-

2024-09-24 06:21:48

broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca

Quick #Fediverse question … does anyone know why more of #DisabilityTwitter didn’t come over here? Were there accessibility issues or key features missing?

With news today that Elon plans to change the block feature so that blocked accounts can view your posts (it’s like he’s trying to break things)… I see a lot of disability accounts wanting to leave.

Granted we’ve seen this before - I’m starting to wonder if that site will have to cease to exist before people will go elsewhere.

Though if he goes through with the change it will make that site exceedingly unsafe for many people.

I figured if there was a specific reason(s) they struggled over here … maybe it could be addressed. I adore it here and find it much safer and more inclusive - but I suspect not everyone agrees.

show all 5 comments

2024-09-24 09:51:28

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Broadwaybabyto There could be several reasons for this.

One, "All my friends are here." They don't want to let go of large parts of their online social circle.

Alternatively, "But muh followers." They don't want to let go of their fame and move someplace that doesn't even have enough users to build up the same numbers of followers in no time.

Two, inconvenience. The Fediverse is too cumbersome to use in comparison with centralised corporate silos.

You can basically load ? onto your phone, enter a user name and a password, and bam, you've got a bustling feed.

On the other hand, while you can load Mastodon onto your phone, it asks you too many questions. There's that field where you have to choose an instance. And yes, leaving it on default is a choice you have to take. It doesn't railroad you hard enough.

And once you're online, your timeline is dead. Many have left because they thought the whole Fediverse is dead because their timeline was, because Mastodon was praised to them as, quote, "literally Twitter without Musk". You have to take care of getting content into your timeline yourself, and there's no assistant that helps you with it. Mastodon doesn't have training wheels, everything else in the Fediverse has them even less, but ? doesn't even require them.

Oh, and you can't load "Fediverse" onto your phone at all. Or anything else in the Fediverse that could largely do the same job as Mastodon if people knew about it.

Third-party apps? Most of them have probably never in their lives used an online service through an app that doesn't have the same name as the online service.

Lastly, it isn't worth it. The only thing that may motivate them to move would be a place that's totally guaranteed to be an absolute, 100% safe haven for them with no harassment, no ableism and no hindrances in accessibility. Same goes for other marginalised minorities such as BIPoC or the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community, only that spoons aren't as much an issue for them.

However, these latter two may actually be known even on ? to not be perfectly safe in the Fediverse either. The very reason why BlackMastodon failed. So neither may be disabled people. Thus, the effort of leaving everything behind and learning to use new software might not be justified by the result if nothing much changes anyway.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Disabled #DisabilityTwitter #Mastodon #Fediverse

2024-09-24 12:07:16

Broadwaybabyto

broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca

@jupiter_rowland so much to consider here - I really appreciate the thought you put into it! I definitely struggled with a few of the issues and was lucky to have someone help me along the way

2024-09-25 05:57:21

Kevin Karhan :verified:

kkarhan@infosec.space

@broadwaybabyto @jupiter_rowland granted, things can and do improve...

May it be with good clients like @ivory or general #accessibility improvements.

I also think #TechBros like @Gargron need to be reminded that making stuff #accessible isn't a 'maybe later' / 'nice to have' optionality but kinda essential...

2024-09-25 06:23:03

Broadwaybabyto

broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca

@jupiter_rowland @ivory @Gargron @kkarhan yes I completely agree. You need to build accessibility now - as people need and expect it and won’t stick around without it!

2024-09-25 10:19:09

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Broadwaybabyto @Kevin Karhan :verified: And this could actually improve with more disabled Fediverse users because that'd mean more people who could tell us what they really need.

Ideally, they'd also not flock to only Mastodon, stick to Mastodon and largely ignore the rest of the Fediverse. Ideally, some of them would test Friendica and find it enough to their liking to start a public forum about accessibility in the Fediverse because that's something that needs to be discussed in a place that supports actual discussions between more than just two people.

My original images are extreme edge-cases in terms of describing them. My way of describing them is mostly based on assumptions and erring on the "too much" side to be safe. These assumptions include, but aren't limited to:

Blind or visually-impaired people aren't necessarily satisfied when you mention that something is in the image. They need to know what it looks like, and if they don't know what it looks like, they need a detailed description.
If sighted people explore images with their eyes and take in all the details, regardless of what's important in the context, then blind or visually-impaired people want to be able to do that, too. Thus, images that may be interesting enough for whatever reason need full descriptions of all visible details, for any definition of "visible".
In the Fediverse, people generally prefer detailed descriptions. The more details, the better.
In the Fediverse, nobody minds if you fill the Mastodon/Misskey limit of 1,500 characters for alt-text to the brim.
Describing the camera height, the camera angle and the position of the Sun, if applicable, is at least a good idea.
Having to transcribe all text in an image means having to describe literally every last bit of text that at least partially exists somewhere in the displayed scene within the borders of an image. Regardless of whether or not the text is readable in the image, at least if you're able to source the full text.
At least some blind people don't have a concept of image resolution. If you write in your image description that something is too low-res to clearly identify or read, they may take it for an excuse to be lazy.
If your image shows something that people aren't familiar with, not only does it require a detailed visual description, but you also have to explain it. (By the way: Explanations always go into the post and never into alt-text because not everyone can access alt-text.)
Mastodon absolutely requires a sufficiently useful image description in alt-text, even if you state both in the alt-text and in the summary/content warning that there is a full, detailed image description in the post (and, in the case of the summary/content warning, how long the image description is). So each image that requires a detailed description actually requires two descriptions, namely a description in the alt-text that's as long and detailed as possible within the limits of what Mastodon, Misskey and their forks don't chop off in addition to the full, long, detailed one in the post.

Based on these assumptions, I tend to spend an eternity describing one single image, and thus, I only rarely post images in the first place. I often don't even take images if I think it's impossible for me to sufficiently describe them. Virtual world pictures come with the disadvantage of showing people whole new worlds and making them want to explore these new worlds through these images, so based on my assumptions, they require massive descriptions.

For example, I've used my channel picture with that huge, weird building in it in a post before. I went to three or four other places before, and this was the only one that I deemed possible to describe. It still took me two full days to research and describe it. The result was an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters, including a bit over 1,400 characters of short description, and a full description of over 60,000 characters. And that was even after actually limiting myself to what can be seen if you're in that place, as opposed to describing images within that image with details that could only be seen if you teleported to the places shown in these images.

It's probably hard to say I haven't tried hard enough, but I guess hardly anyone has ever opened the summary/content warning, and hardly anyone ever will. My image descriptions may be useful for a few neurodiverse users who actually need such detailed descriptions and explanations, and they may be good for silencing the "alt-text police" which seems to increasingly go for not only alt-text availability, but also the quality of image descriptions. For most blind or visually-impaired people, they may be of only marginally more use than no image description, if at all.

By the way, I wanted to post another picture of the same building from another angle. The reason why I didn't was not because it would have been too tedious to describe it. It was because there are pictures in that building with human faces on them, and from that other angle, they became visible, for any definition of "visible" anyway. That would have meant a potential eye contact trigger by the definition I know.

So I didn't post that second image because Hubzilla gives me no means of hiding an image from users of Mastodon 4.2 or older or users of many mobile Mastodon apps. I've since started two (streams) channels on which I post images with faces or eyes because (streams) support's Mastodon's non-standard sensitive image flag. And I've considered replacing all my various profile pictures in the Fediverse with pictures with no face in them, although just about everyone else has at least one face in their profile picture.

It's clear that assumptions can be bad both ways. It's bad to assume that colours are useless in image descriptions, but all the things I assume up there lead to image descriptions that may be similarly useless, but due to their overwhelming length.

Disabled people want us to make things accessible to them based on what they actually want, not on what we assume they want. There's that slogan: "Nothing about us without us." They want us to listen to them.

However, it's impossible to listen to them if they don't talk to us in the first place. Right now, they don't, probably also because they're too few, and they're all only sitting somewhere where meaningful group discussions are prevented by technology. And if you have a question about accessibility in extreme edge-cases like mine, searching mastodon.social for blind users and DM'ing them, half a dozen at once, can't be the right way. Unfortunately, it's currently the only way.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility