A quick guide on scrolling on instagram DMs with VoiceOver

By TheBlindGuy07, 6 April, 2025

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello Applevis,
So I am posting this here in the hope that it can be useful to the community.
The DMs interface on the instagram website has never been accessible on desktop with all the popular os/browser/screen reader combinations I've tried. Let me know if you know a reliable way to do so by the way. The iOS app however is quite accessible and I know that more than a few blind people use it regularly.
So I was in a long group thread and wanted to review past messages. Using the vertical scrollbar on the right of the screen had little to no effect and was ultimately not reliable at all.
I've finally discovered that the most reliable and easiest way for us to scroll is to double tap any element on the status bar item and it will keep scrolling with each double tap until it can't go further. The rule of thumb is to use the touch item with one finger and select/press with another anywhere on the screen, so I just slam the battery level indicator until I reach the point in the past I want and it works well, we just have to know it.
HTH

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Comments

By Ekaj on Monday, April 7, 2025 - 05:27

Thank you for posting this. I've never tried out the Instagram mobile app, but have a question. Is it necessary to have a Facebook account in order to log into Instagram, or are these 2 separate? I ask because I deleted my Fb account and when I attempted to log into Instagram awhile back with some other credentials I couldn't do so. Nor would they let me reset my password. Did they change something? One of the guys in the Bible study group I'm attending has been sending emails with links to Instagram, and I can't view them.

By Mert Ozer on Monday, April 7, 2025 - 05:27

Instagram’s iOS app was quite acccessible until last month. Now, scrolling through reels while the voiceover is on is problematic. Additionally, if a story contains a post or other tagged accounts, it’s no longer possible to reliably access the respective profiles or posts. Ugh.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 - 05:27

For the first question, no you don't have to use facebook but you can. In fact this is weird, they previously had this thing that we could text facebook (messenger) users on insta with DM but they've removed that. We can somehow use facebook as an SSO for instagram directly but for all intents and purposes they will not merge these two tighter than that. It's a bit weird but just ignore that.

By Dave Nason on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 - 05:27

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Reels are indeed tricky to use with VoiceOver, so I’ve discovered the best option is to turn VoiceOver off.
When VoiceOver is off, simply swipe up to go to the next video, or down to go back to the previous one, and double tap the middle of the screen to like the video.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 - 05:27

What? No, I just scroll with 3 fingers up/down and it's way more reliable than tiktok for example.
Edit: Okayyyyy... What have they done!? 😂