I’m asking because it is really difficult to find a place for discussing accessibility in Fediverse posts beyond the limits of any one Fediverse server application.
I’m looking for something
- in the Fediverse
- with technology that supports discussions
- where users know the Fediverse beyond whatever software that particular place is running on
- where users know something about how and why to make Fediverse posts accessible for e.g. blind users
- where users take this topic seriously instead of seeing it as a gimmick
- where it’s likely enough for someone to reply to posts
Mastodon takes accessibility very seriously. But Mastodon users never look beyond Mastodon. Every other Mastodon user doesn’t even know that the Fediverse is more than only Mastodon. Most of those who do have no idea what the rest of the Fediverse is like, including what it can do that Mastodon can’t, and what it can’t do that Mastodon can. Many Mastodon users even reject the Fediverse outside Mastodon, and be it because it “refuses” to fully adopt Mastodon’s culture and throw its own cultures overboard. This would include using features that Mastodon doesn’t have. You’re easily being muted or blocked upon first strike if you dare to post more than 500 characters at once.
I myself am mostly on Hubzilla. Not only is Hubzilla vastly more powerful than Mastodon, it is also vastly different, and being older than Mastodon as well, it had grown its own culture before Mastodon came along. Still, three out of four Mastodon users have never even heard of the existence of Hubzilla, and many who do are likely to think it’s basically Mastodon with a higher character count, extra stuff glued on and a clunky UI.
If you try to discuss Fediverse accessibility on Mastodon, you end up only discussing Mastodon accessibility with exactly zero regards, understanding or interest for what the rest of the Fediverse is like.
Besides, Mastodon has no good support for conversations and no real concept of threads. It is impossible to follow a discussion thread or to even only know that there have been new replies without having been mentioned in these replies. Thus, any attempt at discussing something on Mastodon is futile.
Hubzilla itself is great for discussions. It even has had groups/forums as a feature from the very beginning. In practice, however, it has precious few forums. The same applies to (streams) even more.
Discussing Fediverse accessibility is completely futile on both. They don’t “do accessibility”. To their users, alt-text is some fad that was invented on Mastodon, and Hubzilla and (streams) don’t do Mastodon crap, full stop. In fact, their users hate Mastodon with a passion for deliberately, intentionally being so limited and trying to push its own limitations, its proprietary, non-standard solutions and its culture upon the rest of the Fediverse. At the same time, they don’t really know that much about Mastodon, and they aren’t interested in it.
Most of this applies to Friendica as well, but Hubzilla and (streams) users sometimes go as far as disabling ActivityPub altogether to keep Mastodon and the other ActivityPub-based microblogging projects out, and they don’t care if Friendica ends up collateral damage. They hate the non-nomadic majority of the Fediverse that much.
If you try to discuss Fediverse accessibility on Hubzilla, nobody would know what you’re even talking about, and nobody would want to know because they take it for another stupid Mastodon fad. They probably don’t even understand why I accept connection requests from Mastodon in the first place.
Here on Lemmy, I’ve seen a number of dedicated accessibility communities. But they seem to be only about accessibility on the greater Web and in real life and not a bit about accessibility in the Fediverse specifically. I’m not even sure if Lemmy itself “does accessibility” in any way. And I’m not sure how aware Lemmy is of the Fediverse beyond Lemmy, /kbin and Mastodon.
Besides, these communities aren’t much more than the admin posting stuff and nobody ever replying. So I guess trying to actually discuss something there is completely useless. If I post a question, I’ll probably never get a reply.
The reason why I’m asking here first is because this community is actually active enough for people to reply to posts. But I’m not sure if it’s good for discussing super-specific details about making non-Threadiverse Fediverse posts accessible.
I think you should talk about accessibility here, and everywhere else you visit on the fediverse. Especially here though. Accessibility isn’t just an ethical impetus to make community spaces accessible to everyone not just ~90% of people.
I am not dyslexic but I use the Open Dyslexic font all the time because it is easy to read when my brain’s word processing neurons are totally fried from a stressful day.
I am not color blind but I love color blind options in games for the UI since it often simplifies the AI’s color scheme down to a point that makes me feel more relaxed.
I am not deaf, but I love closed captions as they let me watch things at any volume, and allow me to process what people are saying better.
I am not a wheelchair user, but I can’t count the amount of times wheelchair ramps have been useful and helpful in my life (especially when moving big bulky things on wheels).
I am not someone who typically gets powerfully triggered by things that evoke a past trauma, but I find content warnings have massively improved my mental health when using social media because they bring agency into the microblogging/twitter form, an agency I never thought about not having, where I don’t get ambushed by real world, depressing news that I want to learn about but need to check in with myself before processing (especially if I went onto mastodon for cute cat pics, not to catch up on the latest shitty thing).
I am not queer, but every single fucking piece of accessibility accommodation that queer people and their allies have fought for has meaningfully made my life better. You know what drops the bottom out of toxic masculinity violently forcing men into super unhealthy and emotionally stunted existences? A bunch of queer and proud people drilling holes into the foundations of binary gender and blowing it the fuck up so toxic men are too busy panicking about trans people to keep building the widely accepted definition of masculinity towards even more toxic places.
I am ADHD and the world shits on actually accommodating me everyday, to the point that loved ones hurt me constantly even when they are trying to do the right thing because that hatred of ADHD people goes so deep down into the US protestant work ethic hellscape… that it is like a really bad trip that people don’t seem to be able to escape even if they wanted to.
I know what it is like to not be accommodated at a very deep level. It is violence.
I also know what it is like to be in a community that prioritizes accommodating the “edge cases” of humans (I mean that in a kind way), i.e. making sure the people most sensitive to overstimulation have a space they can retreat to and chill for a bit, or making sure the person in the wheelchair can access the building, or making sure that images have image descriptions for blind people. It is missing the point to lament “oh but these people are outliers from the dataset of humans, we shouldn’t waste too much time accommodating them”. Accommodation is HOW we innovate and evolve the Fediverse, and the barometer for how well we are doing can be almost directly translated into how well the Fediverse accommodates those with disabilities and specific needs (and also how suffocatingly white a space we make the Fediverse by tone policing black and brown people from life experience’s we don’t know shit about).
It is funny how people will readily agree that the challenges NASA has faced and overcome with putting a measly handful of spaceships and humans into space has had many indirect, but nonetheless MAJOR benefits to our society in the development of technologies that went on to be useful for entirely different contexts. The challenges of making the Fediverse (or any community space) accessible are no different except though they are far more diverse and far more vital.
