What? in the name of god! is the deal with Skype!

By Chris, 11 October, 2011

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy
OK, this really! pisses me off something fierce! Skype used to be one of my absolute favorite I O S apps. Over the last, oh, I don't know... say... 2 or 3 updates, roughly, they've back-peddled in accessibility! Now, it's just gross! For one thing, good luck finding the end call button, when you're in an active call, and two finger double tapping does absolutely nothing more than start your IPod music playing if you have any on your device, which of course, I do. Second of all, after receiving or making a Skype call, once the call does drop, even after that, Voiceover remains going through the earpiece, not the loud speaker, so good luck being able to hear anything unless you put it right up to your ear. The only way to fix that is to go to the app switcher, and completely close the Skype application. What a piece a crap! Even for sighted people this would be disgusting as you mean to tell me, you gotta close skype after hanging up a call, or else you can't listen to music or any audio through your loud speaker? That's! ab, suh lootly, ridiculous! Oh, and, I'm not even done yet! In an active call, find the button that says something about speaker button. Double tap it, and watch it very happily laugh at you, and not do a single thing! I dono if that's because Voiceover is reporting the button wrong, or what, but come, on, peole! this is stupid! I mean, God damn! They had an app that worked perfectly, parden my language, by the way, but then, oh, we want it less cluttered, we want it to look more... gasp... sexy, quote unquote? So we'll just fluster cluck it to shreds on accessibility, no one'll care, no one'll say anything. Yeah... uh huh, sure! If they keep this up, IO'll find another app to replace my voice chatting needs. And to make it worse, you write their contact form on their web site, and wait over a year, I know as I had an issue with the pc version, and wrote 'em. No one ever writes back. You really almost have to wonder if they're even looking at the damn contact requests coming in. I somehow highly doubt it. Sorry for blowing off the steam, but this really makes me quite angry when developers take this nasty ass approach! Skype developers if you're reading this, which I really doubt, get your act together for God sake, or lose a ton of loyal customers, bottom line! The choice is your's!

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Comments

By Amy on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 06:31

Perhaps it would be more accessible... That is, assuming that he'd care. :D Seriously though... I whole heartedly agree with your pissiness here. The problem is, that there's a ton of customers who use Skype for free. So, they're hardly going to "Lose a ton of loyal customers." If accessibility were a true concern for them, they wouldn't be intent on breaking it with each and every update that gets released for PC or in this case, the iOS app. You're not the first to complain to them, and I'm quite sure that you won't be the last. If Skype were a paid service, you might see more response but given that our population (the blind/VI community,) is such a small one, it's hard to know whether or not that customer base of so-called loyal customers, would be enough to make them wake up and get a clue. Personally I sincerely hope something fixes for the good and soon, as I prefer Skype on the iPhone over the PC.

By Piotr Machacz on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 06:31

Well, there is a live event about skype for mac and iOS starting in half an hour. This could be a great moment to bring the issues up. Go here: http://community.skype.com/t5/Live-Event/Welcome-to-the-Live-Event-board/td-p/200382 To join.

By Scott Davert on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 06:31

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Other than restoring to a previous version of my iPhone, is there any way to revert back to a previous version? It would seem this is the only fix. I'm quite disappointed to say the least.

By Chris on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 06:31

No, Scott... restoring won't do anything. You'd reinstall the app, and it would go right back to where it was. OK, so, fine, if you didn't update Skype, then you could install the old version but the minute you go to the app store, it would always nag you that there was at least 1 update, if if you hit update all, well... crap! there went your old version a Skype you now can't get back. So no, and even if you could do that... why should we be made to do that when it's not our problem. Someone said Skype isn't a paid service, though technically you're right, they do offer paid services which I ihhim, pay for? like Skype in, Skype out, Voicemail, etc. So I'm giving them good money, and just for things that have nothing to do with accessibility, they over charged me by $30 once, and finally when I got a rep, though flat out said very plainly, without beating around the bush to do so, we frankly don't care, pay us, and get over it! Needless to say, I'd not use Skype period on any! platform at this point if it wasn't for my business requiring it.
First off I just wanna say that the voicemail is now free, but you need to manually activate it on the skype website. Second, I don't really use skype either, especially now that microsoft aquired them... I'ms till sad about the app though

By Jose Lomeli on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 06:31

Yeah I agree with you Chris! Everything was way better before Microsoft bought Skype! And you know Microsoft doesn't give a dam excuse my language about accessibility! What a shame!

By DPinWI on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 06:31

In reply to by Jose Lomeli

It's really not fair to blame this on Microsoft. The sale is only just going through now, and Skype has a long history of accessibility issues with so called upgrades that predate anything to do with MS.
As much as I don't care for MS, DPinWI is right. I also agree we shouldn't have to always fight with these developers for access. I have had Skype-out and Skype-in for a long time, but am considering canceling it. I still have to run Skype 3.8 on my Windows machine.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Thursday, November 24, 2011 - 06:31

This was the response that I got back from Skype when asking for better VoiceOver support:

Thank you for contacting Skype Customer Service.

We understand your concerns regarding VoiceOver in Skype. We'll definitely explain this to you and help you be clarified.

Unfortunately, VoiceOver option is not currently available in Skype.

However, we are constantly working on improvements to Skype, so I have forwarded your suggestion on to our development team, who will consider it for future releases. Thanks very much for your input.

Should you need more assistance, feel free to contact us again.

Best regards,

Skype Customer Service

I just had a very similar response from SKYPE as that posted here. And a little too quickly for my liking... Template response and all that. I wrote as part of the monthly campaign applevis has just started which is a fantastic idea by the way. So, not being happy with the template response, I wrote again. Not sure if it will make any difference but, I pointed out that Apple have very high expectations around accessibility and I would forward my concerns to them if necessary as well as go through the SKYPE compaints procedure. Too be honest, I won't loos much sleep over SKYPE if they don't respond possitively but fuervantly beleive that it is right to support the campaingn objectives of the applevis comunity aas other people may need SKYPE more than I do. Thanks to the team here for all their efforts and input.

By Jose Lomeli on Thursday, November 24, 2011 - 06:31

Ok I activated the skype voicemail How can I view and play my voicemails? I am Using JAWS For Windows 12.0!