[NJTechDiv] Voicemail and iOS with VoiceOver

[Andy]

Hello!

A number of people were having complications with this.  Here's how to do this in brief.  You'll need iOS 16.2 for these instructions, but previous iOS versions should work exactly the same.

First, open the Phone app.  You can do that with Siri, or by opening it manually.  By default, the Phone app is on the bottom-left of the Home Screen (the first item in the Dock).

On the Phone's initial screen, on the bottom, there are five tabs.  From left to right, they are Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail.  To get to the bottom quickly, the easiest way is to perform a four-finger single-tap on the bottom of the screen.  Another way to get there is to tap on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen with one finger.  VoiceOver should confirm that the Voicemail tab is in focus.  At this point, double-tap with one finger to select the Voicemail tab.  The rest of the screen will change, but the five tabs will still remain on the bottom of the screen.

From here, you can explore this entire screen by initially setting focus to the first item on the screen with a four-finger single-tap.  VoiceOver should explain that you can set your Greeting.  Continuing to flick to the right, you will eventually find phone numbers (and/or contacts) that have sent you voicemails.  Performing a single-tap on these voicemail messages will allow you to play the message, call the phone number, delete the message, or view a transcription.  Depending on the quality of the speaker, this transcription may not be very accurate.

However, the Voicemail tab of the Phone app makes use of VoiceOver's Actions rotor.  What you can do is, instead of double-tapping on each message and locating a delete button, swipe down on the message.  You will hear the following options: Delete, More info, Share, and then we wrap back around to Activate (the default option).  So, to recap: you can activate the Voicemail tab, find your messages, swipe down to the Delete option, then double-tap.

At this point, your deleted messages are in the trash.  Think of the Recycle Bin in Windows.  To permanently clear them, we'll need to go to the "Deleted" option.  To get there, the easiest thing to do is to tap on the bottom-left corner of the screen to bring the Favorites tab into focus.  At this point, swipe left until you hear "Deleted Messages."  For me, I have to swipe twice until I hear it.  Then, double-tap to activate it.  Having this area selected, go to the top of the screen with a four-finger tap. swipe to the right to "Clear All," activate it, and you're done.

It may seem daunting at first, but that's probably because of this very long description.  Explore the screen, and try to learn these more "obscure" VoiceOver gestures.  VoiceOver offers a help mode that you can use to become more comfortable with them.  To turn it on, perform a four-finger double-tap; the same gesture turns it off.

If anything is unclear, I'm happy to answer questions people have.