#i'm most likely not going to be working on the community's accessibility for visually impaired bloggers anymore after this

[starry-sophrosyne]

UPDATE #3 ‼️‼️ :

Hello everybody! I have established the group of moderators that will be helping me overview the community once it is created. We are all currently working together to get it up and running, and again, we thank you all so much for your patience. ٩(ˊᗜˋ )و

As you all wait, I unfortunately have to pose you all with ANOTHER dilemma about our community's accessible title (yes i know im so sorry) :

*I am now aware that Tumblr is (atleast more than I thought it was) accessible to the visually impaired. HOWEVER. This DOES NOT change the fact that our accessible title is prevented from being used due to whatever fuckassery that is "the title limit being thrown out the window after the community is set up". Due to this, I am asking you all decide, for the final time, what the community title is going to be. This also means that i'm hosting one last poll about our community title (and also tagline)! With any luck, we will not have to revisit this issue in the future EVER AGAIN-

The poll will be run for three days, just like all the others, please vote for the variation you think is best! ٩(ˊᗜˋ )و And again, thank you all so much for your patience while we continue to work on the community. A special thank you for the moderators, who have done a ton to help me get this community closer and closer to completion! I really couldn’t have done it without them. ( ´ ˘ ` ) (poll below vv)

( @vernnationembassador @the-tcclique @sopping-wet-cat-wizard @second-best-daisy @crashingstar69 @sussybaka42069 i apologize for the tags </3 )

[mearcatsreturns]

I have a bookstagram, and I recently followed someone because they posted about the overconsumption issue that most bookish social media seems to have. Today, though, they posted another controversial "opinion": that listening to audiobooks isn't reading, and people who claim to have read a bunch of books that they listened to as audiobooks are lying and/or deluded. Listening to audiobooks, she said, is just consuming books.

I disagreed in a fairly politely worded reply, and I intend to unfollow/block, because I find it unlikely this person will change their mind, especially since I'm far from the only person to point out that this is exclusionary and ableist. But this is tumblr/my house, and now I'm going to be as blunt as I want to be.

I'm a librarian and archivist. So much of the work I and others in my field do focuses on making books and reading more accessible and less exclusionary. It is, in fact, incredibly ableist to negate how important audiobooks are for people who have certain disabilities or challenges, and I would in no universe say they aren’t reading. For that matter, a busy person who only has time for audiobooks and for people who just prefer them--it still counts, as far as I'm concerned.

See, there's a difference between an audiobook and a podcast or long song or radio program. An audiobook is still a book--it was written with a particular narrative structure, and the author plays a defined but limited role (once the book is written, it's written; the author isn't tuning in next episode with comments and corrections based on what listeners said). An audiobook is a book, ergo, listening to one is reading. Using braille is reading, and listening to audiobooks is reading.

The part that has me in full Captain Raymond Holt "apparently that is a trigger for me" mode is that this bookstagrammer called listening to audiobooks consumption. In the context of her other posts about overconsumption as an issue in the bookish community (again, agree, but also...mind your own business), this seems particularly insidious to me. Conflating influencer-driven (and capitalist hellscape) consumption with listening to an audiobook (again, a massive boon for the visually impaired and those with disabilities like ADHD, dyslexia, etc.) is rude at best and dangerously exclusionary at worst. Stop letting comparison be the thief of joy; mind your own business and stop looking at the pages that bother you. Focus on the kindness of leaning towards inclusion, meeting people where they are, and leaving judgment behind.*

*This person also said "feel free to comment if you disagree but please don't be mean or judgmental," as if they hadn't just posted the most ableist and judgmental sludge I've seen today.

tl;dr: don’t be a gatekeeping shithead, mind your own business, and

(gif by matalyn on tenor, couldn't find on tumblr)

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam. A potentially stupid question. Image descriptions for screen readers. Do they work the same way for audio and video? As in are they needed or helpful? I'm finding conflicting answers when I search for this.

Not at all a stupid question! I think sometimes it can vary by community, to be honest.

Screen-reader users, visually impaired folk, and others for whom IDs are particularly relevant, feel free to chime in; I'm going to ramble and you likely have more useful stuff to say. Remember to do it in reblogs or notes, as I don't post asks sent in response to other asks.

I'm not visually impaired, and I don't use a screen reader and thus am not really able to speak with firsthand authority. In the past, when I've asked, I've heard that in-post text is better than alt-text for images; even if that stops being the case, I prefer to use in-post text because there are people who aren't screen-reader users who also like the IDs. I do too, actually. And generally I've heard that video as well as image should be described. I don't do straight audio generally, but when I do, if it's a song I don't bother because the title is there and lyrics are googleable, if it's speech I like to see/give a transcript.

I like when videos have descriptions especially, because I am almost never in a position to play a video I see on my dash. If the video doesn't autoplay I don't want to hit play because then it will load with audio and I'm usually either a) somewhere I can't have audio or b) already listening to something and unwilling to turn it off. If the video autoplays it's muted, but if it's audio-heavy there's the same issue. So if someone posts a video without a description/transcript, unless it has captions, I can't engage.

There are a lot of guides out there for how to write IDs and I kind of think, based on conversations I've had, most of them are bullshit by people who don't use screen readers. In my experience, which is not universal but is relatively comprehensive, people who can't see an image often do not want a precise objective description as we're instructed to provide.

There's a great essay that touches on this, Against Access, where the writer, who is Deafblind, talks about how he doesn't want a diagram, he wants an emotional evocation.

Why are you telling me, telling me, telling me things? Your job isn’t to deliver this whole room to me on a silver platter. I don’t want the silver platter. I want to attack this room. I want to own it, just like how the sighted people here own it. Or, if the room isn’t worth owning, then I want to grab whatever I find worth stealing.

I've had people get shitty with me about putting "feelings" into my IDs, but the majority of people for whom those IDs are necessary have told me they like it because, for example, saying "She looks like she's about to commit violence" is a subjective opinion but conveys something that "A woman is standing with arms upraised and a frown on her face" does not. And if you're describing an image but there's not a ton of meaning to it, describing it in clinical detail is wasting time. A paragraph describing a fortysomething white guy and all the clothing he's wearing and the room he's in is not as helpful, on occasion, as simply saying "This is a photograph of me in my bedroom." It depends on context, which is your call to make, and the only way to get good at that is to do it.

But again: this is my experience with my readers, and even John Lee Clark, quoted above, doesn't speak for his whole community. So I would suggest that the best way to get an answer for this is just to ask your readers what they'd prefer. If you have friends who use screenreaders, ask them. If you don't, or if you don't get a response from your readers, I would do what you feel is best until someone tells you otherwise, and then be gracious and discuss it with them so you can better understand their needs. In my experience, when someone is genuinely trying to make a more welcoming space for disabilities -- as opposed to making virtue-signal attempts to Be The Perfect Ally -- they get a lot of slack when they don't get it exactly right. It is better to make a welcoming space for people to feel safe telling you that you fucked up than it is to pretend you're never going to fuck up.

So yeah, as someone who is more or less fully sighted, that's my two cents, but if you really want to know what your readers want, you know...I'd ask them. :) Good luck, either way.

[daresplaining]

Do you think a blind person could play Daredevil or is Matt a bit too "competent" considering his super-senses? Like once he stops hiding his super-senses? Tho, by my honest and humble opinion, if the actor would get a proper tour of the sets, instructions and (if the actor would want to do his own stunts) training and co-operation, he could do the work pretty well (and with the help of stunt-doubles). Whitch while i love Charlie Cox, his performance and i know he loves the character and cares for him, and i am not even blind so i don't think i have any authority or even right to say anything (whitch is fine tbh) but i'd love to see that sort of authenticity and representation.

I'll go one step further: I think a blind actor should play Daredevil, full stop. I wish Charlie Cox all the best and success in his career, but I truly feel that casting him was a mistake and a huge missed opportunity, and the more effort that the MCU makes to start actually casting disabled actors (Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, for instance), the more awkward it feels to still have a sighted actor hanging around playing Matt.

To me, this is not really an issue of whether a blind actor is capable of playing the role, because of course they are, for all of the reasons you mentioned and more. What it comes down to is this: If accommodations are required to allow an actor to play a role successfully, then the answer is for the studio to make those accommodations. If screen acting or action film/TV acting or whatever is not accessible at this stage, the answer is to make it accessible, not to avoid casting disabled actors.

But to me, this isn't even about that. It's about the fact that there are very few blind characters in media, that Matt Murdock is arguably one of the most high-profile blind characters in media, and that this is a role that would have changed a blind actor's life and provided groundbreaking representation for the blind/visually impaired community. Plus, as you point out, having a blind actor in the lead role (not to mention in the writer's room, etc.) would ensure authenticity and add nuance. It's not about whether a blind actor is capable of playing Matt (they are), or about how well a sighted actor is able to embody the blind experience; it is about giving opportunities to actors who historically have not received them.

I really appreciate your question, and I'm sorry if this reads a bit rant-ish. This topic has been stewing for quite a while, as you can imagine, both in my brain and in the wider DD fan community.

[oooohno]

social+ language contact between islands and island communities?!?! Nana that is SO COOL! At this point I wanna join your pirate crew lol Robin can come too but I'm trying to learn from you! Sociology is so interesting and I had considered going back to school for sociology and archeology before I started my Masters.

Repatriaton as a fad ABSOLUTELY makes sense! Institutions trying to save face can quickly become performative and not reflect an actual change in ideals and practices.

I don't have an area of expertise yet! In high school and college I very much leaned towards American History. I had to take American History 3 out of my 4 years of HS and did AP classes on government and politics so I basically did US History the whole time.

I did an Associates in Liberal Arts with an concentration in Poly Sci and a Bachelors in History and so the American History focused stayed and kind of narrowed down to the history of my city and history related to the bullshit the US is always involving itself in (one class I took was something like the politics of terrorism).

I haven't made any exhibits yet, my projects have been basically "if you had no real world things holding you back tell me what your plans for an exhibit or changes to an existing exhibit would be". One year I wrote a paper for a WWE museum that would actually be in partnership with the WWE. I did a bunch of research and so many peope have tried to create wrestling museums with varying levels of "success".

Last year I created a very veryyy simple protoype of what an Animal Crossing event at the Louvre would look like. Animal Crossing New Horizons partnered with aquariums in Japan and the US and since there's a museum in the game my idea was well why not do the same thing for an art museum. I focused a lot on accessibility.

Actually, in this program I find myself leaning very much towards Visitors Services and Accessibility. There's so much work being done on amplifying all the other voices and experiences that have been left out of the straight white male centric narritive of history which is amazing but if everyone can't access it then I don't think we're looking at the whole picture.

Please join!!! The more the merrier :3. And I’m working on an MA in social & cultural anthropology and another one in English linguistics…so not sociology but close enough lol. What degree do you currently pursue?

Ooooooh a history buff 🌚 very sexy 🌚. I kinda wish I had done a minor in history too although most of the classes I took taught you about history in the broad sense - but I think it’s such a fundamentally important basis. AND OMG I also had a seminar on the concept of terrorism and terror!! It was so interesting bc it really shifted the focus on how I view those terms when used in media! You have to tell me what you learned in that class 🌚. And I’m still thinking about taking archeology classes lol so I feel you…but I’m not allowed to start a new degree unless I finish one of my current ones lol. And maybe also a couple art history classes…there’s no such thing as too many classes if the topic fascinates you, right :’))))?

I’m obsessed with all your projects! The animal crossing x Louvre one is like a dream!!! Also the opportunities to create further adventures within are endless! Like a rally for kids to collect stickers or stamps 🥺.

And big fan of your focus on accessibility! When I interned at the ethnographic museum, they had an online training on how to make collections more accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired & there are so many things to consider that I was unaware of…and I agree it’s so important to work together with different communities to create public museum spaces that cater to multiple audiences! In relation to that I’m also a big fan of a multi-sensory approach to exhibits. Like offering things to touch or hear because it’s so much fun to experience new knowledge in diverse ways 🌚. What kind of measures did you come up with to make your Animal Crossing New Horizons x Louvre project more accessible? 🌚

[nostalgicsummers]

Okay I'm going to talk about it.

For context the only thing I am diagnosed with is dyslexia, but it impacts me heavily. I also have friends who are visually impaired and use any screen reader, so I'm taking their advice too.

-

How is the agere community inaccessible?

Pt: How is the agere community inaccessible.

The community is inaccessible in many ways, I'll make a list:

Censored words- A lot of DNI lists are censored with symbols, for example l1k3 th1s (like this) which is often to avoid cross tagging. However, for people with things like dyslexia we can't read what you're saying. It also breaks screen readers, which will read them like "l one k three, th one s" which is very hard to translate and is jarring to hear.

Small, large and colored text- Small text my belothed, I can't read small text, it strains my eyes. Some people have the opposite problem with large text. Colored text also affects people- Especially on dark mode.

Typing quirks- A large general reminder that when you use baby talk while you are regressed, a lot of people can not understand what you are saying. If you do use baby talk you need to provide a plain text version, especially when people ask you to. Wait if you need to, but please provide a translation.

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How can I make my blog more accessible?

Pt: How can I make my blog more accessible

Provide image ID's, especially on DNI banners- What frustrates me the most about DNI banners is that (while they're pretty) I can't read most of them, and because of that I can't respect your DNI. You don't need to describe the whole banner, but putting in your DNI list (uncensored) means that anyone can read it and respect your bounderies

Provide alt text- The way you can do this varies, all people need is a version of the text without fonts, bolds or italics, colors, ect.

Write your your DNI with no censoring- Please, I can't understand who you do or don't want interacting. Its impossible to read.

Learn what colors are easy to read on what backgrounds- Here is a small guide on how to make your blog theme more accessible, below is a table that shows which colors work best on which backgrounds. If you're worries that people can't read your text for any reason make it darker or lighter (depending on your background).

-

Reminders

PT: Reminders

This is your blog, ultimately I cant stop you from doing whatever you want, but please keep in mind that you are alienating groups of people from your account that would otherwise love to interact with you.

Can I talk about how inaccessible the agere community is or will I get yelled at -_-

[spirit-of-helimire]

🔥 writblr community

DAMN a big one I see that one is a lot.

Mostly it's accessibility reasons, small text and unreadable fonts. This coming from someone who is visually impaired and having to scroll through peoples writeblrs to see if I wanna follow them or not, and all their intro posts/wip intros/etc have a lot of small text, it really discourages me from wanting to follow them, no matter how much I might enjoy the content they're making.

Another thing that's an even bigger thing for me is. Objectively attractive characters. Ones that I look at and I'm like. This is just another skinny (probably white) young character. I don't care. I really don't care about conventionally attractive teens-young 20's character. I get YA seems to be All About That. But I really think people need to branch out and have characters that aren't conventionally attractive, who are older, fat, disabled, etc.

This also includes queer characters, put butches in your content, high femme gay men, genderfuck people, neo pronoun users, fat queers, disabled queers. Etc. You get what I mean. Make your most attractive character a fat butch or gay man. No more skinny trans characters.

And I'm not going to say it's all YA fiction, adult fiction is like this too, it's so hard to find fiction with older queers and fat people in general. I'm also coming at this from a white perspective because I am white, but like characters of color in any of these types as well would be just as important as well.

And I get it might be scary to do these things in the fear of getting them wrong, but if you're open to criticism, do it. Say fuck it, and do it, because if you fuck up and someone explains it to you and you do the research to do better, it's gonna make readers in those demographics so much happier and ready to engage in your work.

[jellycreamjammedart]

Hello visually impaired anon who sent someone else a message before, I saw your thoughtful response in comments and wanted to thank you for being open to accommodations for visually impaired rpers. I’m really not trying to make people feel bad just cause they want their posts to look good at all or feel responsible for the site not being optimized better for both sides, I’ve just been trying to spread awareness so more people in the rp community know visually impaired people like me occasionally try to read their posts and voicing being open to accommodating our needs can go a long way to making us feel more welcomed

Hello there, biscuit!

Good to see you again and you're welcome!

I genuinely find it really flattering that you like reading our stuff, heehee!

It's just a shame that Tumblr isn't as much a functional website as it is a fucktional website, especially when it comes to accessibility. Hadn't it been for good old X-Kit, I bet things would be much worse.

You're doing amazing; I'm pretty sure many users just don't know better or don't imagine others may like reading their content, so you trying to spread awareness is a very good thing! Especially because I know most of us are genuinely very willing to help if we can once we're aware!

I personally prefer the smaller text because the default one just looks so big and in some strange way messy and overwhelming to me (sometimes it may even be a little anxiety-inducing, r.i.p. my ass,) while the smaller one looks cleaner and doesn't overwhelm me so much. I had no idea that the smaller text could be too small for some people-- though I definitely could see the combination of small+sub text which results in VERY tiny text being hard for many so I use it VERY sporadically. Besides sub, there was also sup text, but for some reason that one doesn't seem to work anymore

I know that the X-Kit extension "AccessKit" has some accessibility tools for user interface, including changing the site's font from Default to Serif or even OpenDyslexic, as well as some contrast and color tools and such. I personally think there should be a "Set Min and Max font size" tool to give visually impaired users total power to customize the size of fonts on their end. On the other hand I believe X-Kit is exclusively desktop-based so it still leaves mobile users out.

I remember a Chrome extension that allowed changes to Tumblr's font, but I had to reinstall my browser at some point so I lost it, also it didn't work very well on my end 'cause it clashed with other extensions.

I don't know if you're desktop or mobile-bound nor what browser you use, and I think it'd not prudent of me to ask. So what I can suggest you is to search your browser's store for accessibility extensions meant for Tumblr (and/or what other sites you frequent,) though I feel you may already know that. So I hope that getting this answer out may help you in spreading awareness at the very least!

[megpie71]

This is part of the reason I'm always so enthusiastic about the Australian system where we have to show up and get our ballot papers (it's compulsory voter turnout, not compulsory voting - the fact that about 90% of people tend to cast a valid ballot once they have their ballot papers in their hot little hands is just a nice side effect).

Here's why it's so important: because if it's compulsory for you to get your ballot paper (and presumably cast a vote), then it's also compulsory for you to be ABLE to get your ballot paper and cast a vote. Compulsory voter turnout puts an obligation on the people running the ballot to make it accessible for everyone - not just the people they think are most likely to vote for their side, EVERYONE.

So there have to be enough polling places to be able to process people through the system efficiently. There have to be enough booths in the polling places so there aren't constant queues out the door from the moment the polls open to the point where they close. There have to be polling places in every electorate which are accessible for people in wheelchairs or with other mobility issues. There have to be ballots which are understandable for people whose preferred language isn't English. There have to be options available for people who have visual impairments to be able to cast a valid vote (here in Australia, it's the combination of this with our "secret ballot" requirement which is causing the most trouble for the Australian Electoral Commission, but they're working on it!). There have to be ways for people who aren't able to get to a polling place in their electorate on election day to cast a valid vote (so: absentee ballots, where you cast a ballot at a polling place outside your home electorate; postal ballots, where your ballot is mailed out to you and you fill it in and mail it back; mobile ballot boxes that are taken around the hospitals, care facilities, remote communities, and prisons - yes, we let prisoners vote - to allow people there to cast their ballots). There's advance voting, for those people who know they're going to be unable to get to a polling place on the day of the election, for whatever reason (our elections are on a Saturday, so our Jewish population often votes in advance; I once wound up providing tech support for the AEC on an election day, so I voted in advance for that election).

But basically, the way our system works is that if we aren't able to get our ballot, that's usually down to a systemic failure (or an act of $DEITY). Being unwilling to get a ballot (for whatever reason) tends to result in a fine, which is currently about $50 (my Christadelphian relatives regularly refused to vote due to their religious convictions; they regularly paid the fines as well).

It certainly does a lot for voter turnout and for the quality of our democracy.

‘why should I expend so much of my precious time and energy casting my vote? why should I labour so long and so hard to participate in this election when the candidate opposing the literal fascist isn’t entirely perfect?’

as a non-american I am fascinated by this us voting system whereby apparently you must scale ice-capped mountains, descend through dark and secret tunnels pursued by monsters of the deep, sail raging river rapids, navigate haunted marshes and walls guarded by the undead, until at last you must scale the perilous steppes of Mount Doom to cast your ballot into the firey depths. I was under the impression you just take twenty minutes out of your fucking day to put an ‘x’ on a piece of card.