iOS 27 Wishlist

I recently pulled out my old LG android phone, and once everything was updated, I could do a three finger single tap and whatever talk back was on would get described, just like how ChatGPT might describe something with VOCR on the Mac with command control shift V. You could also assign another command to describe the whole entire screen. I do have a shortcut which can describe the screen via Apple Intelligence including the private cloud compute model, but it would be nice for descriptions of the particular user interface item you are focused on.

Those sound like really good ideas. I really can’t make the road to work because my hands don’t really allow me to do that from my CP. But I can see how it could be a really useful feature. I think we should be able to do a lot more operating the phone with our voices versus the tapping and swiping that we have to do now. I would also like to see some more phone kind of ringtones. I know that’s not really an Accessibility feature, but they’re just aren’t enough of them. It’s really only two. Just the old phone in Hillside. I suppose maybe you Presto but that’s it. I would also like the option for more premium voices for vocalizer. I would eventually like a completely hands-free operation to control my phone 100% with my voice and not just certain things. I guess you can use voice control, but that doesn’t always work so great with Voice. It’s been much better than it used to be though so maybe that will change. But there’s nothing wrong with saying what we want OS 27, even though it’s a bit early to be talking about it. Great topic though.

Want apple to call the exterminator and kill the bugs in VO. Is that to much ask? Do not want new features that will distract. Just kill the bugs. Long live cats.

The feature where the VoiceOver rotor can save settings per application, I'm calling that VoiceOver profiles, I think this would be highly beneficial. However, I agree with Holger that Apple really needs to focus on bug squashing.

P. S. Apple hates Holger. True story. 🤨

For me, the bugs I have noticed with voiceover do not prevent me from getting what I need to get done, except for maybe the bug that will prevent web content from being readable until you turn off and back on voiceover or reload the webpage, or the real famous one on iOS, VO not being able to make up it's mind as to where the focus lands when you open an app, or keeping it consistent. Those are kind of annoying.

not to start an iOS Vs Android debate, but when I was using an older LG phone someone gave me with android 13 and talkback 16, the focus stayed exactly where I put it. I felt confident that I could double tap when going back a screen it would activate the option I want.

to be honest, if bugs like that would be fixed, that would make it all the better, but these bugs have workarounds.

If a bug is negatively affecting a user, I genuinely hope apple fixes it in iOS 27.

From what I’ve heard, it's roomered that iOS 27 will be like snow leopard (hardly any new features, tons of bug fixes and stability and reliability fixes). If that’s the case, I would highly expect voiceover to get a lot of improvements under the hood that will make it feel even more snappy and bug free. Remember iOS 12? Let's hope all os's get that type of stability improvement.

The saving rotor settings per app would be such an awesome idea!

We've been told this is happening any day now for years. I was just playing around with a keyboard and the phone and while cmd-w worked to close an email, cmd-q didn't do a thing. I understand some of this is happening, e.g. I think VO-q and VO-shift-q now work on iOS like they do on Mac, although I can't run iOS 26 to find out.

Give me Mac OS in my pocket already!

Where did you get this from: "It is expected to be Apple's biggest update, focusing on bug fixes and stability improvements."?

I hope it's true and I hope it is applicable to the Mac too.

I have to say I have never liked going line by line like on Windows. A line is a visual thing, I don't see what relevance it has to me but I guess it's what you get used to. I'm sure you can do it using the rotor and I suspect you can setup a custom gesture to go by line too if you prefer. (I also suspect you could do a custom gesture to move the rotor left and right if the twisting thing is difficult).

Proper visual descriptions would top my list. If it could work like the current method but just be better that would be great.

I'm fairly simple so some Microsoft-esque natural voices would make me happy.

I know this is unlikely to happen but I would like to see iOS open up for external cameras so I could more naturally use something like the Meta Ray-bans without them having to build their own SDK to work around it. Obviously paving the way for the new Apple glasses.

But honestly if they release ios 27 and it's identical to ios 26 but with less bugs then I'd be happy with that. (Again - this applies to the Mac a hundred fold)

Yes, apple does not like me. So sad. I purchase their phone and give them money and they give me the finger. Long live cats and down with VO.

Here's my wish list for iOS 27.
1. Fix Bugs. I had inconsistent braille display usage since my first iPhone. I've had VoiceOver jumping around on me, and inconsistent behavior of where I get put when opening an app. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's not. Third, if a website has an embedded video or ad frame, especially in Amazon, it is particularly aggregiously slow. You need to adjust a setting I didn't know existed for 90% of my apple usage.
2. Smarter Image Descriptions
I'm not switching back to iOS any time soon, but I try to look out for all of my communities and my other blind people. Don't make this for me, make it for everyone else! For example, use that GPT power to, on a user's command, to generate a detailed image description with the ability to follow up with a question. Before anyone grabs the pitchfork, "but Zach, there's apps to do that", there's much more steps involved with using an app. On any android running the latest talkback, in my case, a pixel 9A, I have a custom gesture of a four finger tap to describe the image. it takes two seconds, and boom. there's the description, with the actual text of the image, plus buttons to type a question or dictate. The same thing applies for screen description.
There's my detailed list. Actually a third one, but I doubt this is going to happen. have voiceOver update independent of iOS. that way, we can test new voiceOver features early, even while using a stable build of iOS.
There. Rant over.

have voiceOver update independent of iOS. that way, we can test new voiceOver features early, even while using a stable build of iOS.

Ha ha ha ha !!!—oh, you were serious? 😇

I want my phone to be able to tell me more than once she’s calling me. Is it such a basic feature that even my flip phone had it was called name repeat. It would tell you call from whoever a bunch of times. See you picked up your phone but that way you never missed the name of the person with the iPhone. You can’t even do this. There’s not even an option to turn out a feature like this. I’ve been requesting it as a feature for a while from Apple, but I guess not enough people said they wanted it so it’s never been implemented. It’s so basic and they couldn’t even do it for an iPhone but I guess I’ll just have to keep telling them and then eventually we’ll get it. That’s what I did when I wanted to be able to hear samples of the voices before we downloaded them. We got that feature in iOS 16 that’s my other wish that I wanted. I forgot to mention the first time in this thread great topic maybe our wishes should be sent to Apple. They send in the report cards.

Iw'd like to choose an opttion to 8 dot Braille, like it has in Android.
I hope that apple will fix Braille bugs and provide better Braille experience.

That would be an annoyance for me. First of all, you should not give credit because the Microsoft jaws, and nvda did not give me any progress bars. Those MSAA and UIA gave a state computer with personal license of Jaws on a department of rehab services computer. They kept telling us (Microsoft) and even dell themselves on forum that support assist and dell command werent working with automatic reading popups because of changed interfaces, unlabeled buttons and empty panes. Even dell posters told us it wasn't permitted to read using any screenreader. Also I believe that progress bars would get annoying.

Like that idea Singer girl. Whilst you can swipe to double check who is calling before answering it is a pain and could be a toggle for those who would prefer not to have it.

Heard that 26.4 will tell you where the call is coming from. If someone testing the beta let us know if true. Long live cats.

"2. Navigation by line. Currently, VoiceOver groups the information in one, single element. Instead, VoiceOver should navigate line by line, just like Windows. This also eleminates the need of using the rotor and choosing lines."
I'm not sure in what contexts this would be useful. Because if this happened, I could see it also making each navigable element read on separate lines. I have an app at work that behaves this way, and I have to swipe 3-4 times to navigate from one appointment in my list of appointments to the next one. It's very frustrating and time consuming, so I would want to be very careful about how this was put into practice.

This is the FB I filed for this. Note it was also part of my AppleVis report card submission.
FB13759711 (please add repeating caller ID for voiceover)
Please add an repeating caller ID option. It should repeat either the current option and give the user the following choices 1 repeat name
2 repeat number
3 repeat name and number.
4 repeat after x number of seconds. this is important because if a person misses it the first time they will have other chances
to here it.
5 off or default to leave it as the default behavior in other words as currently designed.

Individual notifications where we can do so. For calls do what you suggest, for other such as news just one notification and message 2 times. Long live cats.

What I want more than anything, and I've been asking for it for quite a long time now, is (drumroll please):

All existing VoiceOver and IOS bugs . . . fanfare with many trumpets . . . GONE!!!

NO new VoiceOver or IOS bugs.

Optional: I wouldn't mind a rotor item or settings option for visual description level, much like verbosity level, ranging from nothing to everything with multiple levels in between.

I would also like an option for the current activity to automatically change, excuse me, I mean an option that actually works. I guess this would fall into my first and foremost item, above.

Last for now, I would love a faster learning, more reliable, more consistent focus. Oops. I guess this one falls under item number one, too, doesn't it?

just fix Voiceover jumping and getting stuck, that's all i ask, is it really that hard? these 2 bugs have been around for 6-7 years at this point
just.. fix..them.. already

Agree with you. Wish had money so can put a open letter in the news paper asking T Cook to . fix the bugs. Long live cats.

Everyone wants bug fixes, but that and nothing else will never happen. Maybe if they stopped putting out a major new OS version every year, but we all know they won't do that.

So for new stuff I want that probably won't happen:

I agree with a native way to get image descriptions via Apple Intelligence. Having to share an image to a third party app is a pain. I could see this happening. And since it would probably require an Apple intelligence-capable phone, there's your reason to upgrade.

The one that will never happen: Buy Oko and put crosswalk and light detection into VO live recognition. Make the lidar sensor in the pro phones actually useful. I've heard that's part of the Stellar Trek from HumanWare. I want that in my phone. lol

Maybe they could add things to Braille Access, but I'm not sure what. I don't use it as much as I thought I would, but it's still cool that it's there.

Every year JAWS update their software and address bugs. When was the last time apple did a major overhold of VO? Not talking of new features or adding voices, going to the root of the VO and make sure the code works well and focus on bugs. What is the difference between VO and a NY hotel? None, both have bugs. Long live cats.

Agree with previous comments about where Voiceover focus lands when going back from a dialog or web page. For a sighted person this isn't a big deal since they can see the entire screen. But when focus doesn't land in a predictable location when going back a dialog or from a web page, then the blind user has to hunt all over by flicking around to find out where they are and get back to where they were.

I find this particularly irritating in two circumstances:
1. Aftrer closing an article I just read in the Apple News app, when closing the article, I expect focus to be on the article in the list of articles. Although this has gotten a bit better in the last few betas, often when closing the article focus will land on another article in the list. thus, if I want to read the next article, I have to flick through a bunch of articles to get back where I was in the list of articles.
2. The other irritation is when I have my phone unlocked and I'm exercising and listening to a podcast. Focus will be on one of the static elements on the open app. then I aks Siri for the time, which it tells me, but when Siri is done, focus can not infrequently wind up on the time at the top of the page. Now, as time passes, while I'm listening to my podcast, Siri keeps interrupting by telling me the time each time a minute passes. There is no reason for focus to jump back up there just because I interaccted with Siri!

On the second topic of app updates, it would be really nice if there were separate iOS updates to address Voiceover issues. they might actually get more attention that way and maybe even get fixed! Using Windows, people are used to the screen readers being updated independently of when there are updates for the OS. Imagine if we had to wait for a Microsoft update to introduce new features for our screen readers or fix bugs?

--Pete

Tap the center of your iPhone screen when trying to start/return focus where you left off.

I don't really have much hope for the next revision of iOS, but something I would really like to see, would be for Apple to remove the need for third-party apps for image descriptions. Have you ever considered how awesome it would be to just open the camera app, snap a photo, and AI automatically, and instantaneously describes the content of said photo?
That's what I want. Nothing else, because I know wishing for bugs to be fixed is not likely to happen anytime soon.

So call Siri 2.0 might be able to do so. If ever comes up. Hope before iOS 50. Long live meow.

Siri can not play voice message instead she goes to play voice mail. Nuts. If wrong someone tell me. I send voice messages because is better but if I sent it to a blind person or anyone, can they ask Siri to play it? No. Why not? Simple request. Long live cats and Chicago.

Firstly, I highly doubt that we'll get a very minimal features, very bugfix-rich update. Most of the impatient population wants to be impressed with mindless features that half-work until the last version of that year's OS rolls out where it works perfectly. :) So I'm not expecting anything. Marketing over actual usability! :P

But if things would actually go the way of sanity and there was a whole lotta code tightening and real testing and fixing going on, I'd be the first to sing praises on Apple.

Now assuming we can get this focus loss stuff fixed, let's talk nice features:
1. The Gemini picture query is a good one. I'm not really an AI fan but it has its uses.

2. Braille command to set focus on main area of app. In something like Youtube or many websites, you don't wanna go touching the center of the screen every time you switch tabs or open something. Because VO in its current state usually drops focus at the top (or bottom depending on how much it ate last night), you have to press l chord then pan through every element until you find the guts of the app. This kind of thing is what makes it difficult for me to use braille and have my ipad/phone in a bag. Always gotta be tapping that screen to get to new ap content. Or if VO flies off somewhere, to reset focus back to where you were.

3. A more general feature. Play music at regular volume whilst making a facetime call or running another app with background audio. Think about playing a cool fighting game and having some amazing Anime soundtrack to bolster your mood. Go get 'em, tiger.
This is something I've really thought should be possible for a long time, but maybe Apple would have to refactor the coreaudio stuff to let more than one audio dominant app have the foreground/main stream. It would also likely introduce mega bugs, so nah. Fun idea though. :)

4. Lossless bluetooth. We've had AAC 256kbps for all bluetooth these days on iOS and MacOS, would be cool if LDAC was implemented. Another one where bugs would arise in time but also would validate people using lossless streaming platforms (or local media, I suppose).

Bugs, bugs and bugs. Fix them. No features, just kill them. If need call exterminator. Long live cats.

If you use Siri to send a voice message, she will not play it back, just ask you if you send it or make changes. In the beginning of 26, if you did sent a voice message, Siri ask you if you want to play it back or send it. Apple stop it, do not know why. Apple hates me and wants me in a psychiatric unit. Long live cats.

If you use Siri to send a text, and you get that prompt to send it or change it, if you say the word "review", she will read the message back to you, then prompt you again to send it or change it.

HTH.

Thanks, I will try it next time. Still think apple does not like me. Long live cats.

As for the focus if you're using a Braille display thing, did you know you can press space with dot 7+C to jump to the center of the screen? This helps to quickly jump to somewhere known without having to tap the touch screen. IIRC this was added in iOS 15 or 16.

Be nice if you get a message, beside able to share with other messages or text, you could also send it to an email, instead of copy and paste. That would be nice. Long live cats.

Nice tip! Smile. I ma going to use it.