X/ Twitter is unusable now

By Omar Altahaineh, 25 June, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hey everyone,

I’ve been having a really tough time with Twitter lately, and I wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing the same thing. The homepage timeline has become a nightmare for those of us using voiceover. Instead of being able to read through the posts like before, now I have to double-tap on each post just to hear the content. It’s super annoying and makes using Twitter way harder.

And good luck trying to report this to Twitter – it’s like hitting a brick wall. There’s no easy way to get in touch with someone who can actually help with accessibility issues.

Anyone else dealing with this? Any tips or workarounds would be really appreciated. Let’s try to get Twitter to fix this mess!

Options

Comments

By Francisco crespo on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

I'm experiencing this issue since I upgraded to X version 10.46 this morning. Unfortunately there is no longer an accessibility team to handle this. I'll think of ideas to bring the issue to their attention

By WellF on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

Since the last update, I've been having the same issue. Annoying as heck.
Now I'm using Twitter on my laptop only.

By Louise on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

That's the 2nd app in as many weeks that break VO accessibility. I have the same issue as the original poster with X, and the Microsoft Start app, which was a great source for news has also updated and broken VO accessibility.

Grrr. It's frustrating when these big companies just glibly disregard accessibility when updating their apps.

By TamagotchiTune on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

I was just coming on to post this. Having the same exact problem since updating this morning and its frustrating.

By Jonathan Candler on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

I stopped using twittter ever cense said person fired said accessibility team. That's all! What a nut ball! Twitter is trash now and I will never ever go back to using twitter as long as Musk is owning it! It's honestly not because of the third party API access we no longer have access to, it's the principle of the thing! Really... Why the heck does someone think it's a great idea to fire their whole accessibility team?

By kool_turk on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

I see what you mean. After installing the update, I find it still usable, although it requires an extra step. While I'd prefer not to update, I wouldn't say it's completely unusable. You can still use it; you just need to navigate in and out of tweets. And yeah, I'm still calling it Twitter - even Siri still opens the app when you ask her to open Twitter!

By blindpk on Saturday, June 22, 2024 - 08:08

I would not call it "unusable" either, but it is really annoying. If someone finds a way to report the bug it would be great. Accessibility team or not, it needs to be reported.

By Omar Altahaineh on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hi Jonathan,

I couldn’t agree more – the decision to let go of the entire accessibility team was deeply disappointing. It’s disheartening to see such a lack of consideration for users who rely on those features. Despite the technical challenges that have arisen on Twitter recently, I must admit that the content and platform itself have improved significantly. Twitter remains my primary source of news, as I haven’t found a comparable alternative. While it can be frustrating at times, it’s still the best option available for now.

By Omar Altahaineh on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hey Luis,

I get why you’re so frustrated. It’s super annoying when big companies ignore accessibility in their updates. It’s bad enough that X broke VO accessibility, and now Microsoft Start is doing the same thing? So frustrating. I really think the answer is to have blind developers on these teams. As a visually impaired developer myself, I know how crucial it is to make accessibility a priority in our work. Companies need to see the value in diverse perspectives to stop these problems from happening.

By Engin Yilmaz on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hi all. after 25 june Update, I have the same problem. While navigating between messages, It reads only the ones which had quotes.

By Matt on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Having the same problem. I know there are other platforms but I follow a lot of news and other various things. I miss the days of twiterrific.

By Carter Wu on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hello everyone, I updated the latest version of X, I have been searching for a long time and have not found an accurate feedback channel. I would like to know for those of you who have already reported feedback, through which channel did you give your feedback? You might as well tell us how to do it and let us submit feedback together. It sucks that Musk fired X's entire accessibility team, but we shouldn't just sit there and wait. Of course, before this bug is fixed, my friend told me that Spring is a good alternative and now has a free version. I want to give special thanks to the developers of Spring, you saved us.

By Jonathan Candler on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I could never get spring to work. Are they using some alternative I don't know about? Then again, I haven't tried cense these past few updates that's been rolling out.

By wiljames on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I use Spring and it works. I still use Twitter because the value of the contributors. Install it. The dev is very responsive to circumventing Musk's bullshit!

By Jonathan Candler on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I wonder how they're getting API access then? They've gotta not be paying for that shit. It's expensive from what I read.

By Matt on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I just started using spring and like it so far. I hope it doesn’t go away like twitterific.

By Tony on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hi all, I would suggest posting with the handle @XA11Y and politely discussing the problem. Maybe if enough of us do this, it will get their attention. Even if you don't think it's likely to help, give it a shot. What can it hurt?

By SiddarthM on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

yess, even I too noticed now.

By Ollie on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

The trouble I find with spring is that my notifications are about a week out of date.

By Lee on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

We still get the tweet read out in notifications.

By Tony on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

The posts don't read in the notifications for me. There have been other problems on the platform, many accounts getting unwarranted suspensions, people losing large percentages of followers. There's certainly something technically wrong on there. Here's hoping the accessibility problem is part of that same syndrome and that things will get better once they attend to all of it.

By Omar Altahaineh on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hi Tony, that’s a great idea. However, I recommend tagging the X engineering team instead of the accessibility team because no one is currently monitoring the accessibility account.

By Tony on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Hi Omar, thanks for the tip. The handle for the X engineering team is @XEng.

By Eddie on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I've been dealing with the same thing. We'll see what happens on the next update.

By twnelson07 on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I just posted a message tagging @XEng asking if someone can assist now that VoiceOver functionality is broken in the latest update. Hopefully they'll do something soon.

By Francisco crespo on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I saw on the Xeng account that they repost from their engineers. I reached several of them personally with mentions so that they see the issue and eventually can help. I encourage everyone else to do the same so that they are aware of it and fix quickly

By Ollie on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

Nice work everyone! This is the sort of coordinated work to resolution that makes me hopeful we can get these sorts of things squared away.

By blindpk on Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:08

I second Ollie, thanks everyone for your work!

By Blindxp on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

How can they say that there fixing the issue when they fired there accessibility department? Sounds like a bit of suss business in my opinion. But I guess we shall wait and see until the new update comes out

By Tony on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

They can say they fixed the problem because it was an accident. We know they simply broke something unintentionally because 1) it happens and 2) the alacrity with which they have responded is remarkable. If we approach them with honey they'll be the flies we catch, so if the problem isn't resolved with the new update, we let them know. They don't need an entire accessibility team to fix a bug. Perhaps this incident will be beneficial in that they will understand the need for bearing Voiceover accessibility in mind in their updates. A couple of years ago Freedom Scientific broke something terribly crucial that forced me to take special measures to role back a minor update to JAWS so I could work, which is not easy to do. It happens. The X engineers have been kind and respectful and quick to act. They have the link to this thread, so let's regard them with a positive attitude.

By Blindxp on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

I guess. I mainly used Twitter, for sports stuff that isn’t on Facebook, like NRL physio, ware there are more posts from that person on Twitter, then on Facebook. Hopefully the accessibility improves in the future, but the last time I used Twitter accessibility was okay,

By Snelspoor on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

Hi everyone. Thank you very much to those of you have raised this issue. Hopefully the fix will come through soon. I need to use X quite a lot for my work, so the bug has really been very disruptive for me.
As an aside, in my view X accessibility on iOS remains superior to that of alternatives like Threads and BlueSky. When the app is working as it should, the ability to swipe left and right to move between posts is great. In BlueSky and Treads swiping left and right takes you through each element in a post, which is very tedious.

By Ollie on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

I just wish the mac version was more like spring. It kinda works but feels janky and makes the error sound as you scroll up and down the home list. Spring doesn't update notifications properly and seems to have died on my iPhone too.

By TamagotchiTune on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

As of newest update. Tweets are now read with voiceover.

By AppleVis on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

As AllEyesOnLilWeezy says, the update is now available from the App Store. If you don't see it upon opening the Updates screen, remember to perform a 3-finger swipe down to force a refresh.

Credit and appreciation to the engineers at X who turned the fix around so quickly 👏

By Lee on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

Yep, all working again. Would like to second how quick this was fixed. If only all major companies could fix things this quickly.

By Omar Altahaineh on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

Thank you, X engineers. I must commend the remarkable speed at which you resolved the issue. I hope you will also consider accessibility in future updates.

By Omar Altahaineh on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

When scrolling through the timeline on X/Twitter, if a post contains a video, the voiceover doesn’t indicate the presence of the video, unlike with images. This issue has surfaced in recent updates but hasn’t been resolved. I hope we can bring this to their attention, as they proved to be cooperative in addressing the last issue.

By Ollie on Monday, July 1, 2024 - 08:08

My favortie thing about all this was the RNIB posting about it, the issue being, no one experiencing the bug on IOS would be able to read it. An interesting conceptual problem.