FaceBook reached it’s rock bottom accessibility-wise since 2014!

It still works for me.
Yes sometimes scrolling jumps around, but it is still very usable. Also, to react, double tap and hold on the like button. That brings up a list of reactions.

Anyone wanna hold NFB accountable as they supposedly was working with FB regarding accessibility but instead NFB spends their time toying around with miners? Man what a bunch of PDFs

I’m not really interested in the NFB debate honestly. I just want apps to work properly with VoiceOver.

@ Jonathan That's, bluntly speaking, the job of facebook. Weather the nfb helps or not, again; not their job, plus, why are you waiting on the nfb or wanting to hold them accountable? You’re just waisting your time. That is, if what you said about the nfb is true and your that pessimistic as your post seems to come across, it would be a waiste of time to hold them accountable. Plus you could always write to facebook directly, after all, as said, it’s their job; not of the nfb. What your doing by saying oh nfb! Is the equivalent of say, oh twitter isn't accessible; oh nfb! No. That's on twitter, not the nfb to sort their problems out. Plus even if, hypothetically speaking it was on the nfb, they wouldn't be able to force companies to say, improve accessibility even if they wanted to, the company i.e facebook could just say, oh we'll do it, and then just not give a damn, easily. Again. Not the nfb's job; its facebook's. Of course, it’s more convenient, apparently, to hold other's who have nothing to do with making x app accessible rather than say, getting your hands dirty, as it were. You’re missplacing responsibility here. Weather the nfb got involved or not makes no differense; its facebook's problem to solve. I personally don't care about the nfb as i'm not american, but just as well, some of the accusations made in your post, unfounded, and you should know better than accusing people of that behavior without proof. You should know better.
And some people wunder why things are the way they are, indeed! Wih some people having the, oh its other's, i.e, nfb's responsibility and just doing nothing? No wunder.
As far as facebook... It has its share of bugs but again, facebook is to blame; take it up with faceboo'k. I myself don't use the app often hense frankly don't care one way or another as it works. Not perfect, but it works well enough.

Then tell me how they didn't say they were going to advocate and work closely with facebook's accessibility team to try and make sure that FB will be better at focusing on making their stuff accessible. Because they did. While it's not directly NFB's job, they did imply it as such. Maybe, if NFB did not specify as such we wouldn't be having this conversation.

@Jonathan

Simple: did the NFB sign a contract making them responsible for Facebook’s accessibility? If not, there’s your answer.

Working with Facebook can mean advising on accessibility best practices, testing features, reporting bugs, providing feedback, or discussing accessibility issues. It does not mean they own Facebook’s code, control Facebook’s engineers, or become responsible for every bug Facebook introduces.

Your original claim wasn’t that the NFB worked with Facebook. Your original claim was that the NFB should be held accountable for Facebook’s accessibility problems.

Those are two completely different claims.

So I’ll ask again: where exactly did the NFB guarantee Facebook’s accessibility? Where did they claim they had the power to force Meta to implement fixes? What evidence do you have that they became responsible for Facebook’s decisions?

Because so far, all you’ve shown is that they may have worked with Facebook. What you have not shown is that they became accountable for Facebook’s actions.

By that logic, every accessibility consultant, advocacy group, tester, and advisor who has ever worked with a company would be responsible for every accessibility bug that company releases years later. That’s obviously absurd.

Facebook writes Facebook’s code.

Facebook ships Facebook’s updates.

Facebook introduces Facebook’s bugs.

Therefore Facebook is responsible for Facebook’s accessibility failures.

If a consultant gives advice and a company ignores it, the company is responsible.

If an advocacy organization reports accessibility issues and a company fails to act, the company is responsible.

If Facebook releases an inaccessible update tomorrow, Facebook is responsible.

You’re treating “worked with” as if it means “responsible for.” It doesn’t.

And that’s the problem with your argument: you’ve spent this entire discussion assuming responsibility was transferred from Facebook to the NFB simply because they worked together. You haven’t actually demonstrated that anywhere.

This thread started with people discussing Facebook accessibility issues. Instead of discussing those issues, providing evidence, reporting bugs, or proposing solutions, you’ve spent the entire time trying to assign blame to an organization that neither develops Facebook nor controls Facebook.

As I’ve already said, if Facebook has accessibility bugs, report them to Facebook. Holding the NFB responsible for code they didn’t write, releases they didn’t approve, and decisions they didn’t make doesn’t solve a single accessibility issue.

Money. Enough to say it. I am sure facebook donated money and now NFB loves facebook because they listen to them. Long live cats. PS. I am lucky it is working for me.

It seems like every update breaks something else as of the last six months or so, it feels like there's no one at facebook monitoring anything regarding accessibility over that and they are just waiting for folks to report bugs to figure out what to do next. I really hope I'm wrong on that front, but if there's no team to work with, the NFB will just be speaking into the void.

@Holger

Problem is, whether that is true or not, you would need evidence to support that claim. Maybe Facebook donated money to the NFB, maybe they didn’t. As it stands, neither of us knows.

More importantly; even if it were true, it changes absolutely nothing about who is responsible for Facebook’s accessibility. Facebook writes the code, Facebook ships the updates, Facebook introduces the bugs. Whether they donated money to the NFB or not is of no consequence to that fact.

Furthermore; even if Facebook donated money, that still would not mean they are obligated to listen to the NFB. Facebook is a private company. Consultants can advise, advocacy groups can make recommendations, employees can raise concerns; none of that means Facebook has to act on any of it if they choose not to.

A donation is just that; a donation.

Let’s take an extreme example. Suppose a billionaire with a blind child donated 100 million dollars to an accessibility organization. Would that be a huge donation? Absolutely. Would it be generous? Certainly. But that would not suddenly mean Apple, Meta, Microsoft, or any other company is required to fix every accessibility bug, prioritize every accessibility request, or follow every recommendation made by that organization.

Money changing hands does not automatically create control, authority, responsibility, or obligations.

To get from a donation to an actual responsibility, you would need evidence of some kind of agreement, contract, or arrangement that specifically created those obligations. At that point we are no longer talking about a simple donation; we are talking about a service, a partnership with defined responsibilities, or some other formal agreement.

As for Facebook possibly not having an accessibility team anymore; that at least is a possibility worth discussing. We have seen similar things happen before. Look at what happened with Twitter when the accessibility team got the boot. Am I saying Facebook has done the same thing? No. But it is certainly a possibility.

After all, Meta products have had accessibility issues that have remained unresolved for years. Take WhatsApp as an example. Open the main chats screen, go into search, switch to Braille Screen Input and try typing. Last I checked, it still does not work properly. That has been around for ages.

So if someone wants to argue that accessibility is not being prioritized internally at Meta, I can at least understand where that argument comes from. What I do not understand is how any of that somehow makes the NFB responsible for Facebook’s accessibility failures.

At the end of the day; if Facebook has accessibility problems, the responsibility still falls on facebook, donations have nothing to do with it. If it was a contract? That's a different story but, when it’s just donations? Again that has nothing to do with it.

Seriously, it's just, bug that affects me hasn't been fixed, must be a conspiracy! Can we at least have the NFB be some kind of interesting aliens or something?

The only thing I've seen from the NFB about Facebook is What's-His-Name on their podcast talking about how it sort of got some accessibility improvements in the browser, by basically bringing back something similar to the old mobile interface. But even their, it was mentioned that it's more usable, but more work needs to be done.

So I mean, yeah, evidence. Forget money changing hands, which you can't prove. Where's this evidence that "the NFB loves Facebook"? I don't follow either organization, I check the podcast occasionally to see if there's anything vaguely interesting/useful, and I haven't been on Facebook in years. But the one thing I did stumble across from NFB was basically, "Facebook said they'd do stuff, they did some stuff, here it is, they should do more stuff".

That hardly seems like evidence of the NFB praising Facebook and ignoring problems or whatever. It doesn't even seem like evidence that anybody there particularly likes Facebook, let alone loves it. Plus, have you seen all of the *other* issues with Facebook? It's not like they're a company without problems. So it hardly seems surprising that there are unaddressed accessibility issues. They fit right in with all of the other unaddressed issues Facebook's got going on.

I'm sorry. Your conspiracy/bribery claim is unsupported, but more important IMO, it's really really boring. If we're going to go down this road, and given the number of conspiracy claims tossed around here lately it seems that we are, I at least demand some entertaining theories. Here, I'll start.

The reason Facebook hasn't been addressing accessibility issues lately, among many others, is that they have a new CEO. I can't tell you how I know this, but trust me, it's true. I have sources. *High level* sources. The new CEO, and you should hear about this in approximately half a year from official sources, is in fact none other than the Loch Ness Monster.

While Nessy has extensive knowledge of business and economics, it was first taught by Adam Smith in 1779, as you might imagine, being a lake-dwelling plesiosaur, it's knowledge of computers, let alone accessibility, is fairly minimal. So while it's doing its best, it is clearly playing catch-up within a complex and unfamiliar ecosystem, not a Scottish lake, but the world-wide web.

P.S.

Yes, that date for Adam SMith is accurate, because you gotta do the research.

Shifting back to the subject of the original post (we're getting kind of out of hand and off-topic with discussions on conspiracy theories now), I just did a test and it is possible to pick a different reaction. When you tap on the like button, VO will say double-tap and hold to react. Do exactly just that and it pops up a menu where you can choose a reaction.
I can't comment on the scrolling itself since I hardly use Facebook these days, apart from occasional posting myself and of course for chatting with friends that are still using it.
One nice feature for VO on Facebook is that if you perform magic tap on a post in your feed you get to do things like like a post and whatnot. I don't think I've seen VO's magic tap being adapted in that kind of way in other social apps honestly.

A one-finger triple-tap on the "Like" button in a post also brings up the Reactions menu.

That's why you don't turn off the Speak hints option in VO settings, to not miss out on useful control tips like this one. Sure, the hints are annoying on the home screen and in the native system apps (I know how to open apps on my home screen, thank you), but when apps do make use of their own custom accessibility hints, more often than not they're actually useful.
Double tap and hold versus triple tap: They're basically two different keystrokes (gestures) for the same command.

Hello all,

From my own experience:

First, using a SE 20/20, iOS 26.5, no interface mods or extensions. Also using latest FB app from app store as of 5/26/26.

Using Magic Tap, on a post in the main feed, can only choose Like, no other reactions available. There is no Like button accessible as a separate unit on the main feed scroll..
When double tapping on the post, opens into its own screen.
First thing encountered is something called Drag Handle. The post itself is collapsed. Can't find any way to expand it. Tried double tap with one finger, no joy. Tried double tap and hold, no joy. Tried tap and hold and drag with 1, 2, and 3 fingers. No joy. Tried many other VO gestures, One, two and three finger gestures. No joy. Looked on Rotor for any Actions, none available. Used my own one finger gesture, made me feel better.
Had a sighted friend try it, with VO off, one finger drag worked immediately. Turning VO back on collapsed the post again.

Depending on interactions with the post, there is 1, 2, or 3 Tabs available. First is Reactions and shows a list of such. Second is Comments, also shows a list. Third is Shares, also shows a list. Tabs only appear if these functions have been used by others.
On the Reactions Tab, there are no Like or other Reaction buttons, just a list of those who reacted. If I like a post, by Magic Tapping on post in the main feed, it shows me in the list, but no way to interact or change my reaction.
ie: same with Comments and Shares.
On Comments Tab, there is a Comments filter popup, preset to "Show most relevant." Can't interact or choose anything else. Sometimes my own comments don't show. I'm irrelevant.
Also, other issues exist that others already mentioned. Skipping over whole sections in posts. VO focus jumping erratically to nonsensical points on the screen. And, every time I leave the main feed, going back to it puts me back at the top again. Even when I'm 20 or 30 posts down.
I have additional issues with FB on the Mac, but different ones related to popup dialogs that won't hold focus, sometimes losing my place in the "posting" process, etc.

Just my own opinion, but currently FB is so messed up with VO issues on all my devices, it is barely worth using. Unfortunately, this doesn't help me use my professional account. Nearly every issue is no problem when having sighted friends trying them, with VO turned off.

Johnathan, I understood your comment and agree. As for other commenters, this is an opinion and issue based forum, not a court room. Your opinions are taken by me, but maybe try some casual grace. It makes getting needed info from this forum much easier. We are all humans, after all.
Keep pushing on.

AppleVIS is messing with my submissions, using plain text format. Posting from MacBook Air M3, latest OS. Spaces are removed between sentences.

The NFB has more influence than individuals do when it comes to working to make apps more accessible. They have resources that I do not. They are a force to be reckoned with. Which would be paid more attention to, a voice of one?, or a group of 5,000. Use common sense. NFB is not responsible for the creation or resolving of bugs. Put the blame where it belongs. FaceBook breaks it, FaceBook should fix it. I even wonder if there are beta testers who test app updates based on the bugginess that seems to not only not get resolved, but continue to worssen. And how many beta testers are there who rely on Voice-Over? But, surely, as bad as this app is getting, surely, these bugs would be found, reported, and squashed. Since the last update, my notifications are repeated. That's a new bug.

Hi Nicholas,

I too had the issue with the "Drag Handle" appearing in posts and the behavior just as you described it. Last week, without an app update, the layout reverted back to the somewhat usable version I had previously prior to version 560.0.0.

SMH.

I'll stop blaming them when they stop toying round with miners and doing disrespectful demanding shit.

Hi all,

Let's please get back on topic to discussing accessibility issues with the Facebook app. Additionally, please keep in mind that AppleVis is not a general-interest forum, so discussion of blindness organizations beyond their work in accessibility is best taken elsewhere.
Any further off-topic comments to this thread will be removed.

At this point you are no longer even discussing Facebook accessibility. You have completely abandoned the original topic and started throwing unrelated accusations into the discussion as though they somehow prove your point.

They do not.

Clearly you have some kind of issue with the NFB. Fine. Have your reasons. I genuinely could not care less whether you like them or not.

But let’s not kid ourselves here; “I blame the NFB for Facebook accessibility because minors” makes absolutely no sense. It is one of the most absurd jumps from point A to point Z that I have seen in quite a while.

Dragging accusations involving minors into a discussion about Facebook bugs is not an argument. It is an unrelated accusation being used as a distraction.

And yes; people have a right to their own opinions, even when those opinions are badly flawed. But when you move from opinion into serious accusations, the standard changes.

Those are extremely serious accusations, and you are throwing them around without presenting actual verifiable evidence. And no; “someone told me” or “I heard this from somebody” does not count as evidence. Hearsay, gossip, and rumors are not proof.

Actual evidence would be documented proof, direct testimony, corroborated information, verifiable reports, or something concrete. Not vague stories passed around by acquaintances.

Real people’s reputations and lives have been destroyed because others decided rumors and personal dislike were enough justification to publicly make severe accusations. Years later the claims turn out to be false, exaggerated, unsupported, or lacking context, but by then the damage is already done.

That is reckless.

And honestly; even if, hypothetically speaking, your accusations were true, randomly throwing vague accusations into unrelated discussions without evidence accomplishes absolutely nothing constructive.

It does not help Facebook accessibility.
It does not meaningfully hold anyone accountable.
It does not solve anything.

Funny thing is; there are actually people and institutions specifically meant to handle accusations this serious. They are called lawyers, journalists, investigators, law enforcement, and yes, even Congress. Shocking concept, I know.

Those people investigate claims properly. They gather evidence, verify information, establish context, and determine accountability.

What they generally do not do is scroll through random Facebook accessibility discussions looking for vague “someone told me” accusations thrown around with zero verifiable proof attached to them.

And let’s be honest here for a second; what exactly is an international forum full of random users supposed to do with vague accusations like this?

Oh yes; a little something called squat. That’s what.

Or in plain English; nothing meaningful.

Because contrary to popular belief, hearsay and rumors posted in the middle of a Facebook accessibility thread do not magically transform into evidence simply because somebody is angry at the NFB.

And here is the dangerous part; suppose somebody in a position of authority, influence, or power reads those accusations and decides to act on them without proper verification. Suppose reputations are destroyed, careers are damaged, or innocent people end up targeted because you decided hearsay, rumors, and “someone told me” were good enough to publicly throw around online.

And for all you know, people outside this forum may already have read those accusations and taken them at face value. That is exactly the problem with casually throwing severe allegations around without evidence in public discussions.

Once things like that are posted publicly, you do not control who reads them, how they interpret them, or what conclusions they draw from them afterward.

Do you have actual irrefutable evidence? No?

Then you might be wise to quit while you are ahead, so to speak.

And yes; you can blame the NFB all you want. You can blame them until you are blue in the face if that makes you feel better. But make no mistake; you are still misplacing the blame.

Facebook’s accessibility issues are Facebook’s responsibility.

Not the NFB.
Not unrelated accusations.
Facebook.
Now that that is out of the way; what actually concerns me about the downhill state of Facebook, and honestly Meta as a whole, is that some of the accessibility problems people have pointed out have existed for years, if not over a decade. That definitely does not bode well.

At this point I honestly wonder to what extent accessibility on their iOS apps may have been partially accidental. And before somebody misunderstands that; yes, that absolutely happens sometimes. We have seen apps that end up mostly accessible simply because developers used standard iOS controls without necessarily having deep knowledge of VoiceOver or accessibility settings.

But the moment custom interfaces, endless redesigns, dynamic feeds, and more complicated UI systems start getting layered on top, things tend to fall apart very quickly if accessibility is not being actively maintained and prioritized.

And honestly; if even the website experience is becoming clunky and difficult to use, that says a lot. Generally speaking, most websites are at least readable and mostly navigable with screen readers even if they have unlabeled buttons or occasional accessibility problems.

So if even that side of things is degrading badly, then yes; that is a mess, and a pretty concerning one.

Instagram is going downheal too.
Just 3 quick examples.
Before on the profile tab we could choose to see followers or followings and swap between both. Now we have to use screen recognition.
The real interface is almost as bad as tiktok now. I have to turn vo off, doom scroll, and on when I want to interact, like or otherwise.
We can no longer easily mute specific types of notification per profile, SR works but not quite.
Before all this was accessible.
And their web version is abandonware for literally everybody so I don't care. Just look at reddit posts.
Oh did I mention? In the message tab, at each contact e/ group tVO will say, delete, before the status of the last message (sent, seen, etc) and date. Annoying but the easiest to work around, just getting used to.

Hi all,

I need to be rather direct here and say that AppleVis is absolutely not the place to discuss sensitive topics like what Jonathan Candler referenced in some of his comments on his thread. To those participating in discussion of the above, please kindly take it off AppleVis. Further off-topic comments will result in closure of the thread.

I have had all of the issues refferenced in other posts, but I am also having an issue where I can't click to see a full post in my news feed. I can still view comments by using the context menu, but let's say there's a link in a post, I can't click into a post to get to the link. It's just a problem with the main feed, but it's super annoying.

My AppleVIS comment

Just a quickie. I've noticed that my earlier comment about posting on AppleVis mostly concerns when viewing with my MacBook Air, M3. Not thoroughly tested with my old Mac Air 2017 with Intel chip yet. But when reading through my own post from earlier on the M3, some spaces were removed between a sentence and its earlier "period" punctuation. This does NOT occur on my old Intel system. Also not when viewing on my iPhone SE 2020. Note: copying and pasting posts from a plain text file into AppleVIS web forms. I know this is off topic, but wanted to clarify in case it helps.
Keep pushing on.

V463.0.0 appears to have fixed the focus issue. I no longer get taken back to the top of my home feed!

Whilst it may have fixed the focus issue it has completely broke the app. you can now no longer interact with any tabs at the bottom. You are stuck on your news feed and you can't change to anything else!

Ok ignore my last comment. Focus still fixed after restarting FB for around 4 times the tabs came back. very odd.

I agree, Instagram is, I’d say, even more broken than Facebook. Especially when it comes to the reels? Dear God, that is a nightmare. somebody sends a video, you’re trying to follow the page, or find the contact button, you swipe once more to the right? Boom, you’re in another reel. It’s atrocious to say the least. Workable sure but, its a headache and a half.

Are you referring to version 563.0.0? Because that's the version shown in my recently updated apps list.
And I just did a quick test, the bottom navigation bar is still completely accessible just like before.

Sorry yes V563.0.0. After fiddling about I have discovered that everytime I go into FB all the tabs have disappeared. However, if I turn VoiceOver off and on again whilst in the app they appear again until I come out of the app and then they vanish when I go back in. No idea if it is relevant but I'm on iOS 26.5 iPhone 15 pro.

I never experienced any of the issues you described. I'm also on iOS 26.5, and I'm on iPhone 15 Pro Max.
I just tried again and I'm unable to reproduce your issue. Opening FB while VO is on, no issues. Opening FB while VO is off and then turn VO on, no issues. Turn VO off and back on, while FB is opened, also no issues.

If I had to guess, I think Facebook can update certain parts of the core user experience over-the-air apart from updates to the app itself.

A few weeks ago, I posted here warning people to avoid version 560.0.0 because of the issues that Nicholas documented so well above. At the time, this wasn't something others were seeing, which was good of course because the issue wasn't impacting people.

Those issues persisted for me through the next two updates, until... Poof... Last Thursday, out of nowhere, the old interface became available and accessible again. I didn't do anything. The fix did not correspond with an update. It just... Changed back.

My best guess is that Facebook is testing new features/changes on a limited basis to with a certain number of accounts.

That's my guess, anyway.

With react and -native and all that, they can literally change the ui server side no matter what the version number says on the appstore. On top of this there is also AB testing and progressive roleout.
TLDR welcome to modern software landscape :)