Very strange issues on the youtube studio website with voiceover

By Mert Ozer, 16 August, 2025

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Guys, if you have a YouTube channel, you probably use the YouTube Studio website too. There are some really strange issues with VoiceOver on the site, so let’s talk about them.
After logging into my channel and landing on the dashboard, I click on the Content menu. Here’s the first issue: if you try to navigate between menus with VO+Command+B (since they’re also buttons), VoiceOver can’t move past the Dashboard button. You either have to use the Tab key or VO+Arrows instead. That’s one bug.
When I click the Content button to see and manage all my uploads, . VO places my cursor on the menu where you can filter content by Videos, Live, Posts, etc. This doesn’t happen in Chromium-based browsers like Chrome or Firefox, only safari puts me on the correct focused item, and I have no idea why.
The bigger problem comes in the content table. This table shows all your uploads with checkboxes, and it includes a filter combo box for attributes like age restriction and visibility. The issue is that the filter button can’t be reached with VoiceOver navigation commands. The only way I’ve found to access it is by using the Tab key until keyboard focus lands on the invisible item, and then I can filter. But even that doesn’t work reliably.
Another issue with the Content area: in Chromium browsers, I can’t access my content or checkboxes at all. VoiceOver announces the table, but I can’t navigate inside it. Only the Tab key works, but it moves keyboard focus without moving the VO cursor. In Safari, I can at least see my content, but table navigation with VO+Up/Down arrows doesn’t work consistently.
If you have more than 30 videos, YouTube splits the list into pages. To see more content, you have to use the page navigation controls at the bottom. But VoiceOver can’t reach these controls with navigation keys. If you keep pressing Tab, eventually the keyboard focus will land there, but the VO cursor never recognizes them. Without prior knowledge of these controls, I might have assumed they didn’t exist and never used them.
With NVDA or JAWS on Windows, thanks to their virtual browse mode, everything on YouTube Studio is accessible. But on Mac, VoiceOver still struggles with basic web navigation. Why is that? why is the chat gpt website is still problamatic with voiceover when it’s 100% accessible on windows? Why does Apple still have to be the annoying different one?

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