We’re committed to helping people find their place in the Fediverse and wider Social Web.
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We’re committed to helping people find their place in the Fediverse and wider Social Web.
We’ve helped hundreds of people, across multiple platforms, understand the idea by stripping down the tech and reimagining it.
We’ve put that learning in a video. It won’t answer all the questions, but it’s a strong starting point to help explain the Fediverse to outsiders.
Please share it to help educate others.
#Fediverse #FediTips #MastoDev #FediDev #MastoAdmin #FediAdmin
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@newsmast It's disappointing that this YouTube clip is completely inaccessible to blind people like me. It's just music. No narration, no description. Not really in keeping with the inclusivity we've been trying to build here on the Fediverse.
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Elena Brescacinreplied to Jonathan Mosen last edited by
@JonathanMosen @newsmast And even Newsmast app - it has BASIC VoiceOver reading features but no HTML semantics, buttons aren't buttons, checkboxes aren't checkboxes, and so on! Am I criticizing as an awful hater? No, I feel no pleasure in saying what I say; I'm very sad because a community helping community should develop their resources to be accessible from the beginning. Apps, audio, video, etc. And it's not even their fault totally, it's a 20-years-old gap.
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Hi Jonathan and Elena, thanks for raising this with us.
We should've done better here.
As a small team looking to improve the social web, we should ensure we do that in the most inclusive way possible.
We'll have a look internally at the issues on the Newsmast app and any future video projects.
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@newsmast @JonathanMosen It's useless to talk about inclusion if then sensory disabilities are cut off; digital accessibility is 25 years old, or even more, so if you choose developers/creators to work for you, choose them seriously formed to develop with accessibility in mind, from the beginning. Otherwise every word about inclusion is a word bumping straight against the wall.
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@newsmast @talksina Thank you. I think for a worthy project like this, understanding of #accessibility and genuine inclusion must be a prerequisite for giving any company work. It's not difficult. For example, both Apple and Google publish clear guidelines for making mobile apps accessible to screen readers. And really, working out that if a video is produced without a single word it's going to totally lock out blind people is hardly rocket science, it just speaks to a lack of consideration.
One of the things that has attracted blind people to the Fediverse is that while the use of accessibility tools like Alt text isn't universal, it is much higher than any other social media technology. So, we proudly belong here and won’t stay quiet anymore when things like this happen.
You clearly have funding and are spreading the word, and that’s great. But that makes it all the more important to really lift your accessibility game, or you’ll do more harm to us than good.
I’m very happy to have a conversation with anyone on the team about these issues of that’s helpful. -
Elena Brescacinreplied to Jonathan Mosen last edited by [email protected]
@JonathanMosen @newsmast The big trouble is that, speaking mostly about apps, multi-platform frameworks are preferred because they cost less and take less effort. But in the end, accessibility often gets stuck out from there - I honestly uninstalled newsmast app because a reality talking about inclusion with an app similar to climbing the Everest, is like the shoemaker wearing broken shoes. How can it be trustworthy? And I'll no longer be quiet on this.