Image descriptions in What's App

By Blind Adrenaline, 19 November, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

In what's app, when I tap to play a person's message, voiceover reads out "person, actions available".
This is quite annoying as it steps on the first couple seconds of their message, causing me to have to turn speech off then back on before and after playing each message.
I've gone into settings and turned scene descriptions off under voiceover verbosity, but no change.
Is there any way to have it not read aloud what seems to be a description of the person's avatar when I play a voice message in what's app?
Thanks much for any advice.

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Comments

By Esan on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - 20:16

Rotor to image descriptions and flick down to turn it off on that app.

By Blind Adrenaline on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - 20:16

That made total sense to me, and until you suggested it, I didn't even know that was a rotor option.
Alas, it had no effect, still says actions available, person, when I play audio. So strange.
Thank you for the suggestion though, either way, I learned something.

By Adi on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - 20:16

Hi ,

What I am suggesting does not seem logical but very well works. If you are on ios 14, go to iphone settings> accessibility> voice over> voice over recognition and then enable image description. I have screen recognition and text recognition turned off. Now go to rotor and select describe images.Note that here we get images and also describe images, we want to select only describe images in the rotor. Now go to whatsapp and using the rotor go to describe images option and turn off describe images for whatsapp. Now you should enjoy your whatsapp without any extra image description.
Hope this helps.

By Blind Adrenaline on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - 20:16

Thanks Adi,
I turned image descriptions on, it was like a 140 meg download, now it says in progress when I go to that setting, which now says image descriptions on.
However, when I go to What's app, and turn off describe images, it still says person when I play a single message, and if a string of messages play, each time it says actions available person.
I followed your instructions very carefully, but no dice.
Any thoughts? Thanks very much for your help.

By Adi on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - 20:16

Hi

Actually there are quite a few of us who were bugged by this issue. All of us voice over users here locally in our group did what was mentioned in the previous message. And before writing now, I have confirmed with all of them. The issue is resolved for all of us. It should say 145 mb used dimmed.. Below that there is an option of sensitive content. I have selected do nothing. Ot sure if this will help but just thought of sharing.

By Blind Adrenaline on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - 20:16

Ok, so I had not turned text description off apparently, and I had whats app not selected in the apps list under image descriptions.
Also, I had seen the 145 MB dimmed thing before in there, but it said In progress when I went in to check it today, but now it says 145 MB again, very strange. Maybe it updates apps with the new settings or something each time?
at any rate, the main problem is solved, it no longer says "person" when I play an individual mesage, hallelujah!
However, it still says "actions available, person" when I play a string of messages. I can live with this, but seems if the other is gone, this should be gone as well. Here are my settings under voiceover description:
image descriptions: on
sensitive content output: do nothing
apply to apps: what's app is selected
screen recognition off
text recognition off
feedback style: do nothing
In what's app itself, I have describe images turned off under rotor

Again, if I have to live with the actions available person thing when playing multiple messages, no problem, I don't do that much anyhow, but if I can eradicate this as well, would be great.
Thanks so much for your patient help with this Adi, much appreciated.

By Adi on Friday, December 25, 2020 - 20:16

Hi,

Nice to know that your issue is resolved. I have the similar settings as yours and even I get actions available feedback always, though I do not get person . I even turned hints off in voice over settings but did not help. Actually the actions available information does not bother me. Still if you want to experiment , you could do a three finger double tap gesture before starting to listen to a large string of whats app messages. Once you are finished listening to your whatsapp messages you can toggle speech back on. From my understanding this will work on whats app audio messages as these play one after the other without touching the screen, but may not work for text messages as this will require us to use swipe gesture and this will require speech.