Telegram Messenger

I wrote to the developers some months ago and there was no response either. I use the Mac version, called messenger for telegram, you can find it on the mac appstore.

Give this a miss unless you really need to use it for file-sharing. I've just downloaded it and spent a few minutes on it, and you are still not able to enter the text edit box with Voiceover running, or read the messages from left to right in a chat as with iMessage, Messenger or Whatsapp. To write a message, you have to go from the main screen to compose message each time, find the person you were talking to and send the text that way. I think the rating remains accurate: it is usable in the sense that most of its features can be half-used, but to be honest it's such a slow process that you probably needn't bother. I shal persevere but continue to use my charms to persuade people of the merits of Whatsapp for group messaging instead.

Telegram has not improved its accessibility for years! There are many helpful study groups on Telegram, but I fail to access them. There are not so many study groups on WhatsApp though. Very frustrated...

Confirmed by Telegram owner/founder: https://twitter.com/alisonc42/status/1100439055320444928 support for Voiceover due in March - Download the latest version - basic messaging works in VoiceOver for iOS!

Telegram VoiceOver support has dramatically improved in terms of navigation but there are still glaring issues with the app, in particular one button with no label on the main window of the app, and it seems impossible to manage existing chats after tapping the edit button. does anyone know the procedure for engaging with telegram on accessibility? I assume if I email normal tech support they probably won't have a clue what I am going on about or my report will just be lost in the system.

Try their Twitter name. Be polite ... at first ...

with the latest update telegram has improved there accessibility again, there is still an unlabeled button or two, e.g if you get sent a website link, but now deleting messages marking as read and all the other usual things you would want to do with a messaging app is now accessible, as VoiceOver offers an actions rotor for managing chats and messages within chats. the main accessibility rating and information for this app is totally outdated.

that's good to know! hope the next version can be more better

Hi everyone.
I do not think we can now define Telegram now as accessible. yet
You cannot scroll through messages within a group, you cannot read the unread messages counter, you cannot read the comments of a message within a group,
you cannot change many settings, etc etc .

Greetings

Sauro

I've sent all of that and more including the files and now the scheduling messages to telegram.org/support and no go. They don't respond, they don't even say they got the issue. They don't respond on twitter. I'm thinking of leaving this app, but for the fact I run 2 troups on there and I have a podcast channel on there. The app sucks balls on iOs and it appears they don't really care. Oh and they still have not fixed the crashing when deleting a voice clip issue. I sent them a sis diag file and no response.

Well, there was an update today, but, scheduling messages are still inaccessible, the files area is atrocious and don't even get me started on links. They are not taking us seriously. and also removing audio messages what the actions rotor still causes telegram to crash. I sent in my reports in ios 12 when this happened in June, but no go, and it looks like they don't care.

Yeah, I have to see if I can remove audio messages with out it crashing. Also the files area is still inaccessible last I looked a few weeks ago.

Dear Everyone!
Personally, I still rate telegram as an inaccessible app in comparison to other major social network out there, at least for now. Unlabeled buttons are still lingering around, while the interface is hard to navigate. I think the telegram should be ashamed for ignoring improving accessibility despite telegram's popularity.

Hi all:
Am using the app from more than 3 months, and all i can say that they are working in improving accessibility, so, it's not fair to say that it's not accessible, do not know if we can change the rate etc according to it's current status?

I need to find a secret chatting app that deals only with blind persons, or at least not known to sighted ones, need to talk to my GF which is totally blind.

Secret chats are not accessible. Use telegram and unigram on the pc. By the way I've reported all the issues we are having to telegram's support and they don't even take the time to answer our emails. We even are part of a telegram group with those folks and they ignore us there as well.

Hi,

We've been using the Telegram app for about a week now and it works well if you use in conjunction with the Unigram app for windows 10. the main issue appears to be badly labelled elements and the interface is a little quirky. when focus changes unexpectedly.

A little frustrating, but certainly not enough for me to say forget it.

Hi,
I don’t understand at a all why this is, but if you try using the app on an iPad, voiceover won’t read much of anything. At least, that’s the way it was, when I tried it a few months ago.
Can anyone else confirm this?

Yes, using Telegram on iPad is difficult but possible if you need to do this.
You may already notice that list of chats is accessible. But when you select a chat or channel, it appears in the separate part of the screen and this area is not reachable by swiping or by exploring with touch.
To get in to that area you may do one of the following:
1. Select navigation by headings with the rotor and then swipe down with one finger. This witll place you in the window with your selected chat or channel.
2. If you have Braille display or Bluetooth keyboard connected to your iPad, then after selecting chat or channel, go to the bottom of your screen and start moving back. Again you will be placed to the area where your selected chat is displayed. It is also helpful when you need to quickly find an edit field when you need to respond to someone's message.

Hope this helps a bit.

I reached out to Telegram. I was very nice and professional that usually gets you far. I will say if people reached out like KE7ZUM comments that will not get you far. Saying it sucks balls to a developer is not the way to go. Am I saying KE7ZUM did this? No but I'm saying that sort of response is not how you should approach a dev. We will see.

Hi,

I noticed that as well.
I hope they fix it soon.

Good for you that it was even accessible. I never encountered that it was ever accessible. For me 2 biggest pains when using telegram now is that we're not able to read channels and manage our cache. My telegram app is 4 GB in size. Yes, we are able to clear it, but we cannot manage for how many days this cache will be kept. That really annoys me. Bugs cards are lying on a bug tracker without any changes for a year already, I don't know where to write to be honest.

Hi, I'm trying to download an audio file but it would only let me listen to it when I double tap. Any workarounds?

Good night, friend. To download a song on Telegram, I do it as follows:

A) I find the message regarding the file I want to transfer;

Two) if you have not set the application to automatically download the audio files, you will first have to double-tap the message to play the song.

Three) you can stop playback using the VoiceOver magic ring, two taps with two fingers on the screen;

Four) still positioned over the message containing the song, slide your finger from top to bottom until you hear message options, perform the two-tap gesture with one finger;

Five) now comes the cat's jump: make the swipe gesture with one finger from left to right, to hear the message options, which can be copy, forward, delete, etc. If you don't hear VoiceOver read these options, place your finger in the lower quadrant of the screen that you will find them, then start scanning the. What we are looking for here is the option to select, when you find it, perform two taps with one finger;

Six) after performing two taps on the select option, new options will appear, so start scanning until you find the share option; now you can play this audio file in any application you want, including in the Apple files application, to Save them in iCloud or on your iPhone, as you prefer...

I hope I helped, because I've already suffered a lot trying to save audio files in this application.

Big hug from Ricardo Brandão!!!

Hi, how do you contact telegram? are there any other clients designed specifically for VO that are based on telegram?

Short answer: no. Long answer: Telegram's accessibility on iOS hugely, shamefully, terribly and disastrously sucks! And this is despite many users' efforts to interact with the development team and file access-oriented bugs. The telegram development team doesn't even listen to these reports. Moreover, it's not just scrolling around 2 or 3 messages. Try sharing something, from an app, with a Telegram contact, and you'll end up getting an inaccessible window. Fortunately Unigram on Windows takes care of these issues, but it can never take the place of native/built-in accessibility for an intrinsically mobile app like Telegram.

Is there an accessible telegram client for iOS like unigram?

Hi.
Yes there is.
It's called bright guide.
It's quite limited in functionality.
Like for sending voice messages you have to $9 for this s't?re.

I will download telegram on both an iPhone and an android device.
I will be back soon with my findings. People say accessibility on android when it comes to telgrm is good.

I have contacted Telegram I would encourage other iOS users to do the same.

Since Software is getting updated every day I am facing the challenge when I want to send media or I mean to say when I want to attach any video VoiceOver lags and it is very laggy and we cannot select the video which you want to send to that particular person This is the disadvantage of telegram and when we are forwarding from other app to telegram, it will not speak in the homepage of telegram, where we can select whom to send is the issues I am facing so I do not recommend this app.

Although i do not recommend Telegram for any blind user, but It is very strong app, so, many companies, schools and many people are using them to organize big channels, host big groups etc.
So, i do not use it for sending to my friends at all, but i should have it for my work.
Wish Whatsapp can be as good as Telegram.

I just downloaded Telegram on my iPhone 11 and it's accessible. There's maybe 1 or 2 unlabeled buttons and an area twhere VoiceOver doesn't red anything when I flick, but the contacts part is accessible. I haven't tried sending a message yet, and I can't figure out how to join channels or groups, I guess VO doesn't recognize that. Thanks. I have Telegram open as I type, and I'm trying to search for something, but it won't let me type in the text field. So, I don't know now if I can really call this accessible, since I can't search for anything. Thanks.

I am using an iPhone 11 Pro.

Hi,
I'm using an iPhone 12 mini on iOS 18 latest version, and the latest version of Telegram too, and I just tried reading a group's messages I'm in, and I can explore by touch to get to the message list, but I can't swipe right continuously to read through the messages. Someone told me that as long as I stay in the list of messages which is in the middle of the screen, I can swipe through the messages and read them. This isn't the case now at least. If I find a message, I can swipe to the next one, and then it either just gets stuck, or jumps me straight back to the 'back' button. In contrast, the library on the Kindle app is only accessible using explore by touch, but once you get to the list of books, you can keep swiping right or left if necessary and it just works. It doesn't get stuck or jump you back to the beginning. I've got several hundred books in my Kindle library. The Telegram group I was looking at has about sixty or seventy messages, and I can't navigate through them with VoiceOver. At Rob, I'd be very surprised if all your contacts are being read by VoiceOver unless you have a very small number of contacts. Only a few of my contacts are being read out, the rest are not. I've got the Unigram client for Windows, and when I checked my contact list there, I had about twenty-five contacts, whereas I only had like seven or eight on the iOS Telegram app. The thing is with Telegram on some screens, it just jumps past stuff without taking you back to the 'back' button or getting stuck, so you assume everything is there when it isn't. The accessibility rating should be downgraded. Screen recognition doesn't improve things either.

Hmmm, weird. I'll have to check again later today to see if VoiceOver reads the contacts. I am pretty sure it does, because I heard names being read. I just can't search for someone by typing text in the edit field.

Do yourself a favour and don’t bother using the Telegram app on iOS, it’s pretty hopeless. You can just about send a message to an individual but for group messages it’s totally useless I did use Bright Guide a while ago and someone else recommended another client that works well with iOS but can’t remember it but why does it work so well on Android that’s what I don’t understand.

You have to use three finger swipe up and down while swiping through messages. Voiceover doesn't scroll pages automatically like it should, so you have to do the scrolling manually.

Your best clients when it comes to Telegram, are Telight on Android and Unigram on Windows. The standard Telegram on Android will work, though you are not able to read secret messages, only hear audio ones. You could try the app for Apple devices called Nicegram (which also has versions for Mac & Android). As for the devs paying attention to V-I Telegram users among the Apple world? Don't hold your breath. You can try pinging them over on X/Twitter though I think they made their mark somewhere if you're able to find thy thread on why they wish to not deal with blind Apple users. I believe it has something to do with blind folks not having a market for telegram usage.

Discored is still better than telegram but the app is more or less usable for me and I know many blind folks actually who are there.

Re fatih, tried the three-finger up and down, it works for a few messages, and then I'm taken to the 'back' button again. In fact, I'm sitting here trying to navigate through a group's messages, and I'm taken round in a circle, and I can only read like five or six messages, then I'm taken back either to the first one I found again or just to the 'back' button. VoiceOver just keeps getting stuck anyway. Thank God for Unigram on Windows. And Trenton, thanks for the Nicegram recommendation. I'll check that out. Thanks guys for all your recommendations and help.

Has anyone gotten anywhere with nicegram?

My experience with NiceGram was frustrating. After a bunch of introductory screens they requested a premium subscription. Since I decided to give this app a try I accepted it and subscription for upcoming month was charged. And just after that when I actually tried to login in my Telegram account I found out that there is no way for VoiceOver user to enter a veryfication code.