Whatsapp and voice messaging. Is it accessible?

hey, i am finding it not accessable too. i only manage to listen to one voice message by accident. how i did it? i am not sure too.

When typing text, the button changes to "send", but when you attach audio, only the text part goes through. I tried everything, but it's not working. It seems the new voice messaging feature broke accessibility and Whatsapp used to be quite accessible! PS: The old way of sending audio notes still work. Tap share media and tap "more". Then you must feel around the screen, do not swipe, till you find "record audio note". But a couple of us here in South Africa tried to use PTT, but it does not work. That's why I use Zello for that. (sad)

Having a bit of time on my hands I decided to try out this new voice messaging facility on What's App using Voiceover on my iPhone. I found it's doable but not terribly satisfactory. Sending out Voice messages is the easiest. Find the "Push to talk" button and do a one finger double tap and hold. You will then hear two low tones. Record your message then lift your finger. You'll hear two higher pitch tones. The message should have been sent. Listening to a message someone has sent you is more problematic. You can drag your finger around the screen until you hear "message contains audio" then hover your finger just above the screen and triple press the home button to turn off Voiceover. Bringing the hovering finger down on the screen will play the message. I understand sighted folks have an opportunity to cancel their message mid-record if they make a mistake. I haven't found a way that Voiceover users can do that. Obviously What's App haven't considered the needs of blind users in this update and I, too, will be writing to them. But at least in the meantime we can use this new facility although it's not easy.

Over a week ago I contacted the developer of What's App Messenger to tell them Voiceover couldn't detect the "listen" button on received audio messages. Finally got a reply overnight. They said they'd fix the problem in the next release. Let's hope they will as this is a fantastic cross-platform messaging app.

Seems they've fixed one thing and broken several others. Talk about one step forward and two back. Also, the "push to talk" button is now labelled "Voice message button" easily confused with "voice message" which is the audio note the other person has sent you. I too will be emailing the developers.

Agree with the two posts prior to the one above mine. Quite a few things seem to have been broken in the new update (released earlier this week) as far as accessibility with Voiceover is concerned. Things that have worked perfectly fine prior to this update, are not working anymore. I installed the update after looking at the notes for the update (which stated that Voiceover accessibility improvements and enhancements had been made). What an absolute nightmare! The frequent loss of focus (hence making it a pain to navigate through conversations and access messages), inability to access time stamps and whether a certain text is mine or my friend's, constant lag while loading chats or navigating through messages in a chat, the voice message button being labeled incorrectly are just a few. I also have noticed that the keyboard keeps disappearing anytime you stop typing and touch above it to check what's been typed thus far. So, each tyime I stop typing and try to check what I have written, the keyboard disappears. Hence, I have to double tap in the field again to get it back. If I stop and check my text again, it disappears. This also happens if I stop typing and want to check a new message that I have received in the same conversation while I am typing. Emailed the Whatsapp Support team. Hopefully they will pay attention and resolve these issues.

I wrote them an email and got a reply from them. It was saying that the problem would be fixed on 2.11.4. Just come here and write several words about it. I'm not sure whether the same reply was also sent to you guys since it was quite informal with a sentence only. Perhaps I'm or we are seriously bothering them. lol

I downloaded the update for What's App today. The voice messages feature seems to be working as it should be. They also fixed the labeling of messages. In a conversation voiceover will announce "your message" or "buddy message." In a group conversation, voiceover will announce the specific persons name along with their message. So there we go, What's app is back to normal with the added use of voice messages. Thanks to those who contacted the developers. I personally like the voice message feature a lot. Even more so than apps like voxer and hey tell.

Right, problems are only fixed partially... Is anyone gonna contact them again?

My WhatsApp works just beautifully. Whenever I get a voice message, I just open the app, find the particular conversation that's new, or even old, hear the "Voice Message" double tap, and it plays beautifully.

Hello there, I updated my whatsapp a few days ago,and it works just fine without any noticeable problems. it doesn't read the voice messege time,but that isn't a problem at all. not to me,anyhow. The whatsapp team has done a lot to make their app accessible and I was surprised that they actually took notice and resolved the accessibility issues. so a thanks gos out to the whatsapp team. I rated the app on the app store noteing the accessibility changes that were made,I suggest people who haven't,do the same. =d Falcon wings

Ever since the latest update (Sep 9, 2013), there have been a couple of improvements. The things that got fixed were that Voiceover now announces whether the message is your message, or your buddy’s message (there are still no time stamps announced by Voiceover though), and the Voice Message feature seems to be working fine again. However, there are still some issues as far as Voiceover accessibility with Whatsapp is concerned. And really frustrating ones too. 1. The major problem that I have been facing is, while trying to go through the conversation thread (reading individual messages in a chat, using the right and left flick gestures to move down or up), Voiceover skips messages. Meaning, it doesn’t read anything at all at certain points. There’s no particular position it does this. For instance, if I am in a chat, and I perform a left flick to check the last message that I have, Voiceover does not read the message. It makes the clicking sound, and then stays silent. If I keep flicking left, it may or may not read the next one or the next one. Same behavior when trying to go down in a conversation. Basically, it does not read the text in some of the messages while trying to navigate up or down in a conversation. It reads some messages, and skips others, at random. I have had the most trouble with this particular bug, and it is really annoying trying to read all the messages in a conversation as it requires multiple attempts with flicking right or left, and sometimes even having to close the app entirely, before I manage to get Voiceover to read all the messages. 2. The other bugs (that carry through from the August update) are, Voiceover is very jumpy, and loses focus quite a bit. The focus just jumps randomly, all over the place (hence making it extremely tedious to navigate through conversations and keep up with them). 3. Also, the keyboard keeps disappearing anytime you stop typing and touch in the edit field to check what's been typed thus far. So, each time I stop typing and try to check what I have written, the keyboard disappears. Hence, I have to double tap in the field again to get it back. If I stop and check my text again, it disappears. This also happens if I stop typing and want to check a new message that I have received in the same conversation while I am typing. Not sure what everyone else's experience has been, as far as the above mentioned issues are concerned. I for one, am encountering them a lot, which makes it very difficult for me to use Whatsapp effectively.

Well, now that what's app was bought by facebook I'm not sure if the accessibility email for fb would work or not. I can give it though if anyone wants.

Take care.

I heard in the twitter verse that th ebutton can be made sticky that is you don't have to hold it. However I jsut browsed their faq and i can't find how to do this I think this was just a roomer but can someone verify this?

Take care.