Instagram accessibility issues appeared a few months ago and are still not fixed!

Instagram is an incredibly frustrating experience right now. The other major accessibility bug that no one seems to talk about is where you view a profile and attempt to double tap the notification settings button. Despite the included hint, nothing happens unless we use screen recognition, which should only be used as a last resort, as I'm sure you'll agree. Frankly I have given up reporting to Meta, both on their accessibility web form and the report a problem feature in the app itself, as they never respond to my reports. Admittedly they cannot respond to the accessibility web form as all reports are anonymous. Facebook although have its own issues, is the only mostly accessible Meta app as of this writing. Because of this, while I have an Instagram account I barely use it. Honestly, I'm not sure where to take it from here, other than just praying and hoping they will compound the issues reported eventually. I know you guys/gals in the US have the NFB and ACB, along with section 508, but all we have in the UK really is the Equality Act 2010, which only offers guidance when it comes to digital services and not legislation.

Hi everyone!
I note also that instagram become less and less accessible, and it's really frustrating, because it was not perfect but we can use it some years ago.
The problem, is that we can make a bug report to meta, but we have no response, as if they have nothing to do. I wonder if the accessibility team is always there in the meta company.
Bgrds carine

I have never used it at all in the 5 years I've had my account.
It's been inaccessible always.
I was a bit worried about using it as it would randemly just start recording things and I had to be careful that I wasn't just posting things while in the app.
It's curious how things happens.
I recently started wanting to post on there now.
and wanted to know what it was like from a user's side too.
Reals are not good.
I have to turn voice over off to do the swipe up gesture everyone else done.
Tiktok at least has Previous and next buttons dispite how easy it is to refresh your intire feed,
it's still far ahead in turms of Accessability to Instergram.
Honestly.
while it bother's me I don't file reports like this any more.
Reports go nowhere.
Try making a big thing of it on your actual profile and get people envolved to actually try speaking to actual instergram people.
But now for the important thing.
The reason I clicked your post to be honest.
From one creating to a beginner what's your advise and recommendation?
I'm not sure I want with my face in it yet.
at least
not till I understand the best ways to record without making silly misstakes.
I play a lot of instroments and don't have a tripod to do a birds eye view to record just my fingers playing them.
I'm Just wondering too,
what kind of stuff is worth posting?
Can I check the kind of content you make?.

Yes, I also have a lot of accessibility issues with Instagram right now. I can still use the platform, but I feel like Instagram seems to make something accessible and then they break something. I feel like when I first got my Instagram account in 2023, the platform seemed a lot more accessible. Here are a few things that I've noticed:
- If a post has multiple photos, you used to be able to use the adjust value gesture (swiping up and down or swiping left and right with three fingers) to go through each photo. This is great, even if photos did not have alternative text, as you would be able to just use another AI app to describe the picture. When posts do have alt text on them, because of this limitation right now, it is impossible to see what other photos were posted. Even if you turn off VoiceOver and visually swipe to the next photo, VoiceOver still reads the photo as the full post now instead of just reading the photo.
- The AI-generated alt text. I don't know why they have not updated their algorithm, because I feel like now, with Meta AI integrated into everything these days, we should have much better image descriptions now. One time I was following an account, which I am still following. They posted a picture of their dog. It literally just said, "Maybe an image of a dog," in text. That was it! There was literally no caption on the post at all, so I had to send it to an AI.
- The AI doesn't describe just the image. It describes the full Instagram layout, and as I already know where the back button is and who posted it, I don't need to hear that information repeated. This is why I would like to see a feature where you could tap the image and it would go into full screen.
- Apple Intelligence support for VoiceOver is coming with iOS 27, and for now I do see more image actions on the photos, so I'm pretty sure Apple Intelligence would be able to describe those images, which will be nice.
- When you go on someone's profile, even your own profile, it does not describe who you were following or any of those statistics anymore. It used to describe those, but now it does not.
- When a post includes a video, I double-tap on it to start playing it. The strange thing is it completely mutes the video, but the visuals still continue to play. I turn VoiceOver off and tap the video, where it goes to full screen, and then the video starts unmuted. It started completely in the middle of the video, meaning I have to rewatch the video a couple times and listen for it to loop around.
- I have not used Facebook before, but I have also heard that Facebook also seems to be getting less accessible now. I feel like in 2026, a lot of apps that used to be simple are becoming very complicated and not screen reader compatible. I've also heard of an upcoming Instagram Plus subscription, but I don't know what that will
Bring to Instagram. I've heard that it will bring a few improvements. For example, you can view someone's story without someone knowing, but even then I don't exactly understand what a story is. I know it's something like some kind of collage of photos and videos, but unfortunately I usually don't watch or listen to those stories because they are usually not accessible. I am still going to keep my Instagram account, and they will still post things to it, but it is just kind of hard to use right now.

Hello, an issue that I’ve noticed on Instagram for a few months that is driving me crazy is that I am no longer able to see the list of followers and following!

I'm having the same bug as well and it's quite annoying honestly.
It seems that the settings appear visually on the screen, but voiceover doesn't detect them. Using screen recognition doesn't solve the issue either, because when the iPhone language is set to another language than English, it only reads the types of controls, but not the text. E.g. It only says switch button, button, text field etc.
I'm not sure if reporting this bug or other bugs will get them solved or not.
And btw, you can swipe up or down with three fingers on reels videos with voiceiver. but after some point, it simply doesn't work and stays at the same video. At that point, you have to turn voiceover off and swipe up or down with one finger. I can't like or send a video while voiceover is off either, because I don't have ay usable vision at all.

Well the NFB is making nice with them, those who belong to it, send text to J. Mosen.