Sorry for the silence. Life has been busy, and I kind of forgot I had this account. But now that updates are coming, I'll be posting the VoiceOver changes to watch out for once you update.

watchOS 5, iOS 12, and tvOS 12 all come out on September 17. No major new features for VO users, but some nice fixes and small tweaks. A major change Watch and iPad owners need to know.

iOS12: on iPad, sliding a finger up/down from the bottom/top of the screen is a new command. Down for Control Center, further for notifications. Up for Home, further for App Switcher. More here: applevis.com/guides/ios-ipa…

watchOS5: similar to the new iPad gestures, touch the very bottom or top of the Watch screen and drag up/down. Up for Control Center, down for notifications. This is how you access these items when not on your watch face.

iOS12: Here's the AppleVis article on everything coming in iOS 12: applevis.com/blog/apple-ios…

iOS: In 12, braille screen input has 2 new commands. 3-finger swipe up to send message in Messages (unclear where else this works); 2-finger swipe up to cycle through available keyboards.

iOS: in 12, the 2-finger Dock gesture on iPad is gone. Now, swipe up from the bottom of the screen like invoking the home/app switcher, but then move your finger right back down. That brings up the Dock now.

I no longer remember the answer to this, as I only use Twitterrific these days. Can anyone help?

A good iOS tip for any app that does something custom with the two-finger double tap, assuming the app doesn't hide the status bar.

Hello everyone. I kind of, well, forgot about this account for a while. But don't worry, I'll be back once Apple's next updates come out. There's some cool stuff on the way for VoiceOver this time around, especially on iOS and, for those liking punctuation customization, macOS.

Now that iOS 13 is out, let's begin. The big change for VO is custom gestures, braille keyboard commands, qwerty keyboard commands, braille screen input gestures, and handwriting gestures. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Commands to set all this up.

But that's not all. You can now also customize punctuation, setting up your own set of pronunciations and ignored symbols. This is in the Verbosity section of VoiceOver's settings. You can also enable the Punctuation rotor option to choose a group on the fly.

Activities are the other major change. You can set up a punctuation group, synthesizer voice/speed/volume, and other verbosity settings. VO can switch to an activity based on which app you're in, which kind of content you're reading, or which activity you choose using the rotor.

For way more detail on all this, here's the link to Scott's wonderful article with details on these and other iOS13 changes, on AppleVis: applevis.com/blog/whats-new…

iOS: in 12 and older, Safari's Reader button could be double tapped to toggle Reader. In 13, it now opens formatting options. But you can just swipe up or down once, then double tap, to quickly toggle Reader.

iOS: iOS13 has Slide to Type, letting you touch a letter, then slide to the rest of the letters in the word before you lift your finger. If you don't like it, Settings > General > Keyboard has the option to turn it off.

iOS: If you like Slide to Type, but want VO to wait longer before this mode engages so you can still type in the usual way, open VoiceOver's settings, go to Typing, then to Keyboard Interaction Time. Set the number of seconds VO should wait before Slide to Type kicks in..

macOS: I'm seeing reports of feedback problems in the new Pages and Numbers. If you haven't updated and rely on these, maybe hold off.

iOS: in 11, emails on iPad act like iPhone. When you open 1, 2-finger swipe up or down to read it. No more buttons read first.