Skip to main content


Note: Despite this negative post, the people at Newsmast do take accessibility seriously and have said they would fix the issues that I mentioned earlier. So please don't let this reflect on them. I only told them about these a few days ago. Today, I found the new ones. Maybe, their site is simply not working properly for anyone at the moment.
I found yet more inaccessibility with newsmast. I went there using Supermium, and hit all the "button" links until I found the one that was for communities. I tried to follow one by entering my Friendica.world information, and told it to authorise the interaction, which is all normal and is how I joined the others when I found myself tagged in them. Then, I was sent to a page that asked me about my birthday, location, etc. I had never seen this when joining a Newsmast page, but I began doing it. There was an edit box for country, but regardless of what I typed, it kept telling me that I needed to select a country. But there was no combobox to do so, just an edit box for typing. I closed the window and tried to return to the communities page, but it kept returning me to the form where I had to enter my location, even when I specifically removed that part of the url. I'm going to try it with Firefox, which is a bit more accessible with the site (it shows some links not all unlabelled buttons), but this shouldn't be happening. I also need to figure out how to delete the cookie from Supermium so that I can visit the site without the prompt.

Update. I just went there with Firefox. I was able to find and follow a community. Again, it sent me to the location page, even when I closed the initial one that opened. Now, whenever I go there, it does the same. I guess I have to use a different browser or virtual machine every time I want to join a community, or just type a large number of tags into one post, hoping that some are communities, so that they will boost my meaningless post, just so that I might be lucky enough to land on their follow page and not the location one again. Yes, that was sarcasm. In reality, I'll just go back to my other pages that list various tags and communities to join because they work.
#accessibility #blind #blindness #Newsmast #firefox #NVDA #Supermium #Windows @newsmast.org @newsmast

Social Media Feed reshared this.

in reply to Georgiana Brummell

Hi Georgiana, thanks again for your helpful feedback.

It sounds like you're trying to follow Communities using the Newsmast app which will ask for you to create an account.

As we spoke about the other day, we know there's issues here that we need to fix and hopefully will be able to soon!

If you want to follow our Community Feeds on vanilla Mastodon, you can do so by follow them directly from your current friendica[dot]world account. (1/2)

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Newsmast Foundation

There's a list of Community Feed accounts available here: newsmast.community/about

Or you can see them in a post here: newsmast.social/@newsmast/1118… (2/2)


Newsmast Community Feeds on Mastodon

See hand-curated, topical, feeds no matter where you call home on the Fediverse. Just add to a list, exclude from your home feed, then dip in and out whenever you want.

We’re working hard to connect knowledge across the Fediverse.

#newsmast #newsmastfoundation #mastodon #feditips


in reply to Newsmast Foundation

@The Newsmast Foundation I was using your website, not an app. The same was true the other day. It was from the communities page. Now, whenever I try to go to the main page, I'm greeted with the form.
in reply to Georgiana Brummell

We have apps on iOS, Android and on the web.

newsmast.org is a our web app which has a number of accessibility issues and bugs which we'll work on soon. For now, our Newsmast app has been placed to the side until we finish our Channel.org service (which we hope will bring in more funding).

To visit the Community Feeds on a plain Mastodon UI or through whichever application best suits you, you can access and follow them from this thread of posts: newsmast.social/@newsmast/1118… (1/2)


Newsmast Community Feeds on Mastodon

See hand-curated, topical, feeds no matter where you call home on the Fediverse. Just add to a list, exclude from your home feed, then dip in and out whenever you want.

We’re working hard to connect knowledge across the Fediverse.

#newsmast #newsmastfoundation #mastodon #feditips


in reply to Newsmast Foundation

To visit our website which explores our mission as a charity, you can visit our site here: newsmastfoundation.org/

The site is currently under a bit of maintenance so if you spot any accessibility bugs (or otherwise) please let us know! (2/2)



I followed the Social Media feed from Newsmast. Now, I wish to unfollow them, but I can't figure out how to do it. I tried "Unfollow" on Tweesecake and also went to the page of the feed, but I keep seeing posts from them on my Home timeline (not the Federated one). I usually don't mind seeing such things in my timeline. I love the Food and Wine one, for example. It's just that this one is going a bit mad at the moment. I may follow it again at some point, or even check it.

#accessibility #Friendica #Newsmast #Tweesecake

reshared this

in reply to Georgiana Brummell

I know on the actual friendica.world interface, you can follow someone but take them out of any circle, or you can add them to their own that way you only see them when you want to. This is under the "Contacts" area.
in reply to Georgiana Brummell

Now, I no longer see them in my timeline. Either they manually removed me after seeing my post to make things easier, or my unfollowing them wasn't instantaneous and took a little while. I will need to test this is if I ever find something else that I don't want to follow.
⇧