Press Release – American Foundation for the Blind

AFB American Foundation
for the Blind
TM

Expanding possibilities for people with vision loss
Alert to AccessNote Users:

iOS 7.1 is experiencing an issue that affects all VoiceOver users who are using a Bluetooth QWERTY keyboard.

Apple is aware of the issue, and is presumably working on a bug fix. The problem stems from using the control key. After pressing the control key, it acts as if the control key is “sticking,” and all subsequent keyboard actions act as if the control key is being held down. This has a significantly detrimental effect on all iOS apps, but particularly impacts AccessNote users. If you are experiencing bizarre behavior when taking notes in AccessNote using iOS 7.1, then it is likely caused by this bug. Unfortunately there is nothing that we can do about this as developers, and we will have to wait for a bug fix from Apple. So for now, try to avoid using the control key by itself, and if you do experience strange behavior it can typically be fixed by pressing VO + left or right to change the focus, then back to what you were doing. This bug only affects QWERTY keyboards, and we have experienced no effects when using braille keyboards.

AppleVis has some excellent resources. They have a podcast and another article suggesting some workarounds:

Podcast: http://www.applevis.com/podcast/episodes/quick-tip-workaround-bluetooth-keyboard-problem-introduced-ios-71

Article: http://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ios-app-discussion/avoiding-bt-keyboard-issues-ios-71

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