please join me in contacting Apple and Spotify regarding Spotify no longer reading descriptions of playlists

By key change, 19 December, 2019

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy

Hi all,

As I've said here before, Spotify no longer reads descriptions of playlists on the home screen, when this functionality used to be present. I have sent the following e-mail to both Spotify (support@spotify.com) and apple accessibility (accessibility@apple.com), and would ask that you consider doing the same, either by e-mail or other social media. I am told that they have a twitter account called Spotify cares, so hopefully someone can tweet them as well, if they feel so moved.
This is the text of the e-mail. Feel free to use as much or as ltitle of ti as you see fit:

Hi there,

While it may be considered blasphemous to e-mail both support e-mail
addresses in the same message, I honestly do not know what else to do
or how else to escalate my concern.

I am a blind iPhone user. The issue I am about to describe has been
replicated on an iPhone 8, x, and 11 pro max, running IOS 12, 13, and
13.3. I have experienced this issue with Spotify versions 8.5.30
onwards, but I also know blind people who have not updated their
Spotify app and who are nonetheless experiencing the same change.
Because of this, I can't know with any certainty if the issue is
Apple's or Spotify's to fix. When I've reached out to Apple and
Spotify separately, I am told by each of them that the issue is the
other's to fix, which is so incredibly frustrating for me as a user. I
love Apple products; I also love Spotify.

When using Voiceover to navigate through the main Spotify screen,
voiceover will no longer read descriptions of any playlist. So, for
instance, when this functionality was present, it would say out loud:
"daily mix 1: Mozart, Bach, haydn and more", "Daily mix 2: The
beatles, Tom Petty, Elton John and more". Now, it simply says "daily
mix 1", "Daily mix 2", etc. There is no indication to voiceover users
what is contained in each playlist, unless the playlist is selected,
we swipe through it to read individaul song names, and then choose.

All I am asking is that someone look into this in a meaningful way. I
am paying for this service, and supporting both companies. I want as
meaningful experience with these products as my sighted counter-parts,
and very much hope you will hear how saddened I am that despite my
(and other blind people) raising this issue to both Apple and Spotify,
we continue to be dismissed and told that it's someone else's problem.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app. I have logged into the
test account and had the same issue. I've tried on multiple phones and
with multiple versions of voiceover.

I would so deeply appreciate a response, and thank you sincerely for
considering this situation.

Options

Comments

By KE7ZUM on Saturday, December 21, 2019 - 21:09

Good luck. When I was troubleshooting with them last time about the search field they didn't understand what accessibility was or the fact I was using voiceover. I'm on a paid plan but even if I left and kicked my family out of it, they probably would not care.