/r/blind community migrates to Lemmy
/r/blind community migrates to Lemmy
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).
Reddit's API concessions were clearly not enough for the Blind community.
Spez didn't care, it was just a small negotiation so he doesn't come across as "fuck disabled people". It didn't work though, he has been a PR disaster.
I mean, it couldn't have worked as they clearly didn't even think about those communities in the first place, they had to be called out.
How is lemmy in terms of accessibility? I hope it goes well for them.
It's not great. The people running rblind.com have forked Lemmy and hope to remerge upstream at some point in the future. Their own fork has a number of outstanding issues: https://rblind.com/post/569070
At least Mlem, the app for iOS is explicitly compatible to all accessibility functions in iOS. They wrote in their latest changelog that they have someone auditing their app to be compatible with this stuff.
Lemmy advantage is that it's both open source and federated. Someone can make a version with accessibility feature (which will likely be integrated into main version) and deploy an instance for blind users. Blind users will then have access to the whole fediverse.
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.
Reddit has made it clear they don't care at all. The amount of lying and gaslighting is sickening.
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.
Lol I went to reddit the other day and saw a big banner about new mod tools being released 😅
It's so impressive to see how the whole community is coming together to basically rebuild Reddit, but open source, and with all the feature everyone needed.
I'll stay here forever if we keep it up.
Thank you, for-profit companies for your assistance to creating a better world by self-sabotaging and imploding. Lmao
I guess it was always bound to happen. Cannot have infinite growth, after all. Something has to give eventually.
How scummy of a company do you need to be to purposely make it so blind people can no longer easily use your service
They tried to walk it back by only cutting deals with app developers that blind people rely on, like RedReader with its screen reading functionality. But that just highlights how selective reddit is being at working with third party developers. So fuck spez and reddit. I hope the blind community gets everything they meed from their Lemmy instances.
Plus, they made it so only non-commercial accessibility apps could use the API for free. So basically, reddit is saying: you can do our job for us and fix the shit we should have fixed on our end over 8 years ago, but you can't get paid for it.
Most blind iOS redditors were using Apollo I believe.
Please add text description to your images/screenshots
Done!
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?
How are they going to determine which apps have free API access without this definition!?
If there's one thing that I've learned from this trainwreck, it's that they're not going to define it publicly. If the internal definition is fluid, it can serve as a moving target to be whatever is most beneficial to them at the time.
This shitty website calls itself frontpage of the Internet while it can't even do accessibility right
OK next we need some sort of lemmy comment awards, that is savage
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.
Indeed. People sometimes wonder why bother, but here we can clearly see why it's so much better than a centralized organization with a closed codebase. Ultimately, if it is not open source, you're subject to the whims and wishes of someone else, which may not align with your interests.
Open source is about freedom.
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.
Hix Looks like you accidentally posted this comment twice.
Finally a group of people that can appreciate the beautiful UI Lemmy has to offer!
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.
Interesting, and good advice, thx.
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.
It takes a bit to load. Not sure if it is the search tool or just my Internet being throttled.
What I don't get is why people must 'migrate' to the Fediverse. All these companies managing multi-socials on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, sometimes even Instagram, but to use Mastodon and Lemmy suddenly seems to require them dropping a commercial one...
Don't get me wrong, people dropping the commercial ones are great for stopping monopolistic control, and I totally support the action, but I wish companies still remaining on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etcetera could just add Mastodon and/or Lemmy to the collection, yet it rarely seems to happen...
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.
I haven't been able to get it to work for jerboa for new instances I've had to go to the actual site and search it