iOS versus Android; why iOS is better

it is why I tranzitioned from android.

I really wish the iPhone accessibility team and the Mac IOS accessibility team would speak more often. Yes IOS has bugs. Yes IOS is also the gold standard for accessibility and it keeps improving.

On the other hand, I just spent a few minutes on the getting a Mac thread. I suggested a reason or two that the poster might get one along with many reasons they shouldn’t Let’s face it, the Mac just doesn’t work as well as it should with third-party apps. If they could make it as accessible as they made the iPhone Windows and it’s screen readers would have a revolution on their hands.

I don’t see that happening though, so I’ll be thankful for the iPhone.

hi!
the company i work for have the option to get company phone. the problem: android. i said no to this, since i was on android before and it was - and sorry for my word now - sucks.
i asked for iphone, and they are checking it...
android is poor in terms of accessibility, very poor.
here in israel for example, most people use Apple devices.

Yeah, if Google's accessibility team gave a crap, I think Apple would have a run for its money. If the Android team, along with all the Google app teams like for Youtube, gave a crap, Apple would have a run for its money. But they clearly don't. In fact, Google apps are more accessible on iOS than Android. That's pretty darn bad. And yeah, while I'd love to play actual video games on my iPhone, or mess with terminal emulators, I just can't give that up compared to the actual freaking productivity I get from the iPhone. I mean, I have a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE. I have the latest TalkBack, with the latest OS, with all the fixes and all that great stuff. And it still feels like using Android 8 pretty much. Or Android 5. TalkBack doesn't even have image description, text recognition, or anything like that. It doesn't even have audible charts, which I seriously wish I had during school. Google is the AI-first company. Until they put AI into their screen readers, I'll know they still don't give a crap.

Also, even though Google accessibility employees have traditionally talked to users, it's always been "Well we can't do this because old phones" or "maybe". It's like playing with a fortune-telling ball. Nothing constructive. And now, they're just as silent as Apple's accessibility team. Except, iOS' folks actually get stuff done. Like, every year there's at least one new feature, for us. This isn't even counting the other categories of disability that Apple helps. Google just doesn't want to compete. And that's what sucks; usually in a market with two providers, there's competition. But in this market, nope. Just way too specialized I guess, for poor, startup company Google. Let's just give them a few years and see what they do. Oh, wait, we have. A good 10+ years of Apple accessibility, and Google disregarding us. So Apple is the only option for ease of use, productivity, and at least the track record of continuous support and features. I mean, in Android 9 and 10, we didn't really get any new TalkBack features. Maybe the braille keyboard showed up at the end of 10, but that's about it. Like, just, imagine having pretty much no reason to upgrade. None at all. Not even the smallest. Yeah, that's Android. So you wait for the other year where maybe, just maybe, Google has added a little something, a tiny breadcrumb, for you. And yeah it's a slap in the face. Such a huge company and they create a braille keyboard finally, but the amount of phantom dots input, or the dots missed in input, makes it just, plain frustrating to use. Oh and if you like your braille display, don't get Android. It's just, all around, crap. And yeah, some people will use it for contrarian reasons cause gotta fight the evil fruit veil hyuck hyuck, and others, like me now, will have an Android phone for media and games (until Android Accessibility gets too annoying for the day), and some will have it to play with and keep up with all the tech, I honestly don't know if there are anyone who likes the state of Android accessibility. They may be Google fanboys, but are they Android fanboys? Do they like that they don't have great braille support, text and image recognition, and audible charts? Do they like that their voices sound like crap, except Eloquence which is literally abandoned on Android? Like, I can't imagine that people are happy about not having things that Apple just gives out like candy. Even one of the chief Android evangelists among the blind wonders why Google hasn't sunk their AI deep into accessibility, although he, unlike me, is hopeful that Google will get it together and save the day and prove who really cares about accessibility. I don't think they ever will, if their track record is anything to go by.

I like the galaxy phone they have more features than the iPhone uncluding their watches but the accessibility is why I do not change. Apple need to start to address bugs because if androy or whoever is in charge of accessibility start to become serious about it, apple will lose people.

When I got my first smartphone, IOS was much more accessible than Android. There wasn't any question about it. I'm used to IOS, and tied into that system with accounts etc. So long as IOS remains accessible, Android would have to have much better features than IOS and be even more accessible than IOS for me to switch over and leave IOS behind.

They do have more features. The galaxy can charge another devise or watch,Battery last long, The watch have many different ringtones and you can play music from it. However the software is not accessible. Sad but there it is. If they do become accessible and stable, I will change.

iOS is great. I use it with a bluetooth keyboard abd ut wirjs wekk, Android doesn't have as smooth keyboard support as iOS. Andfroid is good if you llike to tinker, ios is good if you don't. snfftoid you can have any voice you want and for languages VoiceOver doesn't support, your out of luck. Android has better hardware and the phones have better reseption, ios is easy and intutive.

Hi, applevis community,
First off I consider myself a power user of both android and iOS. We could go back and forth making ourselves feel like we’re on the right team all we want but I think this is the wrong question. I use the latest versions of both operating systems and they both are more accessible in some places and fall short in others, they both have features the other lacks and it really depends on what you want to get out of a phone. I’ll try and illustrate this with how both operating systems live in my own personal work flow.
I have android eleven on a samsung Galaxy s20 and I’m writing this on the talkback braille keyboard. Yes, talkback is maybe a tenth of a second slower than voiceover sometimes but it's a ton better than it was even a year ago and I actually find text editing easier with the braille keyboard on android than with braille screen input on IOS just because using the volume keys to navigate what I’m writing is easier for me than playing around with the rotor but of course your mileage will vary. Dennis I know you were a pixel user so you probably didn’t get to experience the ability on Samsung phones to use the volume and power buttons on the side of the phone to answer and reject calls. For me this makes my galaxy a more effective phone than my iPhone ever was. Yes, I’m only saving a couple seconds every time I used to have to do the two finger double tap but when you’re out and about walking or whatever that matters. That brings me to the other reason I prefer my android as a phone: it's much easier to use with one hand. I found the rotor to be super frustrating when, as often happens, I was out and about with my cane in one hand and my phone in the other, that's an example where, for my use case, android is much more accessible than IOS. The other thing is now with talkback you have much more control of your phone just with one gesture and voice commands. Try using siri to open your notification center or control center, for example, you can do that with talkback voice control and you only need to remember one gesture for all those interactions. If you’re like my blind friend who has a traumatic brain injury, that makes android much more accessible * as a phone * than IOS. Finally, the areas where talkback used to fall short like multifinger gestures, being able to easily browse the web etc have all been mostly fixed. IOS is still better for web browsing but not by very much, like it's a b+ compared to an a minus and google’s done more work with accessibility in the past year than apple has in the pac past at least 2, maybe 3. That's maybe because they had more ground to cover but it's almost even now and, to the comment above about features not being useful without accessibility, I just don’t think that's the case with android anymore. For me all the extra features and customization are worth the slight accessibility gap that's narrowing with every android update.
Now I also use an iPhone SE for work and an iPhone 8 as a notetaker replacement with my braille display and that's where IOS wipes the floor with android. If I could only have one computing device for everything in my life, other than a windows PC it would have to be an iPhone. With my iPhone and braille display I can browse the internet pretty much as effectively as I can on my computer, I can do word processing almost as well as on a computer, hell I can read braille books. Android meets my needs much more as a communications device – my Samsung phone has a much better GPS, vastly superior sounding bluetooth audio, better cell connection speeds and is much easier to use for taking calls, sending texts, doing OCR, and generally being a phone than my iPhone ever was. Still, iOS is still the vastly superior solution for productivity, braille support and being a laptop replacement in a pinch ... but for me it's a much worse phone and I like the more open android experience.
TLDR: Better is a bad word because they both win sometimes and they also both suck sometimes. IOS has easier accessibility out of the box but that gap is narrowing and it's already almost gone, people who say otherwise don’t know newer android just like people who say android works with braille don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

The other thing that's fantastic and annoying about android is how much google leaves up to all the separate companies that make the phone. Samsung android is not like google android which is not like sony android which is not like … well you get the point. It takes a lot more research and trial and error to figure out the one that works best which, yeah, that might be a little less accessible out of the box but it gives me the chance to set up my phone more the way I want it. That's not better or worse than apple it's just different. I think even that is getting more streamlined now though with Samsung and Google working together on talkback and then releasing their own versions that work better on their own phones but still have the same gestures and such. That fragmentation was one of the biggest things making android less accessible for a lot of people but with google and samsung doing it together now that's a much smaller problem than it was even a year ago. You asked what google’s doing to improve accessibility,, there's a big part of your answer.

Apple or android all depends on the user, what you want out of the device, and what you're willing to pay for it.
I use iMovie, Clips, and a few other applications to help with my YouTube channel. I don't necessarily need to customize my device outside of what is offered, because I am able to browse the web, compose emails, text, make phone calls, schedule reminders, make electronic payments, and complete tasks comfortably. The camera and sound quality are decent enough for my needs, and whenever challenges present themselves, I can generally find a workaround or a third-party app that is accessible to get the job done. Apple works seamlessly together with their products, and I would love to upgrade my phone, as well as purchase if you other devices in the future. Since I've never really been around android devices, I can't speak to the Accessibility or whether I would prefer One or the other. No piece of technology or company is perfect though, so I would imagine that there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
I feel like there is more support available for Apple devices in terms of accessibility regarding the technology, and I don't have to look too far to find it. Even if a tutorial or written guide isn't necessarily voiceover based, I can generally read the instructions and figure out what to do.
Should I have the opportunity or needed to switch to an android device, then it would be my responsibility to find accessible resources, as well as connect with individuals who no the android system. Either way, I like the ease of use and intuitiveness of my iPhone. Chances are, Apple might not have a certain feature now, but you never know if down the line they will release a similar version for their own products which works quite well with voiceover. ultimately, I'm happy with the phone I have. Outside of Technology, there are other things happening in my world that need my immediate attention. With that said, whether you're using Apple or android, if you're not already doing so, please report bugs to the relevant departments if you're able to. When I submit a report to Apple, I also produce a screen recording to explain the problem. I turn off my screen curtain, turn on the microphone and explain as I go along. There seems to be a bug regarding screen recording though. Whenever I turn on the microphone, sound automatically defaults to the earpeace, and I have to hold the phone to my ear in order to switch the sound output to the speakers Of my phone. Either way, whenever you report an issue, sometimes nothing gets done, or it doesn't get fixed until weeks, months, or even years later. it's beyond frustrating for sure, but I try not to let it get me down unless it's something serious. At the end of the day, life happens, and it is what it is.

I'm a slow typer, so when my finger stays on a letter for too long, it inserts the bloody thing for me and I don't like that one bloody bit. I have many issues, but won't waste time on mentioning them. It's iOS for me.