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With the recent version of iOS 15, Apple seems to have made a few changes to the functionality of Siri that removed features that blind and visually impaired iPhone users rely on.
Several Siri commands that provide details about phone calls, voicemail messages and sending emails no longer seem to work. The following commands previously worked, but have recently been removed.
- Do I have voicemail messages?
- Listen to my voicemail messages
- Consult my call history
- Check my recent calls
- Who called me?
- Send an email
- Send an email to [person]
Over the past two weeks, we have received several emails from iPhone users who do not have this key Siri feature, or their loved ones trying to help them navigate the changes. Siri feature removals have also been documented on the AppleVis forums for blind and visually impaired users of Apple products.
One of the people I support told me that she can no longer use Siri to send emails from her iPhone 8 with iOS 14. I tried on my iPhone SE with iOS 15.0 and the response from Siri was “sorry I can’t help I subsequently got the same response on a phone running iOS 12. If this is a deliberate feature removal, it is certainly a loss for some users. visually impaired people who find it a convenient way to send a brief email.
Prior to this latest iOS update, if Siri was asked to read voicemail, Siri would – now Siri is just saying he can’t do it. Trying to find a way around the problem as my completely blind dad relied heavily on this feature.
My sister is blind and Siri would respond to voice commands ie read my text, call Barbara, answer questions about the weather and most importantly tell my sister who called her. To this day, Siri’s response is “I can’t help with this.” Has the system changed? Is there something on the iPhone that needs to be turned on for Siri to help my sister know who called her in the past?
Asking Siri to provide details of recent phone calls or voicemail messages results in the following response: “I can’t help you, but you can ask me to open the Phone app”. Asking questions over emails elicits a similar response about Siri’s inability to help you.
It should be noted that it is always possible to ask Siri to play the most recent voicemail message available, or a voicemail message from a specific person, but Siri will not read a list of all available voicemail messages. The Siri commands seem to have disappeared with the release of iOS 15, but iOS 14 users can no longer use them, so this is not an issue with iOS 15.
We asked Apple to tell us if this was a bug or if there were other commands available to users, but after several days of waiting for a response we didn’t get Answer. A user from the AppleVis forums spoke to Apple Support and was told that Apple was aware of the issue, so it’s possible that this feature will be re-added at some point.
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