Help make anchor accessible

By Unregistered User (not verified), 26 April, 2017

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy

Hi all,
Their is a social networking app that I use called anchor. It's basically like twitter, accept no text, only audio. Recently, they released Anchor version 2.0, and they re-envented radio. If you are into radio, then anchor is radio. You could call into each station, applaud each stations segment, and more. Unfortunately, accessibility with VoiceOver has been officially broken with this version. although it can be used with voiceover a little bit, not all buttons are clearly labeled. with that said, I advise everyone to contact anchor support by emailing:
support@anchor.fm
They know what voiceover is, but they have not made any accessibility enhancements with VoiceOver whatsoever. if we could all get our voices herd, and tell the anchor developers that the anchor app could be made 100% accessible, then that means the app could be much easier to use with no accessibility issues. are you with me? let's do this! You can read more information about anchor by visiting their website at:
https://www.anchor.fm

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Comments

By wheelysneakycat on Sunday, June 4, 2017 - 19:24

Hi djnacradio, how do you find anchor at the moment? I installed it a couple of days ago and am slightly confused about it and not sure whether it's working properly. Some problems I have are probably accessibility-related but not sure if they all are. It often cuts off the end of what people are saying/the end of the audio. I don't understand the difference between adding something to my station, favouriting it and applauding it. As for the accessibility, I quite often play things I didn't want to play, I suspect I'm pressing the wrong listen button or it's hard to get to the correct one. Just wanted to check how you are finding it these days and whether you can clear up any of my confusion before I contact the developers as you are more familiar with it...?

By AppleVis on Sunday, March 4, 2018 - 19:24

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

The Anchor developer has just posted this on Twitter:

Now that we’ve got 3.0 out the door, improved VoiceOver support is very high on our list. Stay tuned, and thank you for your patience - it’s really important to us and we can’t wait to make this experience awesome.

https://twitter.com/anchor/status/966713006196486144

By KE7ZUM on Sunday, March 4, 2018 - 19:24

Here is the feedback I wrote about theeandroid side of things. Perhaps someone can taylor it for their ios needs. I just sent it off, so we'll see what happens.

The following will cover the accessibility issues with the anchor app as far as I can see in the first few minutes of using the app. I'm using an android device running android 8.0.

  1. Stopping a recording is almost not possible, or looks to be so when recording a voice clip for the episode. I had to tap the test regarding this. This is not intuitive at all to talk back users, or any user.
  2. When viewing an episode I can hear i fine but pressing the "image " causes it to play. Not really what I had in mind. Pressing the "image" causes the episode I'm listening to to stop. Again this is not intuitive and should be made more clear for talkback users. One suggestion would be a play/stop button that is clearly labeled.
  3. The delete button while you make a recording is not labeled. This can be found in the add sound section while a recording is being made.
  4. The record button in the "add sound" section is hard to locate using talkback I was using swipes but even exploring by touch makes the button almost impossible to locate..
  5. In the profile area getting to the favorites is easy, however a beginning user of android might not know to tap the text , IE, "favorites" "favorited" etc.
  6. Unless I missed it there is no way to view when someone published their stuff, that is the time they published it. For example "Sarah Alawami 2 hours ago"
  7. There are two "share" icons in the episode screen when I play an episode. One of them is actually "share" the other is "options." This needs to be changed. Attached is a screenshot regarding this issue. Notice the two buttons talkback indicates?
    [screenshot omitted from this post]
    As shown this needs to be looked at as a talkback user will be slightly confused as two share buttons means that they have to guess.

Most of these problems can be heard in my episode from today. I was pretty lost, and I'm not a beginning android user. I'm not advanced, but I can get around ok with talk back.

I hope these issues can be fixed. If you have any questions please reach out to me at [email omitted from this post]

By KE7ZUM on Sunday, March 4, 2018 - 19:24

Just heard back from the developers yesterday. They are working on fixing the issues we are having, and are expected to release updates re said issues. Keep that feedback coming to them.