Hi friends,
Since a few updates, an accessibility issue appeared for voiceover users.
In a WhatsApp group, if the sender of a message is not one of your contacts, his phone number is spoken. This wastes some time in reading the messages and is not desirable.
about 2 months ago I posted the message above to WhatsApp support. In return, they asked me to send a video demonstrating the issue, which I did. I then got the usual reply saying that the issue would be taken care of, but it only got a little worse with a recent update. Does anyone know how to reach WhatsApp and if they have some kind of accessibility representative the issue could be addressed to?
Yours sincerely,
JPR
Comments
RE: WhatsApp groups annoying voice-over issue
I use WhatsApp heavily, on a daily basis. Yes, if the sender of your message is not in your contacts, then their phone number will be spoken for you. This is to assist you in identifying those that you know, and those that you don't. It's the same in Line app. I have no solution for you, to cause WhatsApp to not speak these phone numbers, while reading messages. However, if this is possible and desirable for you, simply add them to contacts,and problem solved. If this is not something that you want or need to do, then I do not know a workaround for you. Furthermore, though I'd gladly proven wrong, I don't think Apple has an answer for this, either. If they made it so the foreign contact data wasn't red, how else would we know that it was different than the regular contact list, anyway? If anyone has any additional info on this thread, I am also interested. Despite that minor complaint for me, I use WhatsApp a lot, and I really do love the app. along with LINE, which functions slightly differently, regarding interactions with voiceover, but Line also performs beautifully for me. Sorry I didn't have better info for you, I do hope that you were able to find a tolerable solution.
Hi Roxann. This is quite a…
Hi Roxann.
This is quite a recent issue. A few versions ago, WhatsApp would say something like
message from perhaps John Smith, but not his phone number. You would still be able to find the phone number if you opened the person's details. But in the case of a group with lots of messages, it is so much time-consuming to have to listen to the phone number before the message, and once again, this behavior started a few versions ago.
I was not looking for a solution from Apple, but for an efficient way to notice WhatsApp about this. Their support system is terrible and gives me the impression that your request is going nowhere.
Cheers,
JPR
Yes
Yes, I agree with jprykiel. This problem did not exist before. It is annoying. The voiceover reads the numbers of people who are not in your contacts, especially in groups, and when there are a lot of messages that you want to read.
Not happening on my end. I…
Not happening on my end. I'm in several whatsapp groups and it still says "maybe John Smith" even if he's not in my contacts. I'm running the latest iOS on an iPhone 14 pro.
Kerby, I get the name, but I…
Kerby,
I get the name, but I get the phone number to, that's what annoys me. aa
Don't Hold Your Breath.
Where it concerns WhatsApp getting that bug fixed, all I can say is, "Don't hold your breath". WhatsApp is run and maintained by the same bunch who are in charge of Facebook, the Facebook app, and the Messenger app. These are the same people who, in 2016, developed a bug in the Facebook Messenger app and refused to even acknowledge that there was a bug in the app until they were threatened with legal action. I'm sure you're not the first or the only one to contact them about that annoying phone number bug in WhatsApp, and since this has been going on for months, they're likely not going to fix it any time soon.
Not A Long Running Behaviour.
Hi Roxann. that behaviour is recent, relatively speaking. For a great number of years, WhatsApp didn't do that whole thing of displaying of phone numbers rather than names. A couple of years back, you could go through a chat screen and everyone's names showed up, whether they were in your contacts or not. And frankly, it shouldn't have been changed. There's an old saying that tends to spring to mind. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Replyi8ng To jprykiel.
In a great many cases, support requests are, in fact, going absolutely nowhere. As I said in my previous reply, take a good look at who the developers of the app are.
Very annoying!
When reading a lot of messages, this is very painful.