Periscope Live Video Streaming

Is anyone else having an issue when trying to replay videos (not live) where sometimes they'll reply and sometimes they won't. For me, there seems to be no pattern to this. Sometimes, when I click on a video to replay it after it has already stopped streaming live, I will hear a "play" button and I'm able to play it fine. Other times, however, especially recently within the past day or so, I will most often only hear a VoiceOver "click" sound only where they "play" button should be and, when I double-tap there, nothing happens. The only option I'm left with in these situations is the "dismiss" button.

Is it just me who is having these issues? Is this a VoiceOver issue or is this an issue for everyone? Should we report it?

Thanks.

First of all, have an iPhone 5 with iOS 8.3.

When I click on the tab to go live (I've labeled it "Broadcast", because I just got tired of hearing an unlabeled tab) and when I start typing something for the title, it seems that VoiceOver, at first, just stops working completely. Then, when it apparently comes back on, all you hear is clicks and no speech (it is as if you've somehow turned speech off but left VO on). However, when I do the gesture to turn speech back on, nothing happens. When I try and exit out the app, VO still doesn't respond correctly (no speech, no clicks, no nothing). When I try sleep-moding the phone and turning it back on again, same thing.

Even when I did a hard reset to the phone and try entering the info again, it does the same thing.

One solution/work-around I have found is, when/if you encounter this problem while entering a title, just dictate the rest of your title using the Siri dictate feature on your keyboard. (You can use the same gestures to get into and out of it as you normally would, even though VO is a little off.) Just place your finger on the space bar (at the very bottom ofthe screen and move one over to the left until you hear the click. That's your "dictate" function. Then, just dictate/gesture normally from there. When you exit out of the dictate feature, VoiceOver appears to turn back on/work normally.

Has anyone figured out a way to record audio only on Periscope without video? I mean, if I don't want to record video but just audio, I don't want randomly to be pointing at something (even something I may not want to be/realizing I'm pointing at).

I know there's no built-in audio-only option, but has anyone developed a "work-around" technique for doing audio-only?

What I usually do is just put a shield over my back-facing camera lens so you have a black screen. However, fro some reason, that seems to make my audio really soft/unclear/as if I'm speaking through a barrel. Not sure why this is but I'm thinking it has something to do with there being two microphones -- one for the back-facing and one for the front-facing cameras?

I'd like to do that, but, then, there's the problem at aiming the camera at the wrong part of my face or something when I don't intend to. That could get awkward. Any way anyone's found to prevent this?

You're talking about when you yourself broadcast, right? Because, when you're merely listening to a feed, you have to tap the icon in the upper right of the screen that's always there and that says something like "icon X dismiss".

Also, (and this may be related to an issue I mentioned previously), when a broadcast has a lot of participants, I find that the on-screen keyboard gets VERY laggy. (Again, using an iPhone 5.) Anyone else have this?

I also find it is somewhat laggy normally, even when there aren't a lot of participants.

I try to remedy both of these by using the Dictate feature, but, sometimes that just screws up and often doesn't write the entirety of what I dictated.

Well, then, I meant the front-facing one in my previous posts. Whichever one takes the selfies. Just substitute that, but my questions are still the same and I would appreciate your help.

I plan on it. I just ant to make sure I'm not missing anything first. If anyone else wants to step up befroe me and do this, though, I wouldn't mind.

I also don't use a lot of the features with the issues that often at present, so, t least to me, it's not so urgent an issue.

Should we just tweet them at their a11y account, or is there a better way to get in contact directly with the Twitter accessibility team?

All right, guys. Just discovered how to switch cameras from back to front-facing. Just three-finger-swipe down (as you would to end the strem. Then, to the upper right of the screen, there is a "controls" icon. Tap that and you'll be able to switch cameras.

BTW, guys, at least there is an alternate method for us to access the camera control via VoiceOver. As I understand it, sighted people just double-tap to change it, and, far as I know, such can't be done with VoiceOver.

The folks from the @a11yteam Twitter account let me know earlier that Periscope is developed by an independent team from Twitter, but the a11y person with whom I was in contact passed my comments/links to this thread on to the appropriate individuals.

The following is copied from a tweet I received from @periscopehelp:
"r team know about this."

So, it seems like there's at least some interest in making things better for us.

P.S. I am changing the "Twitter" link (which was originally @a11yteam to the @periscopehelp link, since that appears to be the best way to contact Periscope, at least via Twitter.

OK, earlier today, I was on a broadcast that had a LOT of participants. When I tried to share the broadcast, I 3-finger swiped left and then tried to locate the "share icon". However, each time, before I could do this, the app just completely crashed.

I tried swiping left WITHOUT VoiceOver and it seemed to work just fine. No crashes. So, this is obviously a VoiceOver-related issue.

Let's all continue to report these issues both on here and directly to Periscope.

So far, I've been using the @periscopehelp Twitter handle, but, if anyone has a better way to contact them, please let us know.

The more of us who report, I think, the more seriously they'll take these issues!

(I also continue to remind them to check out this thread for updates on issues we've been having and it would be great if others could do the same in their issue reporting.)

If we see each other tweeting Periscope about these issues, it would probably also be a good idea to RT each other to show how much support there is/we have for each other in this.