WhatsApp for Android: Urgently Fix Bug Preventing TalkBack from Fully Reading chatts.

WhatsApp for Android: Urgently Fix Bug Preventing TalkBack from Fully Reading chatts.

Started
23 August 2018
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Signatures: 326Next Goal: 500
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Why this petition matters

Started by Hammed Junaid

For more than a year now, users of WhatsApp for Android who are blind or visually impaired have been having to put up with a glitch/bug, which makes it extremely difficult to interact with chats through the TalkBack screen reader.
As one flicks along the screen to read messages within a given thread, the TalkBack focus in coming upon a particular message, would often announce only the time and date of the arrival of the message without actually reading its content.

Eventually, many of us somehow devised a workaround to manage the problem by first highlighting the affected message, then navigating to the "reply" option, activating it and then moving focus to the quoted text; this way, we noticed that TalkBack could read aloud the content of the message. And after reading each message, we close the "reply" screen.

Needless to say, this is a most awkward and inconvenient way to getting a message read. But we decided to endure it, as we felt confident of WhatsApp's resolving the problem soon, since several of us were individually contacting the WhatsApp support team to inform them of the problem and appeal for rectification.
Unfortunately, the problem persisted, even after successive updates to the application, the scale of it only worsening with each new update release!
In the early days of the glitch, the rate at which one encountered an un-spoken message was far less than it is today. Currently, you encounter it at an interval of around two messages or even one!.
This is so unbearable for the entire blind and visually impaired community who use WhatsApp for Android eyes-free!


To this end, we humbly call on the WhatsApp support team to kindly address this issue with the highest degree of urgency.
We would be most grateful to see it fixed in the next update.
Thank you so much and waiting for a positive response and resolution,

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Signatures: 326Next Goal: 500
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