Apple has seemingly removed some important accessibility features from Siri as part of its iOS 15 update.
As first reported by MacRumors, the company seems to have removed the ability to send emails or check call history, which is something those with visual impairments used regularly to maximize their iPhone experience.
Questions such as “Do I have any voicemail messages?” and “Who called me?” no longer work, and it’s no longer possible to send an email via Siri, check your call history, or play voicemail messages. It also seems like these commands have been removed from iOS 14.8, but we’re not sure whether this means the commands have been removed from the Siri code or there’s a server-side issue that’s causing these features to not work.
The missing commands are commonly used by blind and low-vision users, and a member of the AppleVis forum said: “One of the people whom I support told me that she could no longer use Siri to send email 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 with that.”
“Subsequently, I’ve had the same response on a phone running iOS 12. If this is a deliberate feature removal, it’s certainly a loss to some users with sight loss who find it a convenient way to send a brief email.”
We don’t know whether the removal of these features was intentional, but considering it’s affecting several versions of iOS, it could be that Apple accidentally turned them off and can bring them back in a server update.
Do you use these commands? Are you frustrated to see them missing? Let us know and check back soon for more news and announcements on everything Siri, iOS, and Apple, right here on AppleMagazine.com.