I'm an ol timer, meaning that for me, an IM and VOIP app of this caliber having gone the path it did is certainly a sad senario. Much has changed with computing over the past few years... I'll never forget that once upon a time services made everyone feel welcome by offering a separate protocol by which other third party devs could take advantage of the product to bring you your own way into an IM platform; Miranda IM from 2011 to 2014 was all I needed. Today, AIM is gone, microsoft has pushed its own agenda with IM forward and given us an our way or the highway decision, and IM, for me, at least, is no longer the thrilling experience it once was. Once upon a time IM's opened in their own window or their own tab; that was traditional. Now, I suppose because it makes for a more appealing sighted experience, everything opens in one window with separate panes. The former probably exists, but poking around the settings in this new version of skype has not yielded any obvious or immediate results. Everything seems to be a graphical button that screen readers can mercifully read, and thankfully there is shortcut keys, else navigating would be way worse than dealing with twitter or facebooks websites on a regular basis.
When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.