I have reported this bug on multiple macOS version and it never gets fixed, so I am posting it here in hopes someone at Apple will see this and fix the issue. I use voice control extensively (in fact, it is THE reason I use Macs. I am an amputee, and voice control makes life much easier and there is nothing even close on Windows (or Linux, but Linux is barely usable for people with with two arms)). Voice control has a setting to have a screen overlay numbers, names, or a grid, to help indicate what item you're referring to. There is an option to have no overlay. However, even when overlay is set to None, the numbers overlay still appears on screen, even when I haven't triggered something by voice. If I right click on the desktop, for example, the numbers appear on the menu. This bug has been in macOS for as long as I can remember. I really hope someone at Apple can fix this. There are quite a few other bugs I've reported with Feedback assistant over the years that go unfixed, this is one of the more annoying ones.

We have a password entry field with a "show password" button. The button effectively turns the "secure text entry" textfield into a non-secure text entry field allowing the user to view what they typed in. When VoiceOver is enabled, I am not including that button in the UI; it doesn't seem to make sense to me for the following reasons. If you properly test with the screen curtain, the functionality is useless. You don't see anything. I've tried to explain this to my accessibility team. It's also quite ridiculous to offer to show a blind user their password, I'm sure they'd love to see it, but they just can't. This would almost seem insulting as well. If by toggling that button, and turning a secure text entry into a non-secure text entry, now the app is literally speaking their password aloud. This seems like a security vulnerability to me. What if someone else overhears the password spoken aloud. The accessibility team is insisting that I need to include the "show password" button when VoiceOver is enabled. This is the response I received. "functionality should be the same for VI users as for sighted users. It may happen that a VI user wants to check what is typed into password field in order to correct mistakes". Again, I don't agree with that because functionality should not be the same. Functionality should be changed and altered as necessary to make the user experience as accessible as possible. And in this scenario, to me the functionality doesn't make sense at all in a VoiceOver setting. Any thoughts on this? Am I incorrect here? Are there benefits of including a "show password" button to a user utilizing VoiceOver? What should then the functionality be? Speak the password aloud? Thanks.

Hello! I was doing some accessibility testing for my app and found out that when the user switches the text size, all of the data in the text fields is reset, which causes major disruption. I've tried looking for documentation, but all I've found is information on how to dynamically scale the UI for different text sizes, which I've already implemented. My guess is that every time Dynamic Type registers a change, it redraws my UI instead of just updating it. How can I make sure the data is not reset when the text size changes?

I've just received an email from Apple regarding the Global Accessibility Awareness Day and some forthcoming sessions to promote their accessibility features. What a joke. For many years, Apple refuses to provide the most basic accessibility requirement on macOS: LET USERS DISABLE ALL NON-CONSENSUAL UNSOLICITED ANIMATIONS AND OTHER UI CONVULSIONS. The scourge of animations started from macOS Lion. Yes, many of them can be, fortunately, disabled through some obscure Terminal commands (that is, if the user is lucky enough to discover them on some obscure internet resources). The "Reduce motion" control in System Settings is a fake option that doesn't do anything. And there are two most glaring accessibility violations that cannot be disabled: Scroll bar rollover highlight effect introduced on macOS 10.7.3. Every time you move the cursor over a scroll bar, the bar gets highlighted. It results in bringing the user's attention to random scroll bars for no reason whatsoever just because the cursor happens to pass over the bar at some point. HUNDREDS of unnecessary, annoying events of distraction daily! Expand/collapse animation of NSOutlineView (such as when we open/close a folder in the list view in the Finder, as well as any other app that's using outline views). It's extremely annoying, distracting, and time-wasting. All feedback submitted about this through the years remains mostly ignored (except for a few cases where I received some ridiculous replies from employees who, apparently, are barely familiar with Macs in general). Apple does NOT care about accessibility. Not only this, but it's obvious that Apple is, in fact, intentionally abusing those users who can't tolerate distracting, time-wasting animations and UI convulsions.

I have an app that needs Input Monitoring permissions to get keyboard access in the background. I've attempted to use both IOHIDCheckAccess(kIOHIDRequestTypeListenEvent) and IOHIDRequestAccess(kIOHIDRequestTypeListenEvent), but they always return denied, even though I have given the permission for Input Monitoring to the app in Settings. Is there something I need to put in my Info.plist to enable this permission to work?

Can you guys like probably make Visual Intelligence available for the action button on the iPhone 16e? It should be only for iPhones that use A18 and future gen apple chips.

I have the following method to insert @mentions to a text field: func insertMention(user: Token, at range: NSRange) -> Void { let tokenImage: UIImage = renderMentionToken(text: "@\(user.username)") let attachment: NSTextAttachment = NSTextAttachment() attachment.image = tokenImage attachment.bounds = CGRect(x: 0, y: -3, width: tokenImage.size.width, height: tokenImage.size.height) attachment.accessibilityLabel = user.username attachment.accessibilityHint = "Mention of \(user.username)" let attachmentString: NSMutableAttributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(attributedString: NSAttributedString(attachment: attachment)) attachmentString.addAttribute(.TokenID, value: user.id, range: NSRange(location: 0, length: 1)) attachmentString.addAttribute(.Tokenname, value: user.username, range: NSRange(location: 0, length: 1)) let mutableText: NSMutableAttributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(attributedString: textView.attributedText) mutableText.replaceCharacters(in: range, with: attachmentString) mutableText.append(NSAttributedString(string: " ")) textView.attributedText = mutableText textView.selectedRange = NSRange(location: range.location + 2, length: 0) mentionRange = nil tableView.isHidden = true } When I use XCode's accessibility inspector to inspect the text input, the inserted token is not read by the inspector - instead a whitespace is shown for the token. I want to set the accessibility-label to the string content of the NSTextAttachment. How?

I have an issue in my app when it is used together with the assistive access feature. For authentication, we are using the capacitor firebase authentication plugin (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@capacitor-firebase/authentication) which enables users to login via apple (FirebaseAuthentication.signInWithApple(...)), google (FirebaseAuthentication.signInWithGoogle(...)), or email. Works just fine. However, when the assistive access feature is enabled, the login fails for apple ("The operation couldn't be completed. com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError error 1000) and google ("The user canceled the sign-in flow). It seems like the popups for sign-in are blocked and therefore an error is returned immediately. The popups may be blocked by assistive access, causing the capacitor plugin to be unable to authenticate. I have tested this on my iPhone 12 Pro using iOS 17.7 I would appreciate any suggestions to handle this issue!

The AVSpeechSynthesizer on some iOS 18 device has a bug that it will read always read Chinese of: AVSpeechUtterance(string: "中文") // Any Chinese Content in the dialect specified by: Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content > Voices > Chinese > Spoken Language instead of the dialect that I specified in AVSpeechUtterance.voice: AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-HK") // Cantonese AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-TW") // Mandarin However, setting Chinese dialect of AVSpeechSynthesisVoice by "zh-HK" or "zh-TW" has been working on iOS 17 and below. My app has a feature that requires reading sentences in Mandarin followed by Cantonese, i.e., both dialects is needed every time. Therefore, setting the dialect in Spoken Language of Settings is not a workaround to make my app to function correctly in iOS 18. Further to the above, I've also discovered that, if iOS 18 (in my case, 18.5 is tested) is freshly installed (not upgrading from iOS 17 or below, nor restoring backup after fresh installation of iOS 18), the bug above will not happen. However, if it was an upgrade from iOS 17 or below, or backup is restored (in my case, I freshly installed iOS 18.5 on a new iPhone and then restored a backup from another iPhone on iOS 16.2), the bug above happens. This bug puzzled me because I need both dialect of Chinese to be read aloud one by one, but as reported by many users, on most iOS 18 devices (since a fresh installation of latest iOS without upgrading or restoring is uncommon nowadays), my app will read Cantonese two times or Mandarin two times (depending on Spoken Language in Settings). It is the iOS 18 bug which made my app unable to perform the expected behavior. Would Apple developers look into this and advise if there are any possible workaround within the code of app to overcome this bug, or please fix this bug with an iOS 18 update. Thank you.

When my macOS Cocoa app displays a modal alert with beginSheetModal(for:completionHandler:), VoiceOver sometimes seems to focus on an "illegal" upper level, where any attempts at navigation will give the unhelpful response "Alert, dialog", until you "drill down" with VO + shift + down or switch apps. After that, things will work as expected. Is this a known bug? Does it happen to anybody else, or am I doing something wrong?

I’d love to see Apple implement a Bionic Reading feature as a system-wide accessibility option. This type of reading aid highlights the first part of each word in bold to help guide the eyes and improve comprehension. It’s been shown to be especially helpful for people with ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodivergent needs. Having a toggle in Settings > Accessibility would be life-changing. Ideally, it could be: • Enabled system-wide, or per-app • Allow customization of how much of the word is bolded • Available in Safari, Messages, Books, News, etc.

Haptic or Sound queue to allow for the accessibility of the blind (sound) and deaf population (haptic) for even knowing when location services and the camera were last used? Also, the grey notification rather than the purple notification for location services should appear for the full 24 hours after an application has used the app, if the correct description is within the "copy" of Settings The green light lets them know that the application has changed to the camera and fade out orange light both could even have subtle simply click sounds, like a shutter, big haptic, softer sound, but editable in Settings, of course

I’ve noticed that the VoiceOver reads currency amounts correctly when they are below thousand. Then, for higher amounts, for example 12.225,34 € VoiceOver reads ‘twelve point two two five thirty four euros’ If the amount is formatted without the thousand separator (12225,34 €) this problem doesn’t exist. (VO reads twelve thousand two hundred and twenty five euros and thirty four cents) Why is the thousand separator a problem for VoiceOver if this formatting is coming from the currency and locale? This issue exists in English. I changed my device language to Italian and German and in both cases the number was read correctly even with the separator. Is there a way to make it work in English?

ar quicklook suddenly is grayed out on iphone 15 pro, I bought the phone new recently ot was working great, 2 days ago updated to ios 18.1.4, ar mode kept opening but i started getting a move iphone over surface message and the object wouldn’t detect surfaces correctly, updated to ios 18.5, now when i open quicklook modesl ar is completely greyed out, can someone help me fix or detect the issue thank you

Updated to iOS 26 beta and now the TV remote app in the control center won’t open. I’ve tried the following: Restart phone Remove shortcut and re-add Cant find any other troubleshooting methods for this issue online so I’m guessing it’s a new problem.

I'm facing a bizarre issue with the Apple's Accessibility APIs. I am registering an AXObserver that listens for, among other things, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification. For many new users, the kAXSelectTextChangedNotification is not triggered, even though they have enabled Accessibility permission for the app. Other notifications are getting through (kAXWindowMovedNotification, kAXWindowResizedNotification, kAXValueChangedNotification etc - full list here), just not the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification! We've found that we can reproduce the error by removing accessibility permission for the app and rebooting our computers. After restarting and reenabling accessibility permissions, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification was not received, even though other notifications were fine. Strangely, the issue can be resolved by launching Apple's Accessibility Inspector app on an impacted computer. Once the Accessibility Inspector is loaded, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotifications start coming through as expected. This implies to me that either: We are missing some needed setup when starting the observers. Accessibility Inspector gets it right, thus ‘starting’ the system properly. Accessibility Inspector is using some Apple private APIs that we don’t have access to. Things I’ve tried: I've tried subscribing the AXSelectedTextChangedNotification to different AXUIElements, including the SystemWide element, the Application element, and children elements from the AXApplication. None of these received the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification, until Accessibility Inspector is booted up. No surprises here, as Apple's documentation confirms that you should add the notification to the root Application AXUIElement if you want to receive notifications for all its children. I had a theory that the issue might be due to my code calling AXUIElementCreateApplication multiple times, possibly creating multiple "Applications" in Apple's Accessibility implementation. If that’s the case, the notifications might be sent to the wrong application AXUIElement. However, refactoring my code to only call AXUIElementCreateApplication once didn't resolve the issue. I thought the issue may be caused by subscribing the AXSelectedTextChangedNotification on the high-level application element (at odds with Apple's documentation). I've tried traversing the child AXUIElements until we find one with the kAXSelectedTextAttribute and then subscribing to that. This did not resolve the issue. I don’t think it's the correct path to continue exploring, given that the notifications are received correctly after AccessibilityInspector is launched. There is one exception to the above: if I add the kSelectedTextChangedNotification listener to a specific text field AXUIElement, I do receive the notification on that text field. However, this is not practical; I need a solution that will work for all text fields within an app. The Accessibility Inspector appears to be doing something that causes the selected-text-changed notifications to be correctly passed up to the high-level application AXUIElement. Another thought is that I could traverse the entire Accessibility hierarchy and add listeners to every subview that has the kAXSelectedTextAttribute. However, I don’t like this long-term solution. It will be slow and incomplete: new elements get added and removed frequently. I just want the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification to be received by the high-level Application AXUIElement, which the documentation suggests it should be. I also have evidence that this can work, since notifications start coming through after Accessibility Inspector is launched. It’s just a matter of discovering how to replicate whatever Accessibility Inspector is doing. An interesting wrinkle: I implemented the 'traverse' strategy above, but was surprised by how few elements were in the hierarchy. Most apps only go down ~2-3 levels, which didn't seem right to me. Perhaps the Accessibility tree isn't fully initialized? I tried adding a 5-second delay to allow more initialization time, but it didn't change anything. Does anyone have any ideas? Here's our file.

I have more than 1000 notes classified in parent/child folders up to 5 levels. From the 5th level of files I can no longer share the note. The note is not shared. It is that of the parent file that is shared. Thank you very much Good to you Christophe

Hi Community, I'm excited to share R Helper, a speech practice app I built with accessibility as the core focus from day one. App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/speak-r-clearly/id6751442522 WHY I BUILT THIS I personally struggled with R sound pronunciation growing up. It affected my confidence in school and job interviews. That experience taught me how important accessible practice tools are. R Helper helps children and adults practice R sounds with full accessibility support. ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IMPLEMENTED VoiceOver - complete navigation and feedback Voice Control - hands-free operation Dynamic Type - scales to large accessibility sizes Reduce Motion - respects user preference Dark Mode - user controllable High Contrast compatibility Differentiate Without Color THE CHALLENGE Most speech practice apps ignore accessibility. I wanted to change that and prove that specialized educational apps can be fully accessible. KEY FEATURES Works 100% offline, no internet needed Zero data collection, privacy first Generous free tier with all accessibility features included 10 story missions with gamification 7 languages supported including RTL for Arabic LESSONS LEARNED Accessibility is not hard when you prioritize it from the start. VoiceOver labels and hints make a huge difference. Testing with accessibility features enabled is essential. Standard SwiftUI components handle most accessibility automatically. Reducing motion significantly helps users with vestibular issues. TECHNICAL DETAILS Built with SwiftUI, targets iOS 17 and up. Universal app for iPhone and iPad. Fully offline using CoreData and local storage. No third party analytics, privacy focused. QUESTIONS FOR THE COMMUNITY What accessibility features do you find users request most? How do you test accessibility features efficiently? WHATS NEXT I'm currently working on expanding the word library, adding more story content, improving haptic feedback Thanks for reading. Nour

Hope it's okay to post here - I haven't gotten resolution anywhere else. Apple's iOs Live Captions is supposed to translate speech into written text either on the phone (works like a charm!) or via microphone (think meeting in a conference room). Microphone doesn't work anywhere, anytime on a new iPhone 14 purchased November 2024. Anyone out there want to fix this and help a lot of people who have trouble hearing? I'm part of an entire generation that didn't know we were supposed to protect our hearing at concerts and clubs and worse, thought it was cool to snag a spot by the speakers...

I’m developing an iOS app, and I’ve noticed that when the user enables Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters → Grayscale, my app icon loses a lot of visual contrast. The original colored version looks fine, but in grayscale it appears “flat” and harder to distinguish, unlike a pure black-and-white design. What I want to achieve: Ensure the app icon remains visually clear and high-contrast even when iOS renders it in grayscale. Ideally, provide an alternate “high-contrast” app icon version when grayscale mode is enabled. What I’ve tried: Increased color contrast in the original icon design. Added outlines and stronger shapes. Tested with grayscale filters in design tools. Researched Asset Catalog and alternate icons, but found no documented API to detect or respond to grayscale mode. Questions: Is there any API in iOS that allows detecting when the system is in grayscale mode so that I can programmatically switch to an alternate app icon? If not, are there Apple-recommended best practices for designing app icons that still look clear in grayscale? Are there any accessibility guidelines specifically addressing icon design for grayscale or color-blind modes? Additional info: iOS version tested: iOS 17.5 Development in Swift + SwiftUI, using Asset Catalog for icons. I am aware that iOS supports alternate icons via setAlternateIconName, but I haven’t found a trigger for grayscale mode.