Image Text:
Since the news broke regarding the forthcoming changes to reddit’s API and the ippact that will have on the third party apps and tools many of us rely upon the mods here at r/blind have been working on an accessible option for those who either cannot or will not be staying on reddit. As talk of alternatives like mastodon, lemmy, and the like have increased we decided that it would be best to reveal what we have been working on, hence this post. Several days ago we shared this with those of you on our Discord server and have been asking for feedback. This project is by no means finished or polished, and is currently operating on development backend code and a beta UI to allow for access to still unreleased features that our community needs such as up/down votes displaying state changes, and nested comments, read this as there are and will be bugs and outstanding accessibility problems. However, the advantage of this platform is we control the servers, the UI, and can fix accessibility concerns ourselves instead of relying on a for profit company or the generosity of app developers to do it for us, not that the latter is unappreciated. So please be understanding of the above and we hope those of you who decide to join and see what we have done so far for all of us, and please report problems as you find them. https://rblind.com/
This post is inaccessible to anyone who is blind.
So here’s the content of the original post on /r/blind:
Since the news broke regarding the forthcoming changes to reddit’s API and the ippact that will have on the third party apps and tools many of us rely upon the mods here at r/blind have been working on an accessible option for those who either cannot or will not be staying on reddit. As talk of alternatives like mastodon, lemmy, and the like have increased we decided that it would be best to reveal what we have been working on, hence this post. Several days ago we shared this with those of you on our Discord server and have been asking for feedback.
This project is by no means finished or polished, and is currently operating on development backend code and a beta UI to allow for access to still unreleased features that our community needs such as up/down votes displaying state changes, and nested comments, read this as there are and will be bugs and outstanding accestsibility problems. However, the advantage of this platform is we control the servers, the UI, and can fix accessibility concerns ourselves instead of relying on a for profit company or the generosity of app developers to do it for us, not that the latter is unappreciated.
So please be understanding of the above and we hope those of you who decide to join and see what we have done so far for all of us, and please report problems as you find them.
The submitter on /r/blind also had the following to say:
There are no plans currently to close the sub, but several mods may have to leave reddit, leaving only a couple BVI mods, the website does not have a slash, and we do have another domain that will be being set as a landing page for the reddit, lemmy, and discord of ourblind.com (that’s O U R).
There’s something ironic about this being a screenshot of text that talks about accessibility.
Image text: Announcement
1!Open Alpha!! RBlind - A community on Lemmy, brought to you by the moderators of the /r/blind subreddit.com
Submitted 11 hours ago by user DHamlin Music (flair: Bilateral Optic Neuropathy)
Since the news broke regarding the forthcoming changes to reddit’s API and the ippact that will have on the third party apps and tools many of us rely upon the mods here at r/blind have been working on an accessible option for those who either cannot or will not be staying on reddit. As talk of alternatives like mastodon, lemmy, and the like have increased we decided that it would be best to reveal what we have been working on, hence this post. Several days ago we shared this with those of you on our Discord server and have been asking for feedback.
This project is by no means finished or polished, and is currently operating on development backend code and a beta UI to allow for access to still unreleased features that our community needs such as up/down votes displaying state changes, and nested comments, read this as there are and will be bugs and outstanding accessibility problems. However, the advantage of this platform is we control the servers, the UI, and can fix accessibility concerns ourselves instead of relying on a for profit company or the generosity of app developers to do it for us, not that the latter is unappreciated.
So please be understanding of the above and we hope those of you who decide to join and see what we have done so far for all of us, and please report problems as you find them.
Thank you!
It wouldn’t have made any difference long term anyway. They would’ve made a teeny tiny change to the official app, proclaimed it as proof they were working hard on it, then cut off API access for the accessible 3rd party apps. Kudos to r/blind for knowing this and taking proactive action.
They are way passed being able to do anything.
Reddit staff have no idea how their platform works or how their users actually interact with the site. It’s completely embarrassing and unprofessional to the point of straight up incompetence.
Reddit’s API concessions were clearly not enough for the Blind community.
This shitty website calls itself frontpage of the Internet while it can’t even do accessibility right
Can’t believe the sycophants at Reddit thinking the issue with assistive apps is a done deal. Can’t believe they fell or fit hook, line and sinker.
This is exactly the beauty of the open source software movement! I’m glad they made the move and took the changes on as a community.
It’s pretty crazy that "Reddit refused to define the term “accessibility-focused app”. How are they going to determine which apps have free API access without this definition!?
They have a definition, they just won’t tell the users because it’s not a realistic definition and they plan to pull the rug out later on.
If third-party apps were only 3% of total traffic and reddit was willing to destroy its image and massively increase the viability of its only competitor just before IPO over it, I’m sure they’ll have no problem getting rid of whatever percentage of blind people who can’t see the ads reddit wants to serve anyway.
They have the same problem with moderator-focused tools. Lots of third party tools are useful for moderation, but aren’t necessarily composed only of moderator-specific functions. Analysis of what public activity a specific user has engaged in, like where they’re active and what kinds of comments they tend to make, are helpful for moderators to decide how to handle a report that a particular user is a serial harasser, a troll, a spammer, or a bot.
So which tools get an exemption from the API fees/rate limits, if they’re useful for both moderation and just plain old people watching?
https://browse.feddit.de/ This is a link to the lemmy community browser. It looks like there are 7 communities focused on the blind. I am still learning how to navigate through the fediverse but maybe this will help you find or link to what you are looking for. I used the link and just searched “blind” hopefully the link will show that or you can use it as a search tool to find what you want.
What type of tools does the blind community use? I can code, I’d love to make a tool to help out.
If you’re really serious I would first recommend you familiarize yourself with the needs of blind users generally. Like try using the internet with your eyes closed and a screen reader to understand how a blind person would interact with a website. Maybe you can ask around or Google some tips for getting started with that.
I had a former coworker who was a UX designer and he taught himself to use a screen reader for this reason since he was required to ensure anything he designed was accessible.
First one that comes to mind for me is RedReader, but I’m not blind so idk if that’s their only tool or if they have others they prefer.
What does it do for the blind community, like text to audio conversion or something?
Yeah, I believe it’s a type of screen reader, this is what came up when I tried to find more info.
This might just be me being a noob, but how to I subscribe to this community? I tried typing !main@rblind.com into the communities tab (I’m using Jerboa) and nothing came up.
It’s kinda tricksy. You need to visit the comm from within your own instance. The easiest way is to click Communities, then All, then search for it - however you have to know what you’re looking for, and you can’t filter or sort by instance.
In this case, searching would be hard, as the comm is called “main”. There are probably lots of other mains in different instances.
For you, try beehaw.org/c/main@rblind.com. However, it could be that it’s too new for your instance to know about it, in which case I’m not sure but you may just have to wait until beehaw federates with it.
I think there’s also a generic way to format links such that anyone can click them from their own instance and get their instance’s version, however I haven’t learned that yet. Something like !main@rblind.com. Also, things can work different on apps vs the website - for example Jerboa only lets you browse comms you’re subbed to.
Often, a quick way to link communities is by formatting a hyperlink like this
[Visible-text-to-click](/c/community@instance.tld)For a this example, formatting the text like
[this link](/c/main@rblind.com)would create this link that most* people can click on that will bring them to that community.*Kbin users will need to replace the
/c/with/m/As a note for Jerboa users: the above link may instantly crash the app. At least, it does for me.
Yep, that’s what I’ve found. I’m thinking of scrapping the app in favour of the website tbh, at least for now.
It would be nice if you could just type /c/community@instance. Or /m/ as required.
When you’re writing a message on the web version, typing
!and the name of the community will bring up a suggestion box.Typing
!mainand selecting the rblind.com instance autocompletes to[!main@rblind.com](https://rblind.com/c/main)but that links directly to the instance itself. It needs a bit of formatting though to get it to be instance-agnostic.There’s a big discussion on Github on how to handle links, because as mentioned, the /c/ won’t work for kbin users.
I personally think it should link the instance directly, as it already does, and have a second link in the formatting we mentioned for the local instance link.
I think there’s also a generic way to format links such that anyone can click them from their own instance
Like this: /c/main@rblind.com, won’t work when reading the comment on kbin, though. For people too lazy to click on “view source” (or unaware of it): [<link text>](/c/<community>@<instance>)
Making that stuff easier and more intuitive is on the dev’s list and I apologise for anyone on a screen reader it’s symbol gore.
Interesting, I tried subscribing from the website (on beehaw) and it just says “subscribe pending”. Maybe I do have to just wait for beehaw to federate with it.
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