as expected, instead remaining on the field and requiring you to stop interacting with the toolbar and manually focus on the web content. This issue only occurs when typing a search in this field, with focus moving to the web content as expected when typing a URL.
• When typing an equation in Calculator, VoiceOver prepends each number and symbol with “Left to right mark.” For example, typing “2+2” will cause VoiceOver to speak the equation as “left to right mark 2 left to right mark plus left to right mark 2,” with the result also prepended with this artifact.
• When using VoiceOver’s “Say all” command to speak text, pauses between sentences are longer than expected. This is most reliably demonstrated when using the command to speak a block of several sentences. This issue does not occur when navigating between blocks of text with VO-left and right arrow.
• After selecting a Writing Tools option in the Edit menu in supported apps, VoiceOver does not play a sound to indicate when the operation is complete; instead sometimes announcing “Selection replaced.” When Writing Tools operations are complete, buttons in the popover will no longer be dimmed.
• When viewing the “Available controls” group in Control Center’s edit interface with VoiceOver, each item is unnecessarily doubled.
• The “Activity view” group, used to indicate the status of operations in Mail, such as fetching or sending a message, is constantly visible to VoiceOver, even when no apparent operation is in progress. The only element inside this group when no operation is in progress is a progress indicator at 0%.

macOS Tahoe release notes

macOS Tahoe introduces a stunning new design and Apple Intelligence features, along with delightful ways to work across your devices and boost your productivity.

• New design featuring Liquid Glass
  • The new design makes the iconic elements of macOS fresh yet familiar. A transparent menubar makes your display feel larger. Apps with Liquid Glass sidebars and toolbars reflect and refract what you're viewing, drawing more focus to your content. And you can personalize icons and widgets, giving them a light, dark, tinted, or new clear look to match your style.
• Customize the look of folders
  • To make folders easy to recognize, you can give them a distinctive appearance. You can now choose a unique color and add emoji or symbol.
• Personalize Control Center
  • Enjoy more ways to customize which controls appear in Control Center, and how they're laid out. Add new controls from Mac and even iPhone apps, including from your favorite third-party apps. Arrange them however you like, and even create pages of controls. You can also place controls right into the menu bar for easier access.
• Communicate seamlessly across languages with Live Translation
  • With Apple Intelligence, Live Translation helps you automatically translate text in Messages, follow along with live-translated captions in FaceTime calls, or listen to a real-time audio transcription spoken aloud in the Phone app. It works entirely on-device so your personal conversations stay private.
• Create incredibly powerful shortcuts
  • The Shortcuts app is supercharged with Apple Intelligence. Intelligent actions can summarize text, create images, or tap directly into Apple Intelligence models. And with automations on Mac, you can make shortcuts run automatically based on conditions, such as the time of day, file or folder updates, connecting to an external monitor, and more.
• New options for making Genmoji
  • Mix your favorite emoji together with descriptions to make something brand new. And get more control over Genmoji inspired by family and friends, with new options like hairstyle customization to help you match their latest look.
• More ways to create the perfect image in Image Playground
  • Get more control over images inspired by people from your photo library, with new options to change their expressions or hairstyle to match their latest look. You can also access new ChatGPT styles, like Watercolor or Oil Painting, and use Any Style to describe what you want.
• See Live Activities from iPhone on Mac
  • Continuity gets even better with Live Activities. Easily stay on top of activities that you started on iPhone, like tracking the progress of your order from Uber Eats, right from the menu bar on Mac. You can even click on the Live Activity to open the app in iPhone Mirroring.
• All-new Phone app
  • Powered by Continuity, the new Phone app for Mac lets you relay cellular calls from your nearby iPhone. Call Screening can help you manage unwanted calls by finding out who's calling and why, without interrupting you. You can also access familiar features--including Recents, Contacts, and Voicemails--and new ones like Hold Assist and Live Translation.
• Focus your Messages conversations
  • To help you focus on what matters, new screening tools filter out unknown numbers from your conversation list until you mark them as known, and on-device spam detection helps filter out spam. You can also add a background to your conversation to give it a distinctive look. And send polls to friends and family over iMessage and watch the votes come in live.
• Discover new ways to browse in Spotlight
  • Spotlight makes it easy to see all your apps, locate recent or suggested files, discover actions you can take, and view your clipboard history. Just launch Spotlight from the menu bar and select the Applications, Files, Actions, or Clipboard button, which will appear next to the search field.
• Take actions directly from Spotlight
  • You can now take hundreds of new system and app actions right from Spotlight, such as sending messages, creating an event, and running shortcuts, all without lifting your hands off the keyboard. And to get things done faster, Spotlight automatically assigns quick keys to actions you take, so you can execute them in just a few characters.
• Experience the new Apple Games app
  • The Apple Games app is your one-stop gaming destination. Discover the latest updates across your games, such as in-game events, major updates, and games your friends are playing. Access your entire game library. And compete with friends in challenges.

In Closing

macOS Tahoe is a solid upgrade that adds a few new features and enhancements for blind, deaf blind, and low vision users. We encountered no show-stopping bugs in this version of macOS. Our recommendation is to update when you're ready. You may want to give developers time to update their apps and others an opportunity to find the bugs or other problems we missed, but we believe most users should be okay to update now.

We would like to thank all those who participated in our Community Bug Program during the macOS Tahoe 26 beta cycle. Our testing and reporting efforts, including in this post, are more complete and comprehensive because of your efforts. We would like to recognize and thank the following contributors for sharing macOS reports:

• Chris
• TheBlindGuy07

We'd love to hear your thoughts after you've had a chance to install the upgrade. What new features do you find most useful? Are there any changes you don't like? Please share your feedback in the comments below. Let us know what Apple got right with this release and where you think there's still room for improvement.

In closing, we thank Apple's Accessibility team for their prompt response in fixing many of the bugs reported during the macOS Tahoe beta cycle. However, some issues remain unresolved, and we find the fact that iPhone Mirroring, after a year of very little refinement for VoiceOver, has once again been made completely inaccessible incredibly disappointing. We encourage Apple to promptly address this and other outstanding accessibility issues discussed in this post and the comments below so that macOS can be as accessible, usable, and enjoyable as possible for all users.

To install macOS Tahoe, choose System Settings from the Apple menu, select General in the table, click Software Update in the scroll area, and click the Upgrade Now button to begin the upgrade process. If other updates are available, you can click the Info button to see details about them and select specific updates to install.

More information on how to update the software on your Mac is available on this Apple Support page.