Petition: Spotify accessibility

By Chris Harrington, 13 March, 2014

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy
Good morning all, I rarely post on this site, but I very much value the content it provides. So, lets bring up a topic that has been talked about over and over again. Spotify's accessibility I have used spotify for over a year on my iPhone with minimal trouble. I am a premium user, and have nearly 2000 songs in my spotify library, which is my main source for music. 0.9.3 was the last accessible version of spotify and it broke in 0.9.4. Here is a message I have sent to spotify regarding this issue. Good morning, I have upgraded from spotify 0.9.3 to 0.9.4 on an iPhone 5S. I am visually impaired, and use voiceover, a screen reader for IOS. I also use spotify as my main music library. All accessibility issues I've been able to deal with until now. Here are the problems I'm facing. My playlists are not visible. When I select playlists, it will show me around five playlists, but will not read the correct names, they are just garbled. Furthermore, when I go in to sed playlist, they are not playlists I have created. I am sorry if I come across as rude, as I do not mean to, but the accessibility issues are extremely frustrating for me. I have nearly two thousand songs in my spotify library which I now can not access. I know I am not the only one that has asked about spotify accessibility for the visually impaired, so what would it take for some sort of change to happen? This is extremely upsetting to me, Especially since I am a spotify premium user who now can't use the service that is being paid for. I am not asking for all accessibility issues to be fixed right away, but if the app could be usable, that would be a giant start. Sincerely, Chris Harrington I am planning on starting a petition to turn up the heat on spotify accessibility and was reaching out to see how well this would be received, and to get some help with wording this petition so it sounds as professional as possible. Thank you all, and I welcome comments!!! Chris Harrington

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Comments

By Rocco on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 19:34

I absolutely agree with you!! Though the latest version of the Spotify iPhone app has become inaccessible, it's windows and mac apps have been comepletely inaccessible for years now, and they have yet to do anything about it whatsoever. Also of Spotify's apps were made "Campaign" of the month I believe a while ago (like September I think, I'll have to look at the campaign page) but again, no results. I think we all really need to get on this company's case, and let them know that accessability does matter. Quite honestly, I think they're iPhone app was mostly accessible by chance, not really because they went through the effort to truly make it voiceOver friendly. I am totally blind myself, so I understand your fustration completely!! What are everyone else's thoughts/feelings about this? Maybe it should be re-nominated for Campaign of the month, if that's possible?

By Jakob Rosin on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 19:34

Hello. I have installed spotify 0.9.4 and am not facing the issues. I am wondering if spotify pushed different versions across the appstores. I have been always able to use all the features in spotify with minimal issues.

By TJ Olsen on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 19:34

I to am displeased with the declining accessibility of spotify, but the reality is the solution is to switch services. I suspect that many of us publicly discussing our distaste while thanking services who provide access will be a much better motivator for services then a patition.

By Saqib on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 19:34

Hi. It's working fine on my iPhone 5S. However! It's a nightmare to use on the iPad as I can not find the albums as they are not labeled but I can see all the search results on the screen. If there is an alternative good quality and legal streaming service, Then I'm quite happy to switch to it as long as it isn't a nightmare to use. I do know Sony Entertainment offer this kind of service but I think it can only be accessed from a Playstation 3 or above as my children have a music service subscription on there. I would be interested to here if Sony allow streaming of their music from any other devices. which