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blindGram 6.0 made Telegram folders and chat preview accessible

4 min read

blindGram 6.0 Final, released July 2, 2020 on Telegram 6.2.0, made secret chats and chat previews accessible, adopted Telegram folders and added media rewind.

This is an archived announcement from the blindGram channel. 6.0 carried blindGram onto Telegram 6.2.0 after a public beta, and it touched nearly every part of the app a blind user works with: chats, folders, replies, forwarding and media.

Chats, previews and folders

  • Secret chats became usable with a screen reader.
  • Chat preview became accessible. Opening a chat in preview keeps the header and controls in one predictable place, and the idea lives on as the Open chats in preview mode row under Chats in the blindGram Area.
  • blindGram's own chat categories were replaced by Telegram's folders, with a combined folder menu: one button that opens the folder list, instead of a row of tabs to swipe across. That is still what the Show chat folders as tabs switch does when it is off, and the Chats settings guide has the details.

Voice messages and video

  • You could save and share voice messages and videos, and rewind or fast-forward inside them.
  • The seek step became configurable, and music could play faster. Today these are the Rewind/forward step amount (Percent) and Rewind/forward step amount (Second) rows under Media, and the Media settings guide lists the rest.

Forwarding and replies

  • Multi-forward grew to cover several messages at once, forwarding without the quoted sender, and editing a caption before it is sent. A spoken guide to editing captions before forwarding was shared the same day.
  • Opening a replied-to message put the focus on the right message, and reply information and playback controls were added.

Progress announcements and other screen readers

  • Spoken download and upload progress was fixed.
  • Support for the Commentary screen reader improved. blindGram is built on Android's accessibility framework, so it works with screen readers including TalkBack, and fixes like this are what keep that true.

blindGram 6.1 followed two weeks later. For the current release, see the download page. The original APK post is below.

APK attachment