CAn't navigate tables in Spotify on Mac

If I use Safari instead of the Spotify app, then it looks like maybe the tables work. Not quite as convenient but guess it will do for now.

[Edit] - found a couple of issues. Firstly if I select a playlist, actually navigating to the table seems far more difficult than in the app. However, I used VO+[ to navigate back through the windows spots and it did take me to the list.

Secondly, Safari doesn't speak the name of a menu item if it is sub-menus. For example, if I select a load of rows, then right click, the "Add to playlist" menu is just a funny squelchy sound with no speech. If I navigate through it until I find a playlist folder, again I get a squealchy sound and no speech. But it will speak the names of the playlists themselves as they have no sub-menus. So it's doable.

And one bonus, the Spotify app would always crash if I navigate more than a few playlists down the list which doesn't seem to happen in Safari. Ooh Spotify you are spoiling me.

If so, I'd be really grateful if you could try navigating tables and let me know if it is working for you. I'm in the middle of a email chain with Spotify accessibility and they are depressingly useless. But it would be helpful to know if this is a general problem or if it's just me.

Using Safari is an OK stopgap but I would much rather they fixed the app.

Thanks very much for testing this.

If I interact with a table and go vo+down I can go through the track numbers. If I go right I can go up and down the tracks. But if I veer any further to the right it just goes a bit weird and I end up with unlabelled images and can't go back left any more.

Also, I'm not sure if there is any way to select a row using vo+up/down.

OK, now I can't browse the tables properly in Safari or Chrome.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how I might be able to select tracks in a plylist or album now? Can this be done on the iPhone?

Spotify accessibility are claiming that they are unable to reproduce the problem but I don't really believe they have tried. Their replies come in almost immediately after I have sent the email. There's no way they have time to read the email, try it out, then write a reply. I wonder if it's just an AI thing. They wanted a screenshot or video but I don't think it's going to help and I've not really had time as it always takes me ages to sort that sort of thing out.

Well the web version has started working again but I've no confidence it will stay like that so I thought I'd carry on seeing if I can get someone to care about the app being broken.

I've been having emails with accessibility, but I hadn't realised that I'm not dealing with the main tech support. They are clearly not reading anything I'm writing as they will ask me questions that I have just answered, and they always respond within seconds of getting my mail as if they aren't really humans there at all.

So I remembered that Spotify are in the Be My Eyes app. I've never used this before, so I thought I would contact them. The call was answered almost immediately by someone in Spotify tech support. The guy was really friendly but clearly had no idea what VoiceOver was. Without even asking what the problem was, he got me to uninstall the app, except he clearly didn't know how to do it on the Mac. And then he told me to go to the App Store to install it, even though it's not there. So I told him that we needed to go to the web site to download and install it. He kept asking me to try to move the mouse pointer this way and that so clearly had no idea how to use the Mac in the way I would.

Anyway only after I reopened the app did he ask what the actual problem was. He seemed confident that he had reproduced it, even though he was using Windows without a screen reader. So he said he would at least submit a report about it and try to get it fixed.

Whilst I was there, I thought I would ask him about a long-standing problem I've had - this was also one I reported to accessibility who told me they had passed it on but it never got fixed. If you go to an artist and then their discography and view all, the page is just horrible to use with a screen reader. There are no headings or seemingly any easy way to jump between albums. It's horrible, and with this new bug it's even worse. But he directed me to the top where you can choose between two different layouts. If you change it to Grid then it only shows albums without their track listing. I can then navigate by link to easily get from one to another. So that at least is something.

Anyway I have mixed feelings about the Be My Eyes experience. Technically the app worked great. I hadn't realised that it also was using my camera until I picked up my phone and found that he could see where it was pointing. So I spent much of the call holding my phone out. And it did connect immediately and work quite well. But the disappointing aspect was that I reached someone who knew nothing much about accessibility. My heart sank when he started talking about "the voiceover" and I realised he thought there was someone talking or whatever. I had hoped it was going to put me in touch with an accessibility expert so that was a bit disappointing. But as a quick and easy way to just contact support it did work well so I'd use it again.

I also think I have been unfairly blaming accessibilityfor my poor experience but I think I had been talking to regular tech support. That explains why every email was answered my someone new. I reckon they get paid by the number of emails they answer.