In an update of Skype released last year, I believe 8.54, the support for split view for chats was introduced. Ever since this update, the experience for screen reader users was really bad. Note that to reproduce this behaviour, you must have split view disabled.
With any screen reader active, personally tested with Narrator, NVDA and Jaws, pressing enter on a chat will often cause the app to freeze for a large period of time, up to 15 seconds. During this period, no keyboard navigation is possible and the whole app is unresponsive.
The same freeze can be reproduced while reading a group chat with many messages, after scrolling past 15 or 20 messages, the app will freeze in the same way.
Hopefully, this issue can soon be fixed, as it is really unacceptable that screen reader users are dealing with this lag for over half a year.

Since Skype 8.63, there is a screen reader bug present with all screen readers.
If you press alt f4, which will hide the app to the system tray, then restore it back by pressing enter on the Skype icon, the app won't respond to any keyboard command.
Pressing Tab, alt 1, nothing will work.
To get out of this inaccessible state, it is necessary to press alt once to focus the menu bar, then escape to close it. This will restore the keyboard navigation, until you perform the same operation again, that is, hide Skype back to the system tray and restore it, which will make the bug happen again.

Hello,

One of my coworkers finds it extremely difficult to use Skype due to the nature of the GIF images. They play incessantly and he cannot stop them. There is no mechanism to Pause, Stop or Hide the content. He has resorted to using this method to push the GIF out of the viewport:
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
[ animated GIF viewport scuttling message ]
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etc...

Thank you for your time

Jason Ament

Hello. In the latest version of Skype for desktop, currently 98.51, screen reader users are facing a major productivity issue. When opening a conversation, either from the recent chats list or by just pressing enter on a contact, keyboard navigation becomes completely unresponsive for up to 15 seconds. During this time, You can not do anything in Skype, and if you try to navigate it causes the whole program to freeze and sometimes go into not responding as well. To reproduce the bug, make sure that a screen reader such as Jaws or NVDA is running. Now, press alt plus 1 to view the list of recent chats. Press enter on any conversation, and you should see the behaviour I described above. I hope your team can address this issue as fast as possible and also make sure to test with a screen reader to prevent such major issues in the future.

Since Microsoft will prevent Skype 7 from accessing the Skype network after the 1st of September 2018, they need to enhance Skype 8's functionality to get at least some of Skype 7's functionality to it. One of those missing and crucial for the visually impaired users functions are the global hotkeys for answering and rejecting a call, and similar ones. |They should be restored to Skype 8 as they are in Skype 7. Otherwise, answering or rejecting a call for visually impaired keyboard users is practically a nightmare at the moment. Since Microsoft will prevent Skype 7 from accessing the Skype network after the 1st of September 2018, they

When the size of the text, apps, and other items is increased through Display Settings, Skype gets inconsistently scaled - for instance, at 175% level or more on 24inch monitor (or 150% level or more on 15 inch laptop), control panel at the bottom of the Skype meeting window (with buttons to make calls, share screen, etc) disappears from the view. This forces the users to work in lower zoom levels (125% or less) which may be not be ideal for some users with low vision. The same phenomenon (disappearance of control panel on Skype while in a meeting) observed when the presenter shares the screen with other audience on Skype meeting. Please consider making Skype to work consistently with different zoom levels (150% or 175%) while in meeting mode so that the control panel won't go out of sight.