Incredibly annoyying issue with Chat GPT website on mac

By Mert Ozer, 31 March, 2025

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

"I used to be able to conveniently use the ChatGPT website on Mac Safari. However, now, whenever ChatGPT writes a message, VoiceOver users cannot see the response following the 'ChatGPT says' heading. Are there any workarounds? This is very frustrating. Of course, I have no problems on my virtual Windows machine, which also means it will take a million years for them to fix it for mac Voiceover users as there is not many blind mac OS users compared to windows.

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Comments

By Mathieu on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - 01:11

Hello,

This bug occurred with Mac OS 15.4... It is very annoying, but I haven't been able to reproduce it on another site... I therefore think that Chat GPT does not use standard code to develop its system. Moreover, if you reload the page, the responses are perfectly readable…

By Oliver on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - 05:11

Thanks for bringing this up. I thought it was just me. I'd assumed it was using canvas for its output.

By Mert Ozer on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - 05:11

I think I started having the issue upon installing Mac OS 15.4, do you guys have the problem on 15.3 and lower?

By Mert Ozer on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - 06:11

It's a VO on mac issue, again and again. Although I never use the Chat GPT website on ios, as I use it's app, I was able to read Chat GPT responses on their desktop version website. I'm so, frustrated. And downgrading ain't easy without a backup on Mac like it is on windows, ugh!

By Mert Ozer on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - 08:11

I have submitted this feedback, along with a screen recording to demonstrate the issue:

I’ve been using ChatGPT’s native website on my Mac for a while, and it was working perfectly fine until I updated my Mac to 15.4 last night. Now, it’s no longer possible to see ChatGPT’s responses using VO navigation on Safari. I’m attaching a screen recording to better demonstrate this issue.

Since this issue doesn’t occur on other platforms with the same website, I tested the ChatGPT desktop website on my iOS device running iOS 18.4 and my virtual Windows copy with NVDA. The problem seems to be specific to Apple. It also doesn’t exist when using any browser other than Safari—I had no issues when using Google Chrome on Mac.

Additionally, this update introduced some strange web navigation bugs, particularly on JavaScript-intensive websites. For example, when reviewing messages on Google Gemini, the focus sometimes jumps to the Gemini menu bar at the top.

We do serious work on our computers. I’m using a MacBook Pro—this piece of tech is meant for professionals, and I shouldn’t have to think twice before installing a point update. It’s not like I’m upgrading from macOS 14 to 15; this is just a minor monthly update, and I shouldn’t have to create backups just in case Apple’s accessibility quality control sucks again. We’ve already dealt with weird Apple Music bugs for a while, and it took Apple until 15.4 to finally fix them—even though Apple Music is a paid service.

I really wish VoiceOver updates and bug fixes could be released separately, so we wouldn’t have to wait for a later macOS public release to get fixes for incredibly frustrating issues that kill productivity.

I hope my rant and suggestions are taken as constructive criticism to improve Apple accessibility. Thank you!

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - 22:11

I'm on 15.4, and the ChatGPT website works fine for me with Google Chrome.

Edited. I see that you've already noted the problem is Safari-specific. Sorry.

By Mert Ozer on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 - 07:23

For me, the biggest issues with Google Chrome that keep me from using it as my default browser are the inability to navigate within text using arrows, making it impossible to select text and review a paragraph line by line without using the annoying Lines Rotor, which also doesn’t sync with other navigation items like characters and words. Also, VoiceOver constantly announces empty groups in Google Chrome, which slows down navigation.

Additionally, when using YouTube on Safari, the reaction time for play/pause, jumping back or forward with keyboard shortcuts (K, J, L, and the arrow keys) is noticeably slower compared to Google Chrome.

Have any of you also been annoyed by this? Any suggestions or workarounds for these issues? If so, I’ll stop using Safari unless I need it for a specific website.

By Oliver on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 - 07:36

A nice little result of this is I created an app from microsoft edge for chat GPT and discovered that voiceover reads the response out automatically. I'd suggest this over safari anyway, and the clunky official app.

By Tyler on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 - 07:54

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Another thing you could do is copy and paste the generated output into a text field, which should make it navigable with standard VoiceOver commands. In addition, if you have live regions enabled, output should be spoken by VoiceOver as it appears in the chat.

By Oliver on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 - 11:51

Thanks for the heads up with live regions, Tiler. I've just created an activity specific to the chatGPT site. Live regions can make things get a bit chatty in other places. cheers.

By mr grieves on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 - 14:31

I created a Safari web app for ChatGPT and I've not noticed any change since moving to 15.4.

When I've typed in a question, I tend to navigate backwardsby heading to the Chat GPT Says heading, then I just read from there using VO keys. Seems to work fine. Are you doing it another way?

By mr grieves on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 - 16:51

I noticed a button under the chat "Edit in canvas" next to the helpfully unlabelled "button". I am not touching that with a barge pole, but just wondering if you have? Maybe there are 2 ways to interact with it?

Otherwise not sure why I'm not having the same problem, unless it is just biding its time.