what would you like to see in iOS 19?

You know what I would like apple to do?
Ignore every single other disability they must cater for and only, exclusively , focus on blind people.
While I understand people's frustrations, I think that people are wilfully blind (pardon the pun), when talking about accessibility on apple platforms.
1. They have to deal with so many other accessibility related issues other than vision impairment and blindness. This means that they cannot focus solely on squashing the VO bugs we would like them to squash all the time.
2. Yes, there accessibility team is smaller, yes, that sucks. Apple are like any other company. They are a business. Whether right or not, accessibility is still viewed as smaller fry than able bodied users needs and issues, because able bodied users make up a larger percentage of their user base. Sadly, this is fact, we can't get away from that at the minute. We should? Perhaps, but that's a different conversation.
3. Apple very clearly do care. It's baked into everything. We have VO on vision pro, a very much eyeballs first device. They didn't have to do that necessarily, they could have just said they'd do it next generation, or that it was to hard. They didn't do that. They baked it into the core of the OS.
On the flip side. I get it. It's frustrating . It's annoying. Long standing bugs grind my gears as much as the next person. But can we, please, for the love of all things buggy, stop the constant negative comments and putting down? It's just not productive. It just isn't.
Feedback, testing, feedback, testing. That is what will help long term. The more of us do that, the more fixes we'll see. In some ways, it is that simple.
I'll get down off my soap box now. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

I have to agree.
While it’s perfectly legitimate to complain about bugs and missing features, we are paying customers after all, I think it’s patently ridiculous to say that Apple doesn’t care about accessibility. I have criticisms like anyone else, but there are definitely good people at Apple fighting the good fight, and I can’t think of too many mainstream companies who do as well as Apple.
I do wish that they would make some significant changes on Mac, and who knows, maybe in the background they are working on something we don’t know about.

As for iOS 19, they announced some interesting stuff, but I was very disappointed that the announcement did not include AI image descriptions with a simple shortcut as in TalkBack on Android and Jaws on Windows. That’s a glaring omission for me. Even if the request was sent to Be My AI or another app of your choosing, that would be fine.
So yes, keep complaining, keep demanding better, but keep some perspective too.
I’ll climb down off my soap box too now 😂
Dave

Ultimately, I’ve been very clear about what I want. I’ve come to a mindset where I really need a clipboard manager. Moreover I am tired of having to confirm the deletion of messages. I want it to work like the email app already does. Where I can turn off Deletion confirmation. I am also tired of confirming if I want to allow notifications or location. The answer is always yes in my case. And I want a systemwide switch. I also need to have a few new ways to interact with the phone. The rotor is a good idea. And it’s become somewhat tedious and archaic.

Admittedly, I’m looking very hard at Harmony OS. And I’m liking what I’m seeing there. If Microsoft came out with a windows operating system that worked the same on desktop, watch, mobile, I would switch in a heartbeat. Androids looking good these days. I am more excited about the android XR glasses than anything Apple is releasing in the next two years. Using iOS is more habitual than anything else. And it’s gotten tedious, frustrating. If something better comes along, I’m ready to move on.

I don’t believe that Apple “cares“ about us. At least not in an altruistic way.I think it’s a money thing. This is a very specifically focused capitalist organization.They did whatever calculations to decide that it would be profitable to have accessibility built-in. And they implemented it. And, there have been some upgrades and fixes. And there’s been a lot of dragging their feet too. I don’t know what’s happening internally. I have my personal beliefs about it. There’s a lot of great engineers. Individually, these people are working very hard to provide something worthwhile. Organizationally though, it seems disjointed and incredibly random. A lot of designs over the past few years don’t seem to have meaningful purpose. It’s just ‘this is how this part of the OS is going to work now’ and then the accessibility team does whatever they can to make it as accessible as they can. And it’s not logical. Why would you get rid of the record audio button in messages? Literally every other Messaging app has that feature. I don’t care if there is an audio option after double tapping on the apps button. I want to double tap and hold, Say what I have to say, and release to send the audio message. Also, why is the clear notification option so hard to find? It pops in and out like a phantom. It’s not intelligent under any circumstance. I don’t want all my notifications all the time. And I don’t want to get rid of them individually. Yes, There is a clear all option. But again, you actually have to pray for it to be somewhere in that list. there. And none of these things are accessibility issues. It’s just poor design.

I would give a lot for some third-party screen reader support. Maybe then, we could get something that makes more sense. Using macOS, for example, has always felt very ‘sideways’ to me. I don’t care if a little practice will make it make sense. Between that and the bugs, I don’t wanna go near it. I’m used to using up/down arrows to navigate. Apple wants me to go left/ right. And I don’t know that I have enough fingers for some of the keyboard commands (if they’re even gonna work). I can’t make it make sense in my brain.

One of the biggest issues that I have is how differently everybody uses iOS and watchOS and macOS. The skill levels are so different. Some of the people on this website can barely turn VoiceOver on/off. And when something doesn’t work, they immediately jumped to it being a bug. And on the other side, some people don’t even notice that something is an issue. And when people bring it up, the immediate response is they’re not going through it. There’s such a fragmented mindset when it comes to accessibility among the blind. And until we learn to actually work together as a real community, we’re going to get a fragmented level of accessibility.

As I write this, what I want most for iOS 19 is for there to actually be a unified community of blind people. We just don’t have that. Other communities exist. There’s a deaf community, there’s a community of people using wheelchairs. everybody gets to have a community except us. Because most blind people are usually arguing about being right more than what’s most important for the majority.

Would love to be able to see the battery level of watch and iPhone on my iPad and same in iPhone. Do not know why this is not possible. If I am using my iPad and want to check watch battery can not do so unless I use a third party app but it does not work.

For what it's worth, if you go to the shortcuts app on iOS, tap on the gallery tab at the bottom, navigate by heading until you find the used clipboard, and tap on the button there, you could find a bunch of clipboard management shortcuts already built into iOS. You just have to enable the shortcuts in order to use them. There's quite a few that I think are pretty handy.

HTH. :-)

Hi.
Agree with the comments about being productive and not being so negative.
Yes with Apple voiceover is baked into the OS which is so great.
I do wish that Apple role out rest of their Apple Intelegence features.
It seems to be quite behind with the AI side of things.
Would be great to see Apple intelegence being baked into voiceover features like screen recognition and all.
That feature does have a lot of room for improovment and is a very useful feature with inaccessible apps.
In saying that it doesn't mean that developers should not be making their apps accessible.

Longer it might come on 27.

I'll add some things too.
I think it was on last Friday's double tap podcast, titled something like will blind be left behind in the ai race or something...
I found in Steven a brother in thought for the one simple but very important thing he said. If Apple lose the AI race and is no longer a dynamic big tech company in the top 10 top or whatever, accessibility world wide will take a major hit. And he is absolutely true on this one. Yes, I have my legitimate complaints about VO on mac. But even there it's perfectly usable when you know how to work around some stuff. Yes, they put VO into Vision Pro while they didn't have any insentive to do so, remember that they wanted to target a million sailsale for the first year and we are hardly in the 100s of ks. And yet they still decided upfront to put accessibility first, not last. This alone does tell a lot. Yes, there are problems and please there are problems just everywhere. FYI, I think we can all agree that the overall accessibility landscape went a little bit backward post covid era in terms of experience and convenience, than it was before. And AI is just helping to balance this out now. Just look at the unstability of things everywhere. Less apparent on Windows side arguably because there are just more userbase and Microsoft only work on the APIs and let 3rd party be responsible for the screen reader experience, imo this approach works very well on windows but may not be the standard to look for either... but this is beyond my point.
Saying that Apple doesn't care, they do much much more than most mainstream companies, and they are just another mainstream company. They stopped it now but reports say everywhere that at one point they even selling braille displays in apple stores! What else do you need.
I had a blind friend of mine who worked for them for awhile. He told me that he needed to lable something there, and tldr they bought these expensive around $2000 braille lablers thing across a couple of stores in Canada, if not much more. Just... Come on. Yes they are capitalist and what not, but again, who isn't in the tech sphere nowadays? Or rather, when weren't they? Microsoft in the 90s alone did horrible things. This is just fact. Like it or not.
To stay on topic, I am quite happy for this UI change just because it will shake some old code and this is always a good thing for us screen reader users. Tim Cook said for macos 15 that a lot was done in the backend and I have never loved my mac more than I do now, as this is apparent. Some new bugs introduced, and yes chatgpt is more of a serious one, but again as long as I can do a workaround for my current need...

We tend to praise and idealize open source, and yes nvda is the best screen reader in the world IMO :) but if open source linux and alternatives were so good we would all be using them and it's the opposite in the worst way possible. Let's be honest, open source softwares are already very bad (and known to be bad) for simple UI design. They don't have the skills, knowledge, or frankly, time, to focus on blind accessibility, especially if it's for free. Only big tech and specialized companies in the field do.

Curious is those sighted people who do report do so? No, just report the issue and how to duplicated. After all we are paying over $1000 for a phone. Also Apple added accessibility do to having contract with government and they need it to do to compliance with law 507 or something. Do not recall which but Apple did not do it for the kindness of their heart but for making sure they continue to get money. It is not negativity. Do like my iPhone and had one since VO came out. Will continue because the alternative is not even good.

As much as I hate to ignore the "excluding bug fixes" part of the post, it's something that has stemmed several years back. We've reached the point where features have taken precidence over bugs or instability. So while I would say the features coming are convenient, I have not reached the threshold of, "besides bug fixes." Because if we look at the honest truth, there's too much. As a user who has been on the "testing, feedback, testing, feedback" train ever since iOS 9, I've felt like said train is starting to apply the brakes. While I understand that productivity is of high priority, we can't disregard, or set aside, the bugs and glitches that get in the way, or sometimes even hinder our experience. Am I happy with what's coming? Sure! There are a bunch of cool things. But does it fix anything, or will it introduce a brand new set of things that need to be ironed out, despite the amount of feedback and testing submitted during the beta period?
I'm just trying to reveal the reality from both angles here, because suppressing one doesn't necessarily make it a spectre.

Would like someone on AppleVis to do a survay on how many of us used the features that Apple has released every May. I think it would be interested specially for Apple. I can say that I had not done so at this time. Also how many of them work well without bugs.

Oh sure, let’s all pretend Apple isn’t doing more than 99% of mainstream companies when it comes to accessibility. Because clearly, making their products usable for blind users just happens by accident, right? And heaven forbid we thank the actual humans working in the accessibility department. what a scandal
that would be.

Meanwhile, sighted users don’t even have to think about screen readers, let alone deal with the constant workarounds and frustrations blind users face
daily. Whether people like it or not, we are a minority , and Apple has people actively working to address that. Yes, those same developers who have to
go above and beyond compared to your average team building shiny animations.

Am I saying we should stop giving feedback? Absolutely not. But there's a difference between offering constructive criticism and forgetting basic courtesy
and human decency. A little kindness wouldn't kill us , though judging by some reactions, you'd think it might.

Wanna know what I would like to see for iOS 19? How about threads here on AppleVis, where we all just, stop, sniping at one another. If someone points out their joy and fulfillment for iOS, or the Apple ecosystem in general, than good, great, no need to belittle them.
On the flipside, if someone expresses their distaste, disappointment, and/or distrust in Apple products, or the company as a whole, Again that is fine, there is no need to belittle, besmirch, harass, and/or humiliate them.

Yet, day in and day out that is all I see on these forums. Why don't we all take a step back, and just take a breath.
Appreciate what we don't have, agree on what we do have, and move on with our individual lives.

Thank you, that is all. 🙂

Well they are forums after all, which is just another word for place to complain. If you read other mainstream forums, like Mac Rumors, or Apple Insider, or Redit, or X, you will see exactly the same thing. I, too, hope we can be better.

I'm not getting my number one wish for a new feature in iOS 19, but the new Braille access notetaker esque stuff sounds great. Whether or not it's something I use all the time remains to be seen.

I would like Apple to fix the higher sample rate in Eloquence, since it's the only synth I will ever need. I keep coming back to it. Then again, FS doesn't use the higher sample rate in JAWS, so. I just wish it wasn't so much quieter than the other voices.

Apple is now rumored to be adding a dedicated gaming hub app, which to me sounds like the old Game Center app but better. I would hope this app, along with the indy game dev Apple just bought, means they will finally be improving game accessibility.

The thing is that when something is free, you can not do so. However when we pay over $1000, we will do so. Specially when the iOS develops bugs and they are not fix even when people follow all the rules regarding reports. Now we suppose to be very nice and ask with sugar on top. I paid for it, No one gave me the phone. Take care and be safe.

Yes Apple is big tech and motivated by money and we are a small team. However, we are a small and mighty team and if that means keep reporting feedback including various bugs and the like then that's what we do. Yes it would be nice if Apple would make a big deal regarding accessibility improvements and features with upcoming operating systems at WWDC like they do regarding visual features such as camera features. Due to the majority of apple consumers being sighted we will still see a blurb regarding accessibility even if it is just a one second blurb. I do have to agree with previous comments regarding Apple being behind the times with AI implimentation.

We are and always will be a minority, so subject to the stuff that comes with it. Simple. Instead of complaining here where apple will never read it anyway, why not you send them a polite email describing your feelings with concrete examples? Because
1: you expect another company / entity to do this for you, in which case stick with microsoft as their philosophy on windows is mostly that currently, and whether we like it or not apple will not be changing this anytime soon.
2: I can understand this is exhausting. It's our right to be tired and just stop. Nobody hear should force sb to do this if the person doesn't have the time, skills or motivation. But we can't do both, complain where it's unlikely for our concerns to ever be listened and not report properly when possible/suitable and expect a perfect accessibility. If you don't like the mac, then don't use it. I know for a fact that accessibility is still completely achievable on linux, and chromeos is still a great option, more versatile than an ipad will ever be at least :)
3: pay a specialized hardware which will be crimially out of date in the device and in the software before even launch, hardly last, and, well, very very expensive. But you will at least have a somehow smooth experience in that closed tiny ecosystem, assuming it's worth something in terms of mainstream job/school productivity.

My feature request for iOS 19 (or iOS 2026):

•the ability to import photos and screenshots into Visual Intelligence.
•A better Siri. Please. Do literally anything with it, partner with Google, build your own, just fix it. Fix it yesterday.
•the ability to import custom audio files into the music app, just like you can on macOS. There is absolutely no reason this shouldn’t be possible.
•an equivalent to androids circle to search. This kind of sort of exists with “select to look up”, it just hasn’t been updated since, iOS 5 maybe? And only uses those same two sources, Wikipedia and the dictionary. Literally just update that interface with the ChatGPT and Gemini integration and we’re good to go.
•Phone, Watch, Journal, Sports, Invites, Wallet apps available on iPadOS. Why these are currently iPhone only is a mystery.
•Improved search throughout the entire operating system, but especially in the settings app.
•The ability for handoff to just do more, especially with media. I should be able to immediately move from watching a movie or listening to an album on my iPhone and immediately pick Right up where I left off on my Mac or iPad.
•Multiple user accounts on iPadOS.
•An App Library that can actually be made usable. Currently it’s basically broken for me and literally the only useful function is the alphabetical list of all of your apps.
•A time estimation for how long it will take your phone to charge.
•The ability to take control of the volume, independently control the volume for different items, play multiple audio streams at the same time and set custom alert tone volumes.
•An “AirPods” app. These things have so many functions hidden away in so many settings menus that they should just have their own app to make things less confusing.
•The ability to still hear VoiceOver in headphones when using both Siri and Dictation.
•An (easier to use with VoiceOver) Camera and FaceTime call UI. Currently as both of these are designed, I’m always hunting for teeny tiny buttons for functions. Especially the “flip camera” button in FaceTime, that thing always seems to slightly move every time I use it.

I’m sure I’ll think of more.

Multi user accounts on ipad os is just completely a MUST HAVE. But Apple is literally just being Apple, they clearly know that iPad is the most familial device ever. This proves how pointless was the separation of ios and ipad os imo, but I have never used it so can't really say that. I have even a feedback opened for this specifically.

Want to be able to see in my iPad how much battery is in my watch or iPhone. Do not want a third party app. Tried one, did not work. Waist of money.

I agree 100% with this. If they implemented this feature I would be very tempted to buy an iPad.

@Holger Fiallo do you not have the batteries widget on your iPad? I don't have an iPad, but I have the batteries widget on my iPhone home screen and it shows me the status of all my devices -- iPhone, Apple Watch, Air Pods Pro and Max, and Magic Keyboard -- provided they are connected to my phone via bluetooth. No additional app needed.

The only device I have that doesn't show up there is my Focus Braille display, probably because it's old, but I can easily find out the status of the battery on the display itself, so not a big deal.

Uh why on earth would you expect to have a braille display battery on that widget? ... Anyways :)

OK. Steps by steps please. Never heard of that so help me set it up. Thanks.

@Holger Fiallo you can find widgets in the today view (three finger flick left from the home screen,) but you can also put them on your home screen or lock screen. I have the batteries widget on my iPhone's home screen.

• Go to your home screen.
• Flick up or down until VoiceOver says "edit", then double tap.
• Double tap "edit" in the top left corner.
• Double tap "add widget" in the menu that pops up.
• Find the batteries widget and double tap it. It will show you a description of what it does. Double tap "add widget".

There are a lot of other widgets you can add. My home screen is just the batteries widget on the bottom, and the siri suggestions on the top, where it suggests apps based on what I use throughout the day. No static apps on my home screen. If I want to open an app that it doesn't show me, I just use BSI.

Thanks. I check. I have it for my iPad, airpod pro 2 and folio keyboard. It does not show my watch or iPhone. Was hoping that it could show that. That is what I was talking about. Did follow instruction and nothing else showed up regarding battery. Thanks anyway.

I personally would like to see them remove the 100,000 song limit in Apple Music and make a bigger limit or at least have no limit like Spotify

I would like Apple to only announce new features when they are ready for use and NOT tell everyone to buy the latest hardware in order to be able to use software that isn't available or indeed working yet! If it doesn't work, I don't want to know about it, as it is totally useless! Screen recognition! Can we please not have it jump all over the place! If we move it to a particular position on screen, it's because we want it to stay there! Example PolarBeat and Mantis X. Wish both of those would label all the buttons in their apps.

I would like Apple to only announce new features when they are ready for use and NOT tell everyone to buy the latest hardware in order to be able to use software that isn't available or indeed working yet! If it doesn't work, I don't want to know about it, as it is totally useless! Screen recognition! Can we please not have it jump all over the place! If we move it to a particular position on screen, it's because we want it to stay there! Example PolarBeat and Mantis X. Wish both of those would label all the buttons in their apps.

I would like AppleMusic to stop censoring the music they allow! Often I find a music track has been removed from the music library, because Apple has decided it it unsuitable! I'll decide if it is unsuitable thank you!

This isn’t a place that apple checks. All this forum is for is talking. Provide your feedback to apple directly.

I know you can add web pages as shortcuts in iOS, but I do like the way it works on the Mac where you can have isolated little apps for a single web site. I'd quite like to see this in iOS if it can't be done already.

We are bad children that apple need to keep safe from bad words. They know what is best for us.

Oh I did not know about this. I had heard that they were making a tool to help users migrate to Apple Music from other platforms. One of the problems with being a Spotify user for maybe 15 years is that I have so many playlists and other things set up that I wouldn't even consider moving. I had been tempted to give this a try, but if they are censoring things then that puts an end to that.

For me, I was also hoping for more bug fixes — but if that’s off the table, there’s one thing I’ve really been waiting for: multitasking.
Like, being able to use two apps at the same time would be a game-changer. Imagine chatting on Discord while scrolling Twitter, or watching a Twitch stream while playing Playroom in the browser.
Even reading a book with Spotify open on the side just to switch up the background music — wouldn’t that be cool?