I am posting this to both my usual blob.cat account and my Friendica one, in the hopes that someone can help me. It seems that the new version of TWBlue isn't working for me at all. Every time I start it, it says that the program quit unexpectedly the last time it was run, and that if the problem persists, I should report it to the TWBlue developers. I tried it on two different computers with the same result. Fortunately, the last version still works perfectly. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what can I do to resolve this issue?
Have I mentioned how much I truly love Akkoma? I heard back from the developer, and she is going to try to do something about the accessibility issues! She's even putting them officially in the list of things to be worked on! Would I recommend this platform to the blind? Absolutely! We are finally getting a place where we belong and where we're respected! For the record, I am dandylover1@blob.cat, but as with other Fediverse platforms, there are many instances. The actual discussion can be found below, if anyone else wants to contribute either experiences or coding knowledge.
First, they shut down the Basic HTML site, forcing many of us to switch to clients such as Thunderbird. Now, they're using qr codes which are not only inaccessible to the blind but also to those who don't use smartphones! This is ridiculous! Yes, they do still have the option to click whether it's you trying to sign in or not (which still requires a smartphone and a carrier, which they claim to be concerned about), but how long before they remove that, too?
Oh for fuck’s sake. I was just thinking about getting an accessible basic, non smart, phone. This is ridiculous. Contrary to popular believe, I don’t keep my phone on all the time. I do turn it off, and I have my Google voice number so it goes to my email anyway so authentication is really easy when I turn off my mobile phone, but this is just ridiculous and another way to Punish everyone for not having a smart phone. For a while, they were the only email providers that provided a basic email option because every other email provider wants to make their service and application rather than just a simple website and it’s all ridiculous. It’s all a way to get us to use their proprietary app rather than using a third-party app because the third-party app gets rid of all the ads and visual junk.
er... didn't an SMS require a phone, too? QR codes are perfectly usable by the blind. I agree that a text message works on a dumb phone, but if you're blind the accessibility of those is generally poorer anyway. As a balance of security, SMS spooffing and whatnot is a real risk.
@quanin That link is heavily truncated on my end. However, if all else fails with the authentication system, they will likely still support the Google Authenticator app, which is using an open standard that other authentication apps and password managers also support. I'd say we have a lot of restructuring to go until we're completely locked out. I can see the QR codes being convenient for some people, even blind people who are comfortable aiming a camera and are using a computer with a screen. The only thing I'll say is that we definitely need the option of specifying whether we want to use that method or not.
(I am posting this from my Friendica as well as my Akkoma accounts, since some instances and groups don't federate with Blob.cat.)Please forgive the negative post, but this must be said. I'm sick of what I'm calling the switching crew. They constantly say things such as "switch from Facebook or Twitter to the Fediverse", "switch from Amazon to local shops), "switch from Windows or Mac to Linux", etc. They sometimes imply and sometimes outwardly state how easy it is. So let me explain something. Note that I can't speak for other disabilities, since I'm only blind, but I'm sure they have their own problems with these as well. I am also very good with computers, so I have the technical skills to do these things. Not everyone does.
It takes research to join the Fediverse. Not everyone wants to join Mastodon, and even for those who do, [people still must find instances that align with their goals. Not all platforms here are accessible, either. I left Facebook precisely because they shut down their basic mobile site, and their main site and apps are terrible to use with a scr
... show more
(I am posting this from my Friendica as well as my Akkoma accounts, since some instances and groups don't federate with Blob.cat.)Please forgive the negative post, but this must be said. I'm sick of what I'm calling the switching crew. They constantly say things such as "switch from Facebook or Twitter to the Fediverse", "switch from Amazon to local shops), "switch from Windows or Mac to Linux", etc. They sometimes imply and sometimes outwardly state how easy it is. So let me explain something. Note that I can't speak for other disabilities, since I'm only blind, but I'm sure they have their own problems with these as well. I am also very good with computers, so I have the technical skills to do these things. Not everyone does.
It takes research to join the Fediverse. Not everyone wants to join Mastodon, and even for those who do, [people still must find instances that align with their goals. Not all platforms here are accessible, either. I left Facebook precisely because they shut down their basic mobile site, and their main site and apps are terrible to use with a screen reader. I joined Friendica, but had more accessibility problems. Now, I'm on Akkoma and am finally happy. But it's taken over four months for me to find my place!
Amazon offers free shipping, large discounts, and in some cases, Amazon Fresh to Prime members. They also have a wide variety of products, all at one place. All of this contributes to the independence, not only of the blind, but also of those who are house-bound. No one has yet to give me an alternative that has all of these features. It's great to go to local farmer's markets and little shops, but not everyone can easily get there, and even those places that do ship often require monthly payments, charge a lot, or charge shipping with every order. Are there blind people who do shop locally? Yes. Is everyone like that, or does everyone have such places near him? No.
Prior to joining the Fediverse, this one annoyed me the most. Most sighted people can just turn on a computer or a phone and start using a new operating system relatively quickly, as long as it's graphical. It's not the same for those of us who are blind. First, the system has to have a screen reader installed. If not, we must find someone sighted to install it for us. Many Linux distributions don't have Orca installed by default. Secondly, even if said system is installed, there needs to be an easy way to activate it via a hottkey or during setup. Many Linux distributions have Orca but don't have an easy way to start it. Then, once all of that is done, we must learn how to use said screen reader, not to mention the layout and commands of the operating system itself, and withLinux, often, one must learn how to use the terminal in order to accomplish certain tasks. Even as a DOS lover, I found it to be frustrating. . Finally, after accomplishing all of that, if there aren't many programs that work with this operating system and screen reader, or if they don't work well, why should we switch from a system that we already know, where things are accessible, to one that we don't where they aren't? Linux is great for the sighted, but not for the majority of the blind. Again, are there blind people who use it? Yes. Is it as easy as simply turning on a computer and switching? No.
Attention, blind Akkoma users! I will be writing to the developer with my concerns about a few problems with accessibility on this platform. Most should be easy to resolve. Please let me know if you find any more, and also state what browser and screen reader you are using. Note: This is in reference to the site itself, not to your client of choice. I will post about that separately. For the record, I use NVDA with Firefox.
Many buttons are unlabelled and simply say "button". This is true on the main page as well as when viewing posts and tabs in profiles. Most work once pressed. They just need to be labelled.
Searching for people, tags, groups, and posts is inaccessible. I can enter the edit field and write my text, but then, there are two unlabelled buttons next to that. The first simply takes me back to the edit field. The second does nothing. I am assuming this is a submit button that doesn't work via the keyboard.
It is impossible to view followers, as well as those whom I follow. I can see the numbers of each but not the people and groups themselve
... show more
Attention, blind Akkoma users! I will be writing to the developer with my concerns about a few problems with accessibility on this platform. Most should be easy to resolve. Please let me know if you find any more, and also state what browser and screen reader you are using. Note: This is in reference to the site itself, not to your client of choice. I will post about that separately. For the record, I use NVDA with Firefox.
Many buttons are unlabelled and simply say "button". This is true on the main page as well as when viewing posts and tabs in profiles. Most work once pressed. They just need to be labelled.
Searching for people, tags, groups, and posts is inaccessible. I can enter the edit field and write my text, but then, there are two unlabelled buttons next to that. The first simply takes me back to the edit field. The second does nothing. I am assuming this is a submit button that doesn't work via the keyboard.
It is impossible to view followers, as well as those whom I follow. I can see the numbers of each but not the people and groups themselves.
I cannot read my own profile without editing it. There appears to be no link where I can simply view it, either as myself or anonymously. If I go to my page and am not logged in, however, I can view it. I can also easily edit it when logged in.
The page renders very differently in Chrome than in Firefox. In Chrome, I can't see anything but my notifications, so I can't get to my page or the other timelines.
Tonight, because of the problems with TweeseCake and Blob.cat compatibility, I was reminded of TWBlue. Normally, I don't use it, because I can't edit posts. But other than that one feature, I love it! It even has a few features that TweeseCake doesn't, including the ability to view followers, those whom you follow, and blocked users. It even allows searching within posts and for people! It also allows me to view favourites, which TweeseCake has only partially implemented. There, they disappear, but here, they remain visible. I was also wrong when I said that I can't post paragraphs. It's just that, instead of hitting return as I normally would (and as in TweeseCake, for those curious), I have to hit shift+return. Interestingly, I found that I can edit my Friendica profile perfectly, excluding Friendica-only features such as keywords. Remember, both of these clients are made to work with Mastodon, and the only reason they can work with other platforms is their compatibility with it. Anyway, when I try to edit my profile on Blob.cat, I can't. After I choose "Edit", nothing happens.
... show more
Tonight, because of the problems with TweeseCake and Blob.cat compatibility, I was reminded of TWBlue. Normally, I don't use it, because I can't edit posts. But other than that one feature, I love it! It even has a few features that TweeseCake doesn't, including the ability to view followers, those whom you follow, and blocked users. It even allows searching within posts and for people! It also allows me to view favourites, which TweeseCake has only partially implemented. There, they disappear, but here, they remain visible. I was also wrong when I said that I can't post paragraphs. It's just that, instead of hitting return as I normally would (and as in TweeseCake, for those curious), I have to hit shift+return. Interestingly, I found that I can edit my Friendica profile perfectly, excluding Friendica-only features such as keywords. Remember, both of these clients are made to work with Mastodon, and the only reason they can work with other platforms is their compatibility with it. Anyway, when I try to edit my profile on Blob.cat, I can't. After I choose "Edit", nothing happens. But the most vexing thing is that TWBlue doesn't include an editing feature for posts! If anyone here works with and/or for them, can you plese either suggest this or strongly consider implementing it? It would make life so much easier and would complement the other features very well.
I recommend you open an issue against their github project. I'm surprised that post editing is not something they can do though, as it's pretty much a core experience of mastodon, but I do remember whispered folk legends about post editing, that it wasn't always there, etc, but that's before my time, so I wouldn't know for sure
@the esoteric programmer That's a good idea. I myself don't understand it. I took it for granted that one simply couldn't edit posts on Mastodon. But if it's not true, then this lack of such an important feature makes no sense.
I am unable to view or even edit my sent posts in TweeseCake with Blob.cat! I have no idea why. Maybe, it's different enough from Mastodon (the actual network that TweeseCake is meant to work with) that it won't allow me to do it. Sometimes, I honestly have half a mind to just give up all social networking accept Dreamwidth, because it's the only place that is completely accessible. I don't have to beg developers to make things screenreader-friendly, or hope it will work with this client or that website because I can't do x on the main one, or that y feature that worked on one site will be accessible on the next one. It just works. Say what you like about Facebook, but the Basic Mobile site (not app) worked. I hardly had any problem with it. Then, they closed it, and I left because their main site is a nightmare to work with. Now, I'm in the Fediverse, feeling as if I'm using the main Facebook site all over again!
I don't blame the administrators of friendica.world or blob.cat. It's not their fault. They're just working with what they have. Both are wonderful human beings wh
... show more
I am unable to view or even edit my sent posts in TweeseCake with Blob.cat! I have no idea why. Maybe, it's different enough from Mastodon (the actual network that TweeseCake is meant to work with) that it won't allow me to do it. Sometimes, I honestly have half a mind to just give up all social networking accept Dreamwidth, because it's the only place that is completely accessible. I don't have to beg developers to make things screenreader-friendly, or hope it will work with this client or that website because I can't do x on the main one, or that y feature that worked on one site will be accessible on the next one. It just works. Say what you like about Facebook, but the Basic Mobile site (not app) worked. I hardly had any problem with it. Then, they closed it, and I left because their main site is a nightmare to work with. Now, I'm in the Fediverse, feeling as if I'm using the main Facebook site all over again!
I don't blame the administrators of friendica.world or blob.cat. It's not their fault. They're just working with what they have. Both are wonderful human beings who have been very kind to me. It's not even the fault of the developers of both sites. It makes sense, when you're a small business or a single developer, not to know about things such as accessibility. I just wish more people would learn and/or write things in semantic html or offer some kind of text-only or basic version of their site. I know that Deque University and Geeks4Geeks teach accessibility and teach html with accessibility included, respectively, but I guess other sites and books don't. As for TweeseCake, this is an excellent client for the blind that works well with Friendica and probably even better with Mastodon. But again, it's by a single developer. While changes are coming, people do have lives and other committments, and one person can't be expected to work as quickly as a huge company.
By the way, my Dreamwidth account is here. I must update it slightly, as I have some new entries to post for the month.
Okay. Make that, I am unable to view my sent posts, Home, and Mention timelines, making TweeseCake effectively useless with Blob.cat. So now, I can either use TweeseCake with Friendica, where the main site barely works, or use the main site of Blob.cat, which mostly works, with a few exceptions, and TweeseCake doesn't. What great choices I have!
Guess what? I can do it on TWBlue! I completely forgot about that client, mostly because I can't edit my posts with it. I may not be able to split posts into paragraphs either, but I'm not sure. If this posts, it's because my trick didn't work.
Oh! It works! Yay! If I hit shift+enter, I can make long posts! I wish editing were that easy. There are some features that TwBlue has that even TweeseCake doesn't!
Sometimes, with all of this going on today, I am reminded of the argument, or at least the disagreement, between Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, who otherwise were very good friends. Coward, who served as a spy during World War II, accused Novello of not doing enough and of trying to live life as normal. This was quite unfair, as he performed during the war years, taking The Dancing years around the UK, sometimes to bombed out theatres, just to bring the people a bit of joy and hope. Not everyone is meant to risk his life in the way that Coward did, be it openly as a spy or more covertly, or even by protesting, etc. In my case, however, he would be right. I do stay away from things. But I am also a follower of dandyism, particularly in its Brummellian form. It is true that Beau Brummell lived in luxury for a time, knew the highest members of society, including the Prince of Wales, and had a mass following. But the rest of his life was sheer hell, from poverty to syphilis. Yet even as he, and everything around him, was falling apart, he never lost who he was. He never willingly stopped... show more
Sometimes, with all of this going on today, I am reminded of the argument, or at least the disagreement, between Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, who otherwise were very good friends. Coward, who served as a spy during World War II, accused Novello of not doing enough and of trying to live life as normal. This was quite unfair, as he performed during the war years, taking The Dancing years around the UK, sometimes to bombed out theatres, just to bring the people a bit of joy and hope. Not everyone is meant to risk his life in the way that Coward did, be it openly as a spy or more covertly, or even by protesting, etc. In my case, however, he would be right. I do stay away from things. But I am also a follower of dandyism, particularly in its Brummellian form. It is true that Beau Brummell lived in luxury for a time, knew the highest members of society, including the Prince of Wales, and had a mass following. But the rest of his life was sheer hell, from poverty to syphilis. Yet even as he, and everything around him, was falling apart, he never lost who he was. He never willingly stopped living to the best of his ability, seeking the finer things in life, etc. As long as his mentality held, and even once after it was gone, he remained steadfast in his love of good things. I am the same way. I refuse to give up my life style, to be negative all the time (I do not suffer from depression as he did), to bring drama into my life, etc. I want to take it for all it's worth and enjoy it! If, and only if, I am forced to change, or to move, etc. I will do so. But the world, in itself, is not my concern. My concern is myself, my loved ones, and those about whom I care deeply. That's it. I may follow the physical and vocal exercises of Clara Novello Davies, but I don't follow her life's philosophy. I can say, however, that if the world did, it would be a truly beautiful and wonderful place to live. I'm just a bit more realistic than that.
I have looked everywhere, but I can't find this post from 11 February! It isn't showing up in my Sent timeline. So if it is on my profile, and/or if you have seen it, I apologise.
I am not closing my account here, but I need to try something other than Friendica, due to accessibility issues. I am considering Akkoma, but am open to other networks if they are compatible with Mastodon.
I am seeking an instance with the following specifications.
Accessible interface (I use a screen reader called NVDA). If it uses Semantic html and isn't cluttered, that's a great start. I would prefer it to be compatible with Mastodon so that I could also use TweeseCake as a client. I need to easily be able to access things such as notifications, follow requests, my own posts, to be able to search for tags, people, my posts etc.
Posting limit of 5,000 characters or more (more preferred.
Ability to pin, unpin, edit, and delete posts.
Ability to filter content, so that I don't see certain words or phrases. (This doesn't work with TweeseCake, so it's not as important as
... show more
I have looked everywhere, but I can't find this post from 11 February! It isn't showing up in my Sent timeline. So if it is on my profile, and/or if you have seen it, I apologise.
I am not closing my account here, but I need to try something other than Friendica, due to accessibility issues. I am considering Akkoma, but am open to other networks if they are compatible with Mastodon.
I am seeking an instance with the following specifications.
Accessible interface (I use a screen reader called NVDA). If it uses Semantic html and isn't cluttered, that's a great start. I would prefer it to be compatible with Mastodon so that I could also use TweeseCake as a client. I need to easily be able to access things such as notifications, follow requests, my own posts, to be able to search for tags, people, my posts etc.
Posting limit of 5,000 characters or more (more preferred.
Ability to pin, unpin, edit, and delete posts.
Ability to filter content, so that I don't see certain words or phrases. (This doesn't work with TweeseCake, so it's not as important as the rest, unless the site is so accessible that I can use it often.)
Ability to select between seeing all posts of someone or only some, and to choose whether to let someone follow me without my seeing his posts or to follow him completely. (Friend versus Subscriber on Friendica).
Extensive profile with keywords. (Keywords may be a Friendica feature, so can be skipped.)
Most people write in English and are not politically, technologically, or gaming obsessed. No radicals of any pursuasion. (the English bit is just to help me find friends on my particular instance.)
Free speech (nothing illegal or homophobic). I personally avoid obscenities.)
If such an instance exists, please tell me. I found https://akkoma.fediverse.observer/list[7] but that's just a list with no real information about each instance. I would have to go through over 400 of them, choose the ones from the UK, Canada, and America (they're the most likely to have English instances), then go through those to see if they meet my requirements, but that's ridiculous.
I am not a programmer, so please don't suggest I start my own instance or join a network that is not set up with a webpage and/or to accept a client, as I know nothing about these things other than that they run on Linux and I'm a Windows user. I just want something that works. Also, if there are any demonstration instances, please let me know. I heard of one where accounts only lasted five days, but it seems to be gone.
@Thomas Thank you. I know how to use Perplexity as well. I was looking for actual instances that meet my specifications, preferably answered by a human.
@Stefan Bohacek @Alien_Sunset Thank you. I sincerely appreciate it. I actually wrote about the specific problems with Friendica on my own timeline, though it's probably buried by now. It's sad because I really like theplatform. But doing certain things on the main site is exhausting.
I am seeking an Akkoma instance with the following specifications.
Accessible interface (I use a screen reader called NVDA). If it uses Semantic html and isn't cluttered, that's a great start. I would prefer it to be compatible with Mastodon so that I could also use TweeseCake as a client.
Posts of 5,000 characters or more.
Ability to edit and delete posts.
Extensive profile.
Most people write in English and are not politically or technologically obsessed. No radicals of any pursuasion.
Free speech (nothing illegal or homophobic).
Allows me to select between seeing all posts of someone or only some, and to choose whether to let someone follow me without my seeing his posts or to follow him completely. (Friend versus Subscriber on Friendica).
If such an instance exists, please tell me. I found https://akkoma.fediverse.observer/list[7] but that's just a list with no real information about each instance. I would have to go through over
... show more
I am seeking an Akkoma instance with the following specifications.
Accessible interface (I use a screen reader called NVDA). If it uses Semantic html and isn't cluttered, that's a great start. I would prefer it to be compatible with Mastodon so that I could also use TweeseCake as a client.
Posts of 5,000 characters or more.
Ability to edit and delete posts.
Extensive profile.
Most people write in English and are not politically or technologically obsessed. No radicals of any pursuasion.
Free speech (nothing illegal or homophobic).
Allows me to select between seeing all posts of someone or only some, and to choose whether to let someone follow me without my seeing his posts or to follow him completely. (Friend versus Subscriber on Friendica).
If such an instance exists, please tell me. I found https://akkoma.fediverse.observer/list[7] but that's just a list with no real information about each instance. I would have to go through over 400 of them, choose the ones from the UK, Canada, and America (they're the most likely to have English instances), then go through those to see if they meet my requirements, and honestly, that's ridiculous.
I am not a programmer, so please don't suggest I start my own instance or join a network that is not set up with a webpage and/or to accept a client, as I know nothing about these things other than that they run on Linux and I'm a Windows user. I just want something that works. Also, if there are any demonstration instances, please let me know. I heard of one where accounts only lasted five days, but it seems to be gone.
I was planning on running akkoma.world but I'm a bit worried about the development of the software. Latest announcement of a release was april 2024, and I do see they released a new version a while ago I don't see any announcement or changelog about it.
the acoma software is just acoma, anything else on top is probably a fork. From what I know, the web interface for acoma is good, but I don't know how good or how accessible. My opinion would be to pick an instance at random, then try it out without logging in, to see if the ui works for you...if it's accessible enough and so on, then log in. Acoma does have mastodon compatibility, so you can use mastodon clients with it, but follows on acoma are plane follows, so if you follow someone, you see their posts too, it's not just a number going up or something like that, if that's what you ment.
*This is a note for those who wish to follow me. First, please read my profile. Secondly, subscribers are those who follow me, but whom I don't follow in return. Friends are those who follow me and whom I follow in return.
People who will never be accepted: Minors. I don't feel comfortable having anyone under eighteen (preferably twenty-one) follow me, even as subscribers.
People who will always be subscribers: Those who constantly write about politics, who always use obscenities, anti-capitalists, anarchists, extreme leftists and rightists), religious fanatics, those who hardly post in English, only post about technology and/or games (not including accessibility), or medical/mental issues. Note. I'm not talking about having a bad day or posting once about politics. I'm talking about those who barely post anything else.
People who will always be friends: Those who post about high culture (classical music, good literature, art, history, theatre, wine, coffee, tea, snuff, fine dining, etc.), male fashion, nature, pets (especially cats), plants/gardening, good ne
... show more
*This is a note for those who wish to follow me. First, please read my profile. Secondly, subscribers are those who follow me, but whom I don't follow in return. Friends are those who follow me and whom I follow in return.
People who will never be accepted: Minors. I don't feel comfortable having anyone under eighteen (preferably twenty-one) follow me, even as subscribers.
People who will always be subscribers: Those who constantly write about politics, who always use obscenities, anti-capitalists, anarchists, extreme leftists and rightists), religious fanatics, those who hardly post in English, only post about technology and/or games (not including accessibility), or medical/mental issues. Note. I'm not talking about having a bad day or posting once about politics. I'm talking about those who barely post anything else.
People who will always be friends: Those who post about high culture (classical music, good literature, art, history, theatre, wine, coffee, tea, snuff, fine dining, etc.), male fashion, nature, pets (especially cats), plants/gardening, good news, writing, and daily life (without constant drama).
I'm replying to this in the hopes that, maybe, I can now see it on my actual profile page so that I can pin it. It's amazing the work-arounds I have to do just to be able to use this site.
Ironically, you've connected to me first. My channel has only got two topics. The primary topic is a certain kind of 3-D virtual worlds, the secondary topic is the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, although this may include accessibility topics. Since this is not my personal, all-round channel, I don't post about anything else.
I'm working on a series of posts that will touch male fashion. But they'll touch male fashion in the above-mentioned virtual worlds, I'll post them on a dedicated (streams) channel, and this Hubzilla channel will only forward them. Also, expect each one to have both a summary and a spoiler tag for those who are easily triggered by even the slightest eye contact.
@Jupiter Rowland I'm actually interested in the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. That's not what I meant by constantly posting about technology. I would also love to experience a virtual world, but I don't know of any that are accessible. That said, many other games are, both text-based and audio, and now, some mainstream ones as well.
Rant ahead. I didn't join Friendica to protest anything. I didn't join to make a political statement. I joined for one reason only. Facebook shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app), and their main site is a nightmare to use with screen readers. That's it. I was just looking for a place where I could find new friends (I lost almost all of mine after moving here), and read interesting things. Yet almost everyone I approve gets set to Subscriber, because of constant political posts, anti-capitalism/extreme leftism, or an obsession with technology. Yes, I post about artificial intelligence, but just as something interesting I read in the news. I don't live for technology. Likewise, I mostly don't choose the places I buy from based on politics, how the workers are paid, what the owners do, etc. It is true that I don't ever give to the Salvation army because of their stance on homosexuality. But I can't simply stop buying from Amazon. I could count the number of books I've bought from them in almost twenty years on one hand. What I do buy from them is everything else, like... show more
Rant ahead. I didn't join Friendica to protest anything. I didn't join to make a political statement. I joined for one reason only. Facebook shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app), and their main site is a nightmare to use with screen readers. That's it. I was just looking for a place where I could find new friends (I lost almost all of mine after moving here), and read interesting things. Yet almost everyone I approve gets set to Subscriber, because of constant political posts, anti-capitalism/extreme leftism, or an obsession with technology. Yes, I post about artificial intelligence, but just as something interesting I read in the news. I don't live for technology. Likewise, I mostly don't choose the places I buy from based on politics, how the workers are paid, what the owners do, etc. It is true that I don't ever give to the Salvation army because of their stance on homosexuality. But I can't simply stop buying from Amazon. I could count the number of books I've bought from them in almost twenty years on one hand. What I do buy from them is everything else, like essentials for my life, from food, to body care, to technology, to household items, and more. I love it when people say "just buy locally". Great! Now can you give me a working pair of eyes, money, and a car? Then, there are those who say "try this site". That seems reasonable. But will they give me free shipping and discounts as Amazon does, and will their selection be as varied? If there is a site like that, I would be more than willing to buy from it. Anyway, I'm just looking for people who share my interests, and while I've found a few, they are very few, indeed. Even those who just post regular things, whether they interest me or not, seem rare here. This probably why so many people don't come to the Fediverse. It's like there's a little clique, and those of us who are not in it are shut out in the cold. Yes, we're invited, and some of the people here are truly wonderful individuals as a whole. But if we have nothing in common with most of them, how are we supposed to find our own? Thank you to those who do post wonderful things. I did find a few of you, and rest assured, you are set to friends and to all, so that I see all of your posts.
I tried to post this to the Friendica support forum, but it kept timing out when I entered my information. I am now attempting to subscribe to their e-mail list. However, I thought I would write this here so that those who know coding, etc. might be able to offer a solution, or at least, to pass this on to the developers.
I joined Friendica in October of 2024, when Facebook decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app). I am totally blind, and their main page is a nightmare to use with a screen readre (NVDA in my case). I chose Friendica because of the huge character limit, the ability to edit and delete posts, local posting, extensive profiles with keywords, and the ability to connect with all sorts of accounts in the Fediverse. For the most part, I am enjoying my time here. However, I am noticing a lot of inaccessibility on the Friendica page. I am not a programmer, but I'm guessing this is at the core of the software and is not due to the instance I'm using (friendica.world). I am also guessing that the page is not written in HTML5 and does not follow WCAG guidel
... show more
I tried to post this to the Friendica support forum, but it kept timing out when I entered my information. I am now attempting to subscribe to their e-mail list. However, I thought I would write this here so that those who know coding, etc. might be able to offer a solution, or at least, to pass this on to the developers.
I joined Friendica in October of 2024, when Facebook decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app). I am totally blind, and their main page is a nightmare to use with a screen readre (NVDA in my case). I chose Friendica because of the huge character limit, the ability to edit and delete posts, local posting, extensive profiles with keywords, and the ability to connect with all sorts of accounts in the Fediverse. For the most part, I am enjoying my time here. However, I am noticing a lot of inaccessibility on the Friendica page. I am not a programmer, but I'm guessing this is at the core of the software and is not due to the instance I'm using (friendica.world). I am also guessing that the page is not written in HTML5 and does not follow WCAG guidelines, though I may be wrong about that. If not, I strongly urge the developers to review them and implement them if possible. If so, perhaps, some changes can still be made that would make this a more screen reader-friendly site. Note that I tried this with Firefox and Supermium (a direct fork of Chrome).
Mostly, I use TweeseCake to access the site, but there are some things I can't do with that client. All of the following refer to the site itself.
There is a list of links at the top of the page that acts like a menu. This causes many problems while trying to perform basic tasks, particularly editing posts and handling notifications. I can't always activate said links/menu either.
1A. I can't stress how frustrating editing posts is. It sometimes takes over ten minutes. The "edit" option is a link/menu, and it can only be found via another menu. Once I finally find and activate it, I hear the sound indicating that I have entered focus Mode. Usually, this means that I am in an edit box and can type. However, in this case, I am taken back to the main page, as if I never entered the option to edit my post. Using e to try to find an edit box doesn't help, as it just sends me to the replies to different comments. So I am forced to find the post, and start all over again. The only way I can do this successfully is to try to tab through the links/menu at the top of the page (when it works), then through other posts, until, finally, I am placed in an edit box where I can type.
1B. When I go to the Notifications" link, I have to tab to "Mark all System Notifications as Seen". This isn't even a regular link, as I can't copy and paste the text from it. Once I tab to and out of that, I can then read my notifications. But here is what I have to do if I want to see follow requests. 1. Try to get the notifications link to work, then click on it. 2. Tab to marking notifications. 3. Perform a search for the word follow. 4. Click on the link of the notification that someone wants to follow me. I open this in a new window, to try to keep the original one available. 5. Make my choice as to whether to approve that notification, then close that window. 6. Return to the main window. Only now, I am not where I left off. Instead, I am placed back at the beginning of the page and the Notifications menu is not open. 7. Repeat steps 1 through 3. Ideally, I should be able to go to a normal notifications link, perform steps 3 through 5, then return back to the link, and perform steps 3 through 5 again, as many times as necessary, without having to repeat 1 through 3.
I can't just go to the site and enter an edit box to post. I must go through a menu to find the link to do so. Yet there is an edit box for searching for content, tags, etc.
Some pinned posts don't always read properly. I can see my name, when I posted, that it's pinned, a public message, tags (if applicable), buttons for resharing, etc., and the number of comments. But I cannot simply read the post itself. ""Comments" is also a button, not a link. Even when I expand them, I still can't see my post, and finding the button again to close them takes a lot of time, as posts also have their own buttons. Note that unpinned posts are read properly.
While the process of editing my profile is completely accessible, finding the edit option might be slightly confusing for new users, as it requires entering yet another link/menu, this time with the user name as the title..
If I go to a profile of someone not on Friendica (usually Mastodon) and wish to reply to a post, after I enter my credentials, it takes me back to my profile, not to the relevant post. It only worked once.
The Friendica app for Windows is basically the site itself. I don't understand this at all.
If you want to see a truly accessible site, try this link. I don't work for them, though I do have an account there.
Please, if any changes can be made, I urge you to do so. The site is otherwise a pleasure to use, but my frustration at not being able to easily perform such basic tasks is increasing.
@Georgiana Brummell First of all, I've just noticed that you seem to not have joined the Friendica support forum yet. As far as I know, you can't post to a Friendica group/forum without fully connecting to it first.
As for the accessibility issues: To most people, it appears like Friendica has only just been made since they haven't heard of it before mid-January. But actually, Friendica is from 2010. And its frontend is largely stuck in the early 2010s, including technologically.
Friendica has always been a spare-time hobbyist project. It was mostly developed by one single man for almost two years. That guy is a protocol designer and not a frontend developer. Also, I think Friendica never had more than two regular developers, and it definitely never had any developer who really knows how to make a modern and appealing user interface. I mean, you've obviously never seen Friendica's user interface, but let me tell you that it's quite old-fashioned. It'
... show more
@Georgiana Brummell First of all, I've just noticed that you seem to not have joined the Friendica support forum yet. As far as I know, you can't post to a Friendica group/forum without fully connecting to it first.
As for the accessibility issues: To most people, it appears like Friendica has only just been made since they haven't heard of it before mid-January. But actually, Friendica is from 2010. And its frontend is largely stuck in the early 2010s, including technologically.
Friendica has always been a spare-time hobbyist project. It was mostly developed by one single man for almost two years. That guy is a protocol designer and not a frontend developer. Also, I think Friendica never had more than two regular developers, and it definitely never had any developer who really knows how to make a modern and appealing user interface. I mean, you've obviously never seen Friendica's user interface, but let me tell you that it's quite old-fashioned. It's just meant to do its job.
Hobbyist, spare-time developers of such an extremely niche piece of software who are not trained in Web UI design normally don't know a thing about accessibility. And truly, they don't care. If the UI covers all features, and the users don't have to SSH or telnet onto the Web server to use it, it's often good enough.
Friendica's regularly active user community has never been more than maybe a few thousand at a time, maybe even only a few hundred, as opposed to the over two million at which Mastodon has topped out. Thus, Friendica has never encountered blind or visually-impaired users yet.
You can see it all over the place. Alt-text is not part of Friendica's culture. Some Friendica veterans staunchly refuse to describe their media because they think alt-text is another Mastodon fad that Mastodon fundamentalists want to force upon the whole rest of the Fediverse with Mastodon's entire culture. Alt-text, to them, is like limiting your posts to 500 characters.
All this is why nobody has noticed yet that Friendica is not accessible at all.
I've got a suspicion that Friendica can only be made fully accessible by throwing the entire Web frontend away, developing an entirely new one from scratch and then also making all-new themes for it.
Also, it's only natural that TweeseCake doesn't support many of Friendica's features. As it looks to me, TweeseCake's Fediverse side is built against Mastodon and only Mastodon. If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, TweeseCake doesn't cover it either. Thus, TweeseCake probably only covers about 20% of Friendica's features because Mastodon doesn't have the other 80%.
@Jupiter Rowland Again, thank you for the wonderful explanation. I am not doubting you at all, by the way, just explaining something. Dreamwidth looks very much like LiveJournal, which has been around for longer than twenty years. I've been using computers for over two decades, and I've definitely seen many good older sites, including from the 2010's. As a matter of fact, many older sites are far better than modern ones, because they are mostly text, don't have hamburger menus, strange buttons, etc. The old Basic HTML version of GMail and even Facebooks Basic Mobile site are two more excellent examples of good sites, though sadly, both of them are gone now. To me, Friendica actually feels a lot more modern, and in a bad way.
Thank you for explaining a bit about Friendica culture and membership. I joined for the reasons I said, so I wasn't really thinking about that. Most of my friends in the Fediverse are on Mastodon, though a few do come from other p
... show more
@Jupiter Rowland Again, thank you for the wonderful explanation. I am not doubting you at all, by the way, just explaining something. Dreamwidth looks very much like LiveJournal, which has been around for longer than twenty years. I've been using computers for over two decades, and I've definitely seen many good older sites, including from the 2010's. As a matter of fact, many older sites are far better than modern ones, because they are mostly text, don't have hamburger menus, strange buttons, etc. The old Basic HTML version of GMail and even Facebooks Basic Mobile site are two more excellent examples of good sites, though sadly, both of them are gone now. To me, Friendica actually feels a lot more modern, and in a bad way.
Thank you for explaining a bit about Friendica culture and membership. I joined for the reasons I said, so I wasn't really thinking about that. Most of my friends in the Fediverse are on Mastodon, though a few do come from other places. I initially avoided Mastodon because of the 500 character limit, no local posting, and the inability to edit/delete posts. I later learned that some instances have very long posting limits, and that posts can be edited and deleted. I was considering Hometown or possibly Glitchsoc. I forgot why I chose Friendica over those. Now, I heard that many instances on Mastodon are very strict with what they allow. I don't post obscenities, graphic images, anything illegal, etc. but I also don't want to be thrown out simply for expressing an opinion that is different from those of the moderators. I'm perfectly fine with acting a certain way within groups, but on my own timeline, I want the ability to post as I choose without my work being deleted or being banned. I heard that Pleroma is good in that regard. If I did switch, though, I would need to choose an accessible platform and, I hope, to be able to take this account with me.
As for TweeseCake, it workss with almost everything. I can see and reply to posts, create, edit, and delete my own (it respect the long ones and allows me to use carriage return instead of posting when I press that), follow and unfollow people, block and unblock them, etc. But I can't edit my profile, pin posts, follow tags, go to a list of blocked users so that I can ublock them, filter out certain words and/or phrases so that I don't see them in my timeline (I'm not even sure if I can do that on Friendica), etc. I can sort read timelines such as Home, Notifications, Mentions, and Federated, and add specific conversations, favourites (that one doesn't work well here though it does on TwBlue), etc. But I can't create, edit, or delete circles.
@Jupiter Rowland To answer your other point, I did try to join the forum. However, when I entered my friendica.world information, it timed out. I tried my actual e-mail and that didn't work. Do I need to actually join the forum site separately? Also, I had no idea that there were so few developers of Friendica. I knew my instance only had one, but I thought there were more working on the main site. It's a shame, as this is really a great place.
@Robert Kingett @Jupiter Rowland It really is sad. I can do most things with TweeseCake, but when it comes to those few, i go crazy! I love the features, but in some cases, the accessibility just isn't there. It would be perfect otherwise.
@Robert Kingett Hubzilla started out as a Friendica fork by Friendica's own creator. He maintained it for twice as long as Friendica, until 2016. Since then, there are only two developers for much, much more code than Friendica has, and they're spare-time hobbyists, too, who only work on Hubzilla when they happen to find some time.
Thus, due to Hubzilla's massive backend, UI maintenance has largely fallen to the wayside. Hubzilla used to have a whole bunch of themes, but only one survived to this day because the two devs had to keep one theme alive. Its name "Redbasic" comes from Hubzilla's original name, Red. Apart from getting more settings with Hubzilla 9, it didn't change that much over time. Hubzilla kind of still looks like Friendica more than a dozen years ago.
It's mostly the backend that keeps the devs busy, too busy to take care of anything else. Example: The built-in help is half-useless because it's totally outdated and therefore partially incomp
... show more
@Robert Kingett Hubzilla started out as a Friendica fork by Friendica's own creator. He maintained it for twice as long as Friendica, until 2016. Since then, there are only two developers for much, much more code than Friendica has, and they're spare-time hobbyists, too, who only work on Hubzilla when they happen to find some time.
Thus, due to Hubzilla's massive backend, UI maintenance has largely fallen to the wayside. Hubzilla used to have a whole bunch of themes, but only one survived to this day because the two devs had to keep one theme alive. Its name "Redbasic" comes from Hubzilla's original name, Red. Apart from getting more settings with Hubzilla 9, it didn't change that much over time. Hubzilla kind of still looks like Friendica more than a dozen years ago.
It's mostly the backend that keeps the devs busy, too busy to take care of anything else. Example: The built-in help is half-useless because it's totally outdated and therefore partially incomplete and partially plain wrong. Features that have been available for several years aren't covered, but things that have been removed in the last decade are. Parts of it actually still refer to a "Red Matrix" which ceased to exist in 2015 when the Red Matrix became Hubzilla. The German and English help is currently being re-written by a user.
Alt-text has to be manually grafted into the BBcode that embeds an image in a post. There is no official documentation on that yet, and I'll have to check if the rewrite covers it. How it's done is only known because, I think, one of the devs looked it up in the code, then told us, and it's being passed on from user to user every once in a while.
In fact, I've once been told by a blind or visually-impaired user that at least Hubzilla's Articles app for non-federating long-form articles did not work in her screen reader at all.
Hubzilla's frontend must largely run on code from 2012 when it was matched with the completely re-written backend. Afterwards, new or changed features were only patched in. Hubzilla's UI is convoluted and confusing even for sighted users.
Also, Hubzilla has never had a run-in with blind users either because it's even more obscure than Friendica, and its community is even smaller than Friendica's.
Lastly, Hubzilla can only be used via the Web interface. There is no other way. It doesn't support Mastodon apps, and it never will.
"Getting back to the cluttered user interface I was talking about. Friendica allows the user to make changes to the user interface. There are a couple of themes to choose from and the themes can be customized in color. Also the layout and the content of the stream can be adjusted. This way I was able to create a style that is easier to digest making Friendica a much better experience than it was for me in the past."
Could this possibly help with my problems? By the way, this is a fairly good article that explains some of the differences between Friendica and Mastodon.
Here is an explanation of another site that I just f
"Getting back to the cluttered user interface I was talking about. Friendica allows the user to make changes to the user interface. There are a couple of themes to choose from and the themes can be customized in color. Also the layout and the content of the stream can be adjusted. This way I was able to create a style that is easier to digest making Friendica a much better experience than it was for me in the past."
Could this possibly help with my problems? By the way, this is a fairly good article that explains some of the differences between Friendica and Mastodon.
Here is an explanation of another site that I just found, called Akkoma. It sounds interesting, but also a bit complicated.
Between Friendica, Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, Hometown, glitchsoc, and the others, I am very confused. I didn't think I would have to be considering this again. It was bad enough when I lost all of my friends on Facebook (only one or two even talk with me outside of it) and had to find a new place to go to, because Facebook decided that accessibility didn't matter. Now, I may have to do it all over again! I really am trying to avoid this headache. At the same time, I need to know what my options are and if anything truly meets my needs.
@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett Perhaps, the real solution is to see if TweeseCake could implement these things. i just tried TWBlue, and they offer the options to view followers, those whom I follow, and blocked users. I cannot do this on TweeseCake. I can also view my favourites/likes without them disappear, as they do on TweeseCake. However, TWBlue doesn't allow me to write long posts with paragraphs, or to edit/delete my posts. This is why I hardly ever use it and comments. Neither one of these allows me to edit my profile, view the profiles of others, or request/reject follow requests, or interact with circles. But I am fairly certain that Pachli for Android does allow profile editing. So the ability is out there. Even if the developers of Friendica can't or won't change things, it can be made fully accessible via these clients. I know Raccoon for Friendica exists, and that is specifically designed to work with it, but it's for Android, and I haven't tried it yet. I am far more focused on Windows soutions.
@Robert Kingett @Jupiter Rowland How is your instance with regard to censorship? Will they moderate me or ban me for posting things they don't like? What about GoToSocial, in general? i don't want to join an instance where all sorts of ridiculous things need content warnings, etc. I know that Hometown allows for local posts, but do some instances of Mastodon also allow this and can they federate as widely as Friendica? While it's true that most of my contacts are on Mastodon, not all are.
@Robert Kingett I'm confused. Were you responding to my post? If so, I have no idea what I wrote to make you so upset. I'm not against the idea of content warnings in general, as some posts do need them. But I've seen warnings on all sorts of things, and most of the time, I had no idea why. I've also heard that some moderators do like to ban people for simple disagreement, so it is a valid concern. I don't know who runs your instance, but it does seem to be by invitation-only. Hence my questions. Anyway, if you weren't responding to me, please disregard this.
@jupiter_rowland Yes. That was for you. Just because you don’t understand why someone does something, and you don’t take the time to ask them, it doesn’t mean a moderator is making them do it. Maybe their catering to their followers. You never ask but moving on, others provide content warnings because they want to provide them. Nobody’s making them provide content warnings. The mods do require content warnings for things like politics. That is something I thought you would be for, but I encourage you to read the rules. Other than that, they do not require content warnings. If someone reports your post, they might tell you to remove it or they might just suspend you or something. I’ve never had my posts reported so i don’t know how the mods are here.
@Robert Kingett @Jupiter Rowland Thank you. That's a good thing to know. I never join anywhere without reading the rules. I was just asking for your experiences, etc. Then, of course, I would read them and decide. Many rules make complete sense, such as not posting hate speech, not promoting violence, putting anything sexual behind a warning, not posting anything illegal, etc. My only concern is that, sometimes, rules that seem perfectly reasonable can be abused by those with the power to moderate. That's all. i don't mind strict rules in groups or forums devoted to a specific topic, but on my own timeline, I do like more freedom. As for warnings in general, I've seen them so often that I've turned off the option to show them so that I can just read the post. I'm an adult, and if I really don't like something, I can skip it.
@the esoteric programmer @Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett Thank you. But I still can't edit with TWBlue, so I would only use it if absolutely necessary. That said, this is very good to know and does seem reasonable.
no editting? perhaps open an issue against their repository? this shouldn't happen, or if it does, it's an unimplemented feature, and someone has to make an issue asking for it. I would do it myself, have done it in some cases, but this is a usability and not a compatibility thing, for that I would have to use it, and I haven't used windows in ages, I dk if I can spin up a virtual machine or something because my hardware is extremely limited lol. I'm thinking about going into the friendica codebase and seeing what I can do in there, but as someone before me said, the whole frontend of friendica would probably have to be rewritten. I didn't know about the alt text issues, which makes me think that friendica people are going to oppose anything mastodon does, and in light of that they're gonna refuse to add accessibility because blind and VI people are the weak ones, and all the weak shall die or something, isn't that the current fascist regime's song now? anyways, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't have high hopes. My advice here would be to try and connect to that forum afew more times, ev... show more
no editting? perhaps open an issue against their repository? this shouldn't happen, or if it does, it's an unimplemented feature, and someone has to make an issue asking for it. I would do it myself, have done it in some cases, but this is a usability and not a compatibility thing, for that I would have to use it, and I haven't used windows in ages, I dk if I can spin up a virtual machine or something because my hardware is extremely limited lol. I'm thinking about going into the friendica codebase and seeing what I can do in there, but as someone before me said, the whole frontend of friendica would probably have to be rewritten. I didn't know about the alt text issues, which makes me think that friendica people are going to oppose anything mastodon does, and in light of that they're gonna refuse to add accessibility because blind and VI people are the weak ones, and all the weak shall die or something, isn't that the current fascist regime's song now? anyways, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't have high hopes. My advice here would be to try and connect to that forum afew more times, even through a vpn if your country blocked the domain for whatever reason, and then post there what you posted here, we have to know their stanse on accessibility and other key issues like those for sure eventually, because it's possible a friendica fork may be imminent in that case.
Just last week I got in touch with an accessibility expert. We had a two-hour session where she registered an account and went through the whole system. She was using an iPad with VoiceOver. There were three main problems:
@Michael Vogel Thank you so much! I can't comment on Voiceover, as I use Windows, but I am assuming that, since you accessed it using the actual site, the problems would be the same.
I don't own any Windows devices, I use Linux. I now have an iPhone (just for testing), an Android device and a Chromebook. So I want to try to make it accessible for those devices. And I hope it will work with other screenreaders too.
After I've made most of the changes, I'd like to get some feedback, just to make sure I'm on the right track. So I may get back to you about this.
I can't say how much time I'll need, though. Working on Friendica is like trying to juggle a dozen things at once while solving a Rubik's Cube and reciting Shakespeare. I try to code new things, to maintain the system, search and fix bugs, provide support and update and maintain three Friendica installations (while also having a daytime job and some other spare time activities).
@Georgiana Brummell He is the lead developer of Friendica, bearing the main responsibility. However, it is not correct to say that he is the only one continuing the development of Friendica. It would be unfair to disregard the contributions of countless other individuals who provide input, conduct code reviews, or maintain the stable versions.
In fact, the web UI has received little attention in recent years. Engaging UX/UI experts for a FOSS project is always a challenge. However, there is currently a development in this area that is quite interesting.
Thank you @Robert Kingett for your contribution. This feedback is extremely important. It would be great if you could accompany the changes already announced and support the project with suggestions for improvements.
@Jupiter Rowland Of course it is the culture of Friendica users to use alt tags. Please refresh your knowledge in other areas as well ;)
@Matthias It is true that it is the culture of (many) Friendica users to use alt tags. But it would be good if it became even easier to create them. Unfortunately, it is not yet self-explanatory how it can be created and it is not integrated into the GUI everywhere.
I need to correct some things. I have spent a lot of time trying to make Friendica accessible. Many years ago I got in touch with a blind person who was working in this area. I made a lot of changes, but due to a lack of equipment to check them, I was never able to see if the changes were really good.
Last Thursday I had a two-hour session with an accessibility expert. She found a number of problems and said that, apart from three, the software as a whole was quite good from an accessibility point of view. In particular, she said that post creation was quite good compared to Mastodon.
However, there are some problems, such as the fact that some menu items aren't spoken. We also use the wrong aria roles for a lot of links. And we don't always use buttons and navigation elements where we should.
As for alt text: Of course we support the creation of this. As I have blind contacts, I'm very interested in this. However (as already mentioned) the interface can be improved a lot.
Also regarding the technology: Friendica has undergone some major overhauls of its in
... show more
I need to correct some things. I have spent a lot of time trying to make Friendica accessible. Many years ago I got in touch with a blind person who was working in this area. I made a lot of changes, but due to a lack of equipment to check them, I was never able to see if the changes were really good.
Last Thursday I had a two-hour session with an accessibility expert. She found a number of problems and said that, apart from three, the software as a whole was quite good from an accessibility point of view. In particular, she said that post creation was quite good compared to Mastodon.
However, there are some problems, such as the fact that some menu items aren't spoken. We also use the wrong aria roles for a lot of links. And we don't always use buttons and navigation elements where we should.
As for alt text: Of course we support the creation of this. As I have blind contacts, I'm very interested in this. However (as already mentioned) the interface can be improved a lot.
Also regarding the technology: Friendica has undergone some major overhauls of its internal structure. Just recently there was another refactoring wave that improved the whole class structure. This means that the core - although started 15 years ago - is quite modern (including a bunch of automated tests).
Could this possibly help with my problems? By the way, this is a fairly good article that explains some of the differences between Friendica and Mastodon.
End quote.
It depends on where exactly your issues are rooted. If the UI is too cluttered for you, it may help, but I'm afraid that the editor itself may not be accessible. But if the UI elements themselves aren't accessible, it makes no difference if you rearrange them or remove elements that you don't need.
As I've probably already mentioned, Friendica has changed a great lot since the last time I've used it, and my more recent experience is from Hubzilla and (streams). But while they let you rearrange all pages, they don't let you modify the UI elements themselves in detail and add accessibility features.
Also, I don't know if Friendica lets you change the layouts of the pages by editing the raw Comanche code that describes t
Could this possibly help with my problems? By the way, this is a fairly good article that explains some of the differences between Friendica and Mastodon.
End quote.
It depends on where exactly your issues are rooted. If the UI is too cluttered for you, it may help, but I'm afraid that the editor itself may not be accessible. But if the UI elements themselves aren't accessible, it makes no difference if you rearrange them or remove elements that you don't need.
As I've probably already mentioned, Friendica has changed a great lot since the last time I've used it, and my more recent experience is from Hubzilla and (streams). But while they let you rearrange all pages, they don't let you modify the UI elements themselves in detail and add accessibility features.
Also, I don't know if Friendica lets you change the layouts of the pages by editing the raw Comanche code that describes them. While this means getting used to Comanche, I can imagine this actually being more accessible than a purely WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor.
In this regard, it's interesting that (streams) doesn't offer drag-and-drop anymore. Either that, or Hubzilla introduced it after Osada and Zap were forked off.
Quote:
Here is an explanation of another site that I just found, called Akkoma. It sounds interesting, but also a bit complicated.
End quote.
Akkoma is a fork of Pleroma with a default UI that, I guess, isn't dramatically different plus compatibility with the same third-party UIs. One downside in comparison with Friendica, Hubzilla etc. is that you, as a user, can't choose a UI for your account individually because the UI is pre-defined for the whole instance. Also, both Pleroma and Akkoma are microblogging projects and closer to Twitter than to Facebook.
@Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett You could try and ask the developers of both TweeseCake and TWBlue to implement full support for Friendica, not via the Mastodon client API, but by also implementing Friendica's own client API.
I wouldn't hold my breath for it, though. They may not even have heard of Friendica yet. And if you tell them what it is, they may still decide that if they haven't heard of it yet because it hasn't been the talk of the town for long enough, it's too obscure to bother.
@Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett Well, GoToSocial is quite different from Mastodon and Friendica in one regard: It's mainly made for hosting your own personal instance. It isn't really for more or less big public, open-registration instances. As far as I know, it doesn't even come with its own built-in UI, so if you want a Web UI on your own instance, you have to choose one and add it yourself.
Still, there are some public, open-registration GoToSocial instances. And if you're going to use it with TWBlue, the Web UI shouldn't even matter beyond registering an account because you won't touch it anymore afterwards.
I tried to post this to the Friendica support forum, but it kept timing out when I entered my information. I am now attempting to subscribe to their e-mail list. However, I thought I would write this here so that those who know coding, etc. might be able to offer a solution, or at least, to pass this on to the developers.
I joined Friendica in October of 2024, when Facebook decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app). I am totally blind, and their main page is a nightmare to use with a screen readre (NVDA in my case). I chose Friendica because of the huge character limit, the ability to edit and delete posts, local posting, extensive profiles with keywords, and the ability to connect with all sorts of accounts in the Fediverse. For the most part, I am enjoying my time here. However, I am noticing a lot of inaccessibility on the Friendica page. I am not a programmer, but I'm guessing this is at the core of the software and is not due to the instance I'm using (friendica.world). I am also guessing that the page is not written in HTML5 and does not follow WCAG guidelines, though I may be wrong about that. If not, I strongly urge the developers to review them and implement them if possible. If so, perhaps, some changes can still be made that would make this a more screen reader-friendly site. Note that I tried this with Firefox and Supermium (a direct fork of Chrome).
Mostly, I use TweeseCake to access the site, but there are some things I can't do with that client. All of the following refer to the site itself.
There is a list of links at the top of the page that acts like a menu. This causes many problems while trying to perform basic tasks, particularly editing posts and handling notifications. I can't always activate said links/menu either.
1A. I can't stress how frustrating editing posts is. It sometimes takes over ten minutes. The "edit" option is a link/menu, and it can only be found via another menu. Once I finally find and activate it, I hear the sound indicating that I have entered focus Mode. Usually, this means that I am in an edit box and can type. However, in this case, I am taken back to the main page, as if I never entered the option to edit my post. Using e to try to find an edit box doesn't help, as it just sends me to the replies to different comments. So I am forced to find the post, and start all over again. The only way I can do this successfully is to try to tab through the links/menu at the top of the page (when it works), then through other posts, until, finally, I am placed in an edit box where I can type.
1B. When I go to the Notifications" link, I have to tab to "Mark all System Notifications as Seen". This isn't even a regular link, as I can't copy and paste the text from it. Once I tab to and out of that, I can then read my notifications. But here is what I have to do if I want to see follow requests. 1. Try to get the notifications link to work, then click on it. 2. Tab to marking notifications. 3. Perform a search for the word follow. 4. Click on the link of the notification that someone wants to follow me. I open this in a new window, to try to keep the original one available. 5. Make my choice as to whether to approve that notification, then close that window. 6. Return to the main window. Only now, I am not where I left off. Instead, I am placed back at the beginning of the page and the Notifications menu is not open. 7. Repeat steps 1 through 3. Ideally, I should be able to go to a normal notifications link, perform steps 3 through 5, then return back to the link, and perform steps 3 through 5 again, as many times as necessary, without having to repeat 1 through 3.
I can't just go to the site and enter an edit box to post. I must go through a menu to find the link to do so. Yet there is an edit box for searching for content, tags, etc.
Some pinned posts don't always read properly. I can see my name, when I posted, that it's pinned, a public message, tags (if applicable), buttons for resharing, etc., and the number of comments. But I cannot simply read the post itself. ""Comments" is also a button, not a link. Even when I expand them, I still can't see my post, and finding the button again to close them takes a lot of time, as posts also have their own buttons. Note that unpinned posts are read properly.
While the process of editing my profile is completely accessible, finding the edit option might be slightly confusing for new users, as it requires entering yet another link/menu, this time with the user name as the title..
If I go to a profile of someone not on Friendica (usually Mastodon) and wish to reply to a post, after I enter my credentials, it takes me back to my profile, not to the relevant post. It only worked once.
The Friendica app for Windows is basically the site itself. I don't understand this at all.
If you want to see a truly accessible site, try this link. I don't work for them, though I do have an account there.
Please, if any changes can be made, I urge you to do so. The site is otherwise a pleasure to use, but my frustration at not being able to easily perform such basic tasks is increasing.
Yes I created an issue for. What i need is an extension to the upload-form to add th alttext at the upload-moment.
Noe it is not possible from backend. So my uploadet can't add it.
Now you have to upload the image, the go to images, choose the new image, edit it, add alttexr, go back to posting, choose image from browser...
Or you upload it with the new uploader, add alttext in between of the ending img and url tag... but then it's not in the database... you can't reuse the image (what i do with som images!!!)
@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett Since I use TweeseCake 99% of the time, I am going to try to tag the developers here, and only use the tag for this part of the thread, so as not to annoy them. I also just read some absolutely wonderful news about the app being redesigned, so perhaps, some of the suggestions mentioned below are already part of that plan. As it is, it's a great client, so I can't wait to see what the future holds!
@TweeseCake The main post here describes problems with the Friendica site itself so can be ignored in your case. However, TweeseCake makes almost everything accessible, except the following.
Editing my profile. There is an "edit profile" option, but I am not sure if this is for Friendica or the T
... show more
@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett Since I use TweeseCake 99% of the time, I am going to try to tag the developers here, and only use the tag for this part of the thread, so as not to annoy them. I also just read some absolutely wonderful news about the app being redesigned, so perhaps, some of the suggestions mentioned below are already part of that plan. As it is, it's a great client, so I can't wait to see what the future holds!
@TweeseCake The main post here describes problems with the Friendica site itself so can be ignored in your case. However, TweeseCake makes almost everything accessible, except the following.
Editing my profile. There is an "edit profile" option, but I am not sure if this is for Friendica or the TweeseCake client itself. Regardless, I cannot see the main text of my profile from Friendica, and other features, such as keywords, aren't there.
Accepting and rejecting follow requests. I can see who is following me, and I can also read notifications that someone wants to follow me, but I cannot act on them. Likewise, I can't go to my contacts and change channel notifications, such as seeing all posts, for example.
Working with pinned posts. I can't pin, unpin, or see posts that I've pinned to my profile.
Viewing posts or notifications on the main site. There is an option to view something on the web, but whenever I have tried to use it, it sends me to a "page not found" error.
Seeing blocked users. I can block people, and I can unblock them if I am in a post where they posted. But I cannot see a list of my blocked users, so that, for example, I can unblock someone if I blocked him by mistake.
Seeing favourites properly. Every time I try to activate that feature, they appear for a moment, then disappear.
Using circles. I haven't used these yet, but I thought I should add it.
I realise that some of these features are specific to Friendica, and since TweeseCake was designed to work with Mastodon, it makes sense that some of them have not been implemented. But 1, 2, and 5 are essential.
As a grammar prescriptivist, I take writing and proper use of words very seriously. I recently saw a post about ending text messages with full stops. Apparently, some think this is a bad idea. No. It's called using punctuation correctly! Perhaps, they should read a few grammars instead of playing their silly video games! The same is true of netspeak, textspeak, corporate spaek, and abbreviating everything. Likewise, I have no use for political correctness. I refuse to use words such as visually-challenged, vertically-challenged, etc. I will say blind (or visually impaired if the person has some vision), short, fat, etc. Unless I'm writing poetry and am seeking flowery words for things, I call them what they are. Neither do I see any difference between saying "a blind person" and "a person who is blind", for example. I also have no time for so-called gender-neutral words, unless they honestly make sense and are actually descriptive, such as firefighter or police officer. But I'm just as likely to say fireman, policeman, waiter, steward, actor, chairman, etc. and change the gender w
... show more
As a grammar prescriptivist, I take writing and proper use of words very seriously. I recently saw a post about ending text messages with full stops. Apparently, some think this is a bad idea. No. It's called using punctuation correctly! Perhaps, they should read a few grammars instead of playing their silly video games! The same is true of netspeak, textspeak, corporate spaek, and abbreviating everything. Likewise, I have no use for political correctness. I refuse to use words such as visually-challenged, vertically-challenged, etc. I will say blind (or visually impaired if the person has some vision), short, fat, etc. Unless I'm writing poetry and am seeking flowery words for things, I call them what they are. Neither do I see any difference between saying "a blind person" and "a person who is blind", for example. I also have no time for so-called gender-neutral words, unless they honestly make sense and are actually descriptive, such as firefighter or police officer. But I'm just as likely to say fireman, policeman, waiter, steward, actor, chairman, etc. and change the gender when necessary. I refuse to use the singular they. There are two sexes (gender is for grammar). You're either one or the other. This absolutely doesn't mean that you can't change your sex. If, for example, I meet you as a woman and you change to a man or are a drag king/queen, I will certainly change my use of pronouns when discussing you or talking about you, either permenantly or temporarily, as the case requires. But unless you literally have multiple personalities or are a machine or an inanimate object, you are neither a they nor an it, and you're certainly not some made-up pronoun such as xe. I would never cause harm to those who use such words. I would just consider them to be silly or confused. If the sex is unknown, or if a sentence can apply to both sexes, I use the masculine, simply because it's grammatically correct to do so.
I am the chairperson of an organisation and I'm not a chairman. You are more obsessed by your gramnar obsession than for the respect of the individuals. I am very certain that this should be the other way round.
At the end of the day, only humans use grammar. The use of grammar should focus on the respect of people.
@lindaduval No, but you very well could be a chairwoman. I'm not against changing the gender of a word when necessary to match the sex of the individual. Language exists for a reason and so do conventions. It would be quite strange if everyone call things according to his own idea of what they should be named.
I am the chaiperson of my organisation literally. Why do I want to pigeonhole myself? The chairperson terminology is valid and inclusive. Why should the focus be gender centric and exclusive?
I certainly rebel to the patriarchal society and will identity myself as a person, not a gender.
@lindaduval There's nothing exclusive about simply saying what you are. It also makes things easier when people speak about you. It would make far more sense to say "I received a letter from the chairwoman yesterday and she told me" rather than "they told me". I am speaking about one person, not a group. What if you had a name that could be either male or female and I were writing to you? I could say "Dear Madam Chairwoman". Of course, I could also say "Dear Sir or Madam", but it's better to use a title. The former salutation is really if you don't know who will be receiving said letter. "Dear Linda" would be far too informal and quite disrespectful in a business context in any case.
When people write to me, they simply use Dear Ms Duval or Dear Linda. Nobody has ever reported to me that they have struggled in finding an appropriate term.
Dear Sir or Madam are also acceptable when someone does not know the name of the person they are writing to. I would expect this to be rare since most people would make an effort to find out to whom they are writing to these days.
I sign my correspondence as Chair of (name of my organisation)
@lindaduval @lindaduval Yes. In your case, Miss, Mrs. etc. makes sense. But if you had a name that could go either way or that was truly uncommon, just knowing it wouldn't help the writer decide which title to use. Fortunately, as you said, in your case, it's not a problem.
Mrs is also an unacceptable term. There is no need for women to have to advertise whether they are married. There is only one term for men and it is Mr. Women should use Ms. Women really need to move on from the old Victorian patriarchal society that entrapped women into submission.
Again, if someone needs to write to the chaiperson of an organisation, the most respecful thing to do, would simply to find out to whom they are writing to.
@lindaduval @lindaduval To whom they are writing. The extra "to" is redundant. I don't agree with all of these leftist/feminist/man-hating ideas that I've seen from various people, but from a grammatical point of view, the part about Mr. and Ms. does make sense. Either both sexes should have such titles to indicate marriage or there should be a single one for each. But I'm not so radical that I would abandon the old ones, and I myself am a Miss, though at forty-one, I very well may be a Madam. haha
@lindaduval @lindaduval My sincere apologies. I always try to be gentle with non-native speakers. I must say, other than that tiny mistake, you write so well that I would never have guessed that English wasn't your first language! I am equal whether I subscribe to all of that or not. I don't need to be radical or to change the language in order to love myself, or to strive for the best, or to demand to be treated equally. I simply need to be, and I am.
Your preferences are yours and you choose what you prefer. However, we live in a society where it is important to be aware where language can be detrimental to women.
The difference can be simply felt in how much you get paid compared to a man in the same role. Please search "gender pay gap" and you will find that in the legal industry, for example, men can earn as much as 59% more than a woman in the same role.
I left Facebook in October of 2024 precisely to avoid inaccessibility, clutter, and frustration of their main site. Now, I am feeling the same thing with regard to Friendica. I joined here because of the extremely long character limit, the many sites with which I can interact, and the fact that I can edit and delete posts, as well as post locally. Whenever I try to edit a post on the main site, I have problems. This has been true since day one. Now, I'm going to my posts, and instead of seeing the content, I'm only seeing my profile and the tags. I have to go through that same process of editing just to be able to read what the post is. Yes, I use TweeseCake most of the time and it works well, but I have no way of searching posts. So I must use Lukol or try to use Friendica itself to find them, which isn't easy either, unless I tagged them with something unique. On Facebook, I would type my name, a few words from the post, and it would show up. I also have no way of simply sorting comments on TweeseCake as I do, for example, on Luna for Reddit. So I have been missing people's repl
... show more
I left Facebook in October of 2024 precisely to avoid inaccessibility, clutter, and frustration of their main site. Now, I am feeling the same thing with regard to Friendica. I joined here because of the extremely long character limit, the many sites with which I can interact, and the fact that I can edit and delete posts, as well as post locally. Whenever I try to edit a post on the main site, I have problems. This has been true since day one. Now, I'm going to my posts, and instead of seeing the content, I'm only seeing my profile and the tags. I have to go through that same process of editing just to be able to read what the post is. Yes, I use TweeseCake most of the time and it works well, but I have no way of searching posts. So I must use Lukol or try to use Friendica itself to find them, which isn't easy either, unless I tagged them with something unique. On Facebook, I would type my name, a few words from the post, and it would show up. I also have no way of simply sorting comments on TweeseCake as I do, for example, on Luna for Reddit. So I have been missing people's replies to my posts, because I keep getting notifications and other things in my timelines that bury said replies. That may be my fault, as I have several people marked to show all posts. Still, their posts shouldn't show under Mentions if they're not tagging me or replying to my posts, and yet, they do.
I just want to find a site that is easy to use like the Basic Mobile version of Facebook used to be or like Dreamwidth still is, or a client like Luna for Reddit that makes Friendica truly accessible. TweeseCake is 98% there, but there are still a few things that I can't do on it. Perhaps, a dedicated Windows client would be best, and no, I don't mean some strange app that looks like the website.
I would try another instance, but I have a feeling that it will look similar, since it's based on the same software. If I am wrong, please tell me, and I will gladly switch!
Okay. I can find posts by going to the main site and putting what I am seeking in quotes, without the number sign or the at sign. But if I don't know the exact phrasing, I still don't think I can enter my name or my user name and a word or two. Regardless, I still can't read the main post, only the tags and the comments.
I figured out how to find comments with TweeseCake, though it is tedious. If I go through my timeline, the comments to my posts and replies make a little sound before NVDA starts speaking. This is very helpful, of course, though I still wish I had a way to sort just those. Still, I should miss fewer reploies now.
at this point, your best option is to not use friendica, untill the accessibility issues are fixed. Search is indeed a problem, but this is so for most of the fediverse for now, even though mastodon is trying to introduce proper full-text search, we have a long way to go still, but it's improving. If you can, I recommend you switch to something based on either mastodon or go to social, unless you actively use friendica only features
@the esoteric programmer From what I've read, the problem with Mastodon is the ridiculously short character limit. Maybe, some instances don't follow that. I thought it was impossible to edit and delete posts, but I recently read that isn't true. But does it federate to as many different places as Friendica?
delete and edit? yeah, that has been there since a long time ago, let's just say that to me, edit not existing is an urban legend because I wasn't around back then. About federation, sadly, probably not, but then, do you really need it to federate in so many places, how many things do you actually use from there? and also, there are better things than mastodon out there, for example go to social, which allows you to configure post visibility and reply controls, also the character limit for a lot of things, not just posts. I run gts snapshot on my instance, which means I get access to cutting edge features, such as post editting and some other quality of life features. If you want to test it, I believe my instance has open registrations, but I don't think tweesecake works well with go to social for whatever reason, so I use enafore on web from time to time, but I mostly use the native client called tuba for linux
and depending on your skills, I recommend you file bug reports against the friendica project, especially for their web UI if you see accessibility issues with that one. If you do that, make sure you describe what should happen, what happens instead, and if possible, maybe also include a screen recording of you trying to perform the action, so that the people can hear the screenreader and what it's struggling with. Can you do that? if so, would you like to do that? I can help as well, if you want. I never used friendica, I just know it exists and what it can do mostly, however I did help some projects, mostly native UI ones, to solve their accessibility issues, so I can help with proofreading drafts, correcting inconsistencies and stuff like that.
@the esoteric programmer I am actually interested in becoming an accessibility tester, but I just started. I took the first Fast Track for Developers course at Deque University, but I decided to take a quick course on HTML from Geeks4Geeks before proceeding to the Advanced course at Deque. Anyway, I can explain what's going on from a user's point of view, but not on a technicaly level i.e. "when I try to edit a post, I have to keep tabbing through all of the links, until I eventually find the edit box, instead of just pressing e to get to it because it's some kind of dialogue, and the links at the top of the page are not normal ones but are menus of some sort" but not "this is the code to fix it" or "this is the guideline that was broken", etc.
actually, when I go in developer's matrix rooms and tell them about issues with their app, I rarely write any code, because it's their app, they know what to do much better than I do, I'd just end up making it worse while trying to learn the codebase. I present it from the user point of view, what I see and what I should see, because most of the accessibility stuff is just...did you know this can be done in a certain way, don't hide a page in the middle of a dialog and so on? for example, in your case, you could tell them to make the edit field be focusable first, and to reorder the DOM so that the post button is shortly after, or that ctrl+enter posts instead of making a new line if it doesn't already. These people don't know how we use assistive software, so we have to tell them, and yes, from a user perspective is very useful almost all of the time. So yes, your feedback is valuable either way, and not writing it does a diservice to other devs of friendica who don't know of the issue, it doesn't help people because they have one less bug to deal with, those bugs are actually very... show more
actually, when I go in developer's matrix rooms and tell them about issues with their app, I rarely write any code, because it's their app, they know what to do much better than I do, I'd just end up making it worse while trying to learn the codebase. I present it from the user point of view, what I see and what I should see, because most of the accessibility stuff is just...did you know this can be done in a certain way, don't hide a page in the middle of a dialog and so on? for example, in your case, you could tell them to make the edit field be focusable first, and to reorder the DOM so that the post button is shortly after, or that ctrl+enter posts instead of making a new line if it doesn't already. These people don't know how we use assistive software, so we have to tell them, and yes, from a user perspective is very useful almost all of the time. So yes, your feedback is valuable either way, and not writing it does a diservice to other devs of friendica who don't know of the issue, it doesn't help people because they have one less bug to deal with, those bugs are actually very important and every reported bug helps just because it's reported, what we can't see, we can't fix and so on.
@the esoteric programmer Thank you. I was told by actual testers that it's important to know html/java/css, that you need to explain things to companies in a technical manner when writing your report, etc. Perhaps, that's only for professionals. I did have two wonderful experiences in which I wrote to two different companies, explaining things exactly as you suggested. In one, I reviewed a new and an old version of their site and explained exactly what happened as I entered different parts of it and tried various things. Anyway, I am going to try writing to the Friendica Support Group and seeing what they say. I love the platform and features, and it would be really sad if I had to leave. But the lack of accessibility in certain cases is driving me mad!
yes, companies are one thing, open source projects are another. While accessibility in here is hit and miss, I'm making a linux screenreader so I should know more than most lol, but when you tell people of issues, they'll eventually fix them
@the esoteric programmer I use Windows, or when absolutelynecessary, Android. So a Linux client wouldn't really work, unless I was just playing around with Debian again. I wonder if the native site is acessible, though.
go to social has no web frontend because it's very minimalist, it tells you to use a mastodon client to access it because that way it's easier for everyone. Either way, enafore is quite accessible, and it's a web client. O yeah, you can use it from focus mode as well, so no need to arrow through buttons like mad, use it like a native app
@the esoteric programmer enafore is okay. I have used it in the past. But TweeseCake is a lot easier and quicker to use. That said, if a website is truly accessible, it can be very enjoyable. Maybe, Enafore and Semafore just don't work well with Friendica. I'm not sure, as i've never tried them with other platforms, so it wouldn't be fair for me to truly comment on them.
@the esoteric programmer I just went to Enafore. I immediately receive an error message that said "Internet request failed. Showing offline content." I am clarly online, as I am posting here and other websites work. When I try to go to Notifications, for instance, it just says "loading" and does nothing else. This has been true for a very long time now. Semafore, however, is working again.
hmm, then it's possible friendica isn't implementing the mastodon API properly. What does the network pannel in devtools say? press ctrl+shift+i in firefox or a firefox like browser
@the esoteric programmer Trying to use the site to even figure out where this comment belongs is giving me a headache, and TweeseCake rarely shows me full conversations, even when I specifically tell it to. Regardless, I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be looking for or how to get to that pannel. I see an Accessibility pannel with many different options, but not the one you mentioned.
It is possible that your instance has some problems due to the dramatic increase in subscribers in the last month. You could try the social.trom.tf instance, lovingly managed by @tio
If instead you want to try an English-speaking instance with mastodon Glitch Soc, then I recommend the infosec.exchange instance, lovingly managed by @jerry
@macfranc @ChatJERRYPT @Tio Thank you. But my issues have to do with screen reader accessibility. It's about the appearance of the webpage. I don't think sighted users have all of these problems. Still, I will research those. Perhaps, their code is different and they work better. I just hope they have extensive profiles, etc. as Friendica does. I forgot to mention that as another reason for my joining. I like the platform itself. I just wish the interface were better.
What are the differences between Diaspora, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Hometown, and Glitch? How do they compare to Friendica as far as features? I've heard there are Mastodon instances that allow for longer posts, editing, and deletion. Do they also allow for extensive profiles with keywords, etc? Are there any other networks I should know about? Finally, will the interface of the page on Friendica change depending on my instance? Maybe, it's just a matter of changing that! If I changed to another network, I'm guessing I couldn't export my profile, followers, etc. there. Most importantly, I need something that is truly compatible with Mastodon, because that's technically what TweeseCake was designed for. Since Friendica is very compatible, I can use TweeseCake without any problems.
@Georgiana Brummell #GlitchSoc is a Mastodon fork with some additional functions (e.g. more poll options, markdown, easier change of the character limit).
@Georgiana Brummell #GlitchSoc is a Mastodon fork with some additional functions (e.g. more poll options, markdown, easier change of the character limit).
die Wartungsarbeiten heute Nachmittag wurden nicht nur für Systemwartung genutzt, sondern auch, um zwei neue Themes hier zu installieren 👉 Bookface light und Bookface dark.
Diese beiden Themes sind optisch sehr nah an die Oberfläche von Facebook angelegt. Wem diese also gefällt, der wird mit diesen vermutlich seine Freude haben. 😊
Danke möchte ich an @Matthias und @Kristi H. sagen, die diese Themes wirklich sehr schön umgesetzt haben. 👍
Und so schauen die beiden Themes aus:
Wie ihr die neuen Themes bei euch aktiviert, sehr ihr unten im Screenshot:
Along with accessibility, long character limit, extensive profiles, editing and deleting of posts, and compatibility with TweeseCake,I also want to join an instance or site that respects free speech. Just to clarify, , I wouldn't post hate speech, or harass anyone, etc. But certain instances are really more about a given topic or political viewpoint, and I am seeking something general in nature. I also want the right to express my opinions, to disagree with others in a civil manner, and even to post some content that's not exactly for minors (nothing graphic, just slightly adult-oriented, such as toys, snuff, wine, etc.). I really want to stay away from radical political instances, and technological ones. The first annoy me, and the second, while not bad, really don't align with my interests. My interests include dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, the Regency, coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, reading British literature, nature and historical documentaries, gardening, cats and birds, classical music, theatre (especially operett... show more
Along with accessibility, long character limit, extensive profiles, editing and deleting of posts, and compatibility with TweeseCake,I also want to join an instance or site that respects free speech. Just to clarify, , I wouldn't post hate speech, or harass anyone, etc. But certain instances are really more about a given topic or political viewpoint, and I am seeking something general in nature. I also want the right to express my opinions, to disagree with others in a civil manner, and even to post some content that's not exactly for minors (nothing graphic, just slightly adult-oriented, such as toys, snuff, wine, etc.). I really want to stay away from radical political instances, and technological ones. The first annoy me, and the second, while not bad, really don't align with my interests. My interests include dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, the Regency, coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, reading British literature, nature and historical documentaries, gardening, cats and birds, classical music, theatre (especially operettas), antique menswear, wit, wordplay, dry humour without vulgarity, being childfree, and atheism. I am now considering Pleroma. My current instance, friendica.world s wonderful about allowing all sorts of content, and like I said, I love the site in general. It's just the accessibility that drives me mad.
What are the differences between Diaspora, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Hometown, and Glitch? How do they compare to Friendica as far as features?
As for Hubzilla vs Friendica, I've made a series of tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams). I've made them for those who are looking for a Facebook alternative in the Fediverse, but who only know Mastodon first-hand and Friendica from hearsay. But these tables are useless for blind or visually-impaired users, and I can't change that because it's in the nature of tables. Also, I don't have all data for Friendica yet. (In case someone sighted comes across this comment and wants to see the tables: Here they are).
So I'll try to do a Hubzilla vs Friendica comparison here. Hold on and take some time, for this will be very
What are the differences between Diaspora, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Hometown, and Glitch? How do they compare to Friendica as far as features?
As for Hubzilla vs Friendica, I've made a series of tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams). I've made them for those who are looking for a Facebook alternative in the Fediverse, but who only know Mastodon first-hand and Friendica from hearsay. But these tables are useless for blind or visually-impaired users, and I can't change that because it's in the nature of tables. Also, I don't have all data for Friendica yet. (In case someone sighted comes across this comment and wants to see the tables: Here they are).
So I'll try to do a Hubzilla vs Friendica comparison here. Hold on and take some time, for this will be very, very, very long. 42 lines of comparison with over 10,000 characters.
Friendica was created by Mike Macgirvin in 2010. Hubzilla started out as a Friendica fork by Mike Macgirvin himself in 2012, originally named Red (from spanish la red = the network), then renamed Red Matrix. It was repositioned, reworked, massively extended beyond Friendica's features and renamed Hubzilla in 2015.
Friendica has native Android apps, a closed beta native iOS app and support for Mastodon apps, even though Mastodon apps only cover 20% of Friendica's features at most. Hubzilla doesn't have any mobile apps, at least none for iOS, none in the Google Play Store, none that could be installed on a new Android device and none with a fully native mobile user interface.
Hubzilla also also doesn't support Mastodon apps and never will. That's mainly because a Mastodon app can't cover over 90% of Hubzilla's features, including features which you need all the time such as file upload, image embedding, handling of connections and permission controls, simply because Mastodon doesn't have these features. Hubzilla would require its very own apps, and due to Hubzilla's immense complexity and wealth of features, a fully-featured, dedicated Hubzilla app would be absolutely gargantuan and just as complex as Hubzilla itself.
On Friendica, ActivityPub federation is available from the get-go. On Hubzilla, ActivityPub federation is optional, and on newly-created channels, it is off by default.
Friendica can integrate Bluesky and Tumblr accounts. Hubzilla can't.
On Friendica, your account is your identity. Your identity is firmly tied to your account. On hubzilla, your identity is independent from your account. It resides in a container called a "channel", of which you can have multiple, fully independent ones on the same account. This also allows you to switch back and forth between channels or identities without logging out and back in.
Friendica has limited capabilities of moving your identity to another instance. Hubzilla has nomadic identity. For one, this makes it possible to relocate an entire channel with all posts, all comments, all private messages, all connections, nearly all settings, all files in your file space etc. etc. to another instance. Besides, it makes it possible to clone a channel to one or multiple other instances. This gives you live, hot, real-time, bidirectional backups of your channel, and you can log into and use any of them. That way, your channel is much more resilient against instance shutdown.
If you delete a Hubzilla channel, you cannot create a channel with the same short name on the same Hubzilla hub unless the admin fully deletes your channel from the database.
If you delete a clone of a Hubzilla channel, you cannot clone the same channel back to the same hub unless the admin fully deletes your channel from the database.
Friendica has client-side support for OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on. Hubzilla has full support. This means that Friendica logins are recognised by instances with full OpenWebAuth support, but Friendica itself doesn't recognise logins elsewhere. Hubzilla logins are recognised the same, and Hubzilla does recognise logins elsewhere.
Friendica has some basic permission control. On Hubzilla, it is much more advanced and fine-grained.
On Friendica, you can set your profile to private. On Hubzilla, you can give permission to see your profile to anybody on the internet, anybody in the Fediverse, anybody on Hubzilla or (streams), anybody on your hub, unapproved and approved connections, approved connections, only those you specifically allow by contact role or only yourself.
On Friendica, you can set your list of connections to private. On Hubzilla, you can give permission to see your connections to anybody on the internet, anybody in the Fediverse, anybody on Hubzilla or (streams), anybody on your hub, unapproved and approved connections, approved connections, only those you specifically allow by contact role or only yourself.
On Friendica, you can set your timeline to private; as far as I know, this happens along with setting your profile to private. On Hubzilla, you can give permission to see your stream to anybody on the internet, anybody in the Fediverse, anybody on Hubzilla or (streams), anybody on your hub, unapproved and approved connections, approved connections, only those you specifically allow by contact role or only yourself.
I don't know if Friendica can give specific permissions to specific connections. Hubzilla has so-called "contact roles". Each contact has a contact role that grants or denies 17 different permissions. Permissions granted channel-wide from the channel role are inherited by all contact roles. Two of these permissions are for your contacts to send you their posts and for your contacts to send you private messages.
On Hubzilla, you can keep both everyone and specific contacts from sending you repeats/boosts/reposts/renotes with a line of filter syntax in a filter blacklist.
On Hubzilla, you can send any of your posts as public, only to yourself, to all members of a privacy group (which is similar to a circle on Friendica), to whoever is assigned a certain non-default profile, to one specific group/forum or to a custom selection of contacts. You can also define your default post audience, either one of your privacy groups, or your posts are public by default.
Hubzilla has three levels of reply control. At channel level, you can give permission to reply to your posts to anybody on the internet, anybody in the Fediverse, anybody on Hubzilla or (streams), anybody on your hub, unapproved and approved connections, approved connections, only those you specifically allow by contact role or only yourself. In addition, you can choose to let comments in from those who are not permitted to comment on your posts, preview them and then manually decide whether or not you accept each comment.
Reply control at per-contact level means that you can use contact roles to grant or deny permission to reply to your comments to certain connections.
Reply control at per-post level is optional and off by default. It lets you disallow comments on individual posts of yours entirely.
Likewise, there is quote-post control at channel level and at per-contact level.
On Friendica, you can report posts to the admin. On Hubzilla, you can't. This feature is currently being discussed.
I don't know about Friendica, but Hubzilla has a channel-wide filter with a whitelist and a blacklist, and optionally, it has an individual filter for each connection with a whitelist and a blacklist.
Hubzilla allows regular expressions in filter lines, but only for normal keywords, not in lines with filter syntax.
Hubzilla's filter syntax can recognise posts, comments and private messages. This is of very limited usefulness, however: If you want to whitelist certain keywords for posts, but let all comments and all private messages through, you'd have to use filter syntax in a whitelist. But in whitelists, keyword lines are connected with "or" whereas filter syntax lines are connected with "and" which means that you cannot combine keywords with filter syntax. There is also filter syntax for keywords, but these lines are connected with "and" in whitelists, too, and each line can only contain one keyword with no regular expression.
On Friendica, summaries or Mastodon-style content warnings are created with a pair of BBcode tags, either [abstract][/abstract] or [abstract=apub][/abstract]. This works for posts, comments and private messages. Hubzilla has a dedicated summary field for posts, but none for comments. In theory, it also has the BBcode tag pair [summary][/summary], but in practice, it is broken.
Friendica optionally offers Markdown for text formatting in addition to BBcode. Hubzilla only offers BBcode.
Friendica doesn't have or support polls. Hubzilla has full support for basically unlimited polls.
Friendica calls reposting "sharing" and quote-posting "quoted sharing". Hubzilla calls reposting "repeating" and quote-posting "sharing".
On Hubzilla, you can optionally be notified when a stranger mentions you out of the blue outside any conversation on your stream.
On Friendica, you can make a group restricted or private. On Hubzilla, you can give a group or a forum privacy, too, but by choosing the "Custom" channel role instead of the "Community forum" channel role, and you have to adjust the level of privacy by hand. The advantage is that you have fine-grained control over what exactly you want to be private in your group or forum.
Private Friendica groups can be joined by users on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and probably also Forte. Private Hubzilla groups or forums can only be joined by users on Hubzilla, (streams) and maybe Forte.
Friendica has a central directory of users, groups etc., the Friendica Directory. Hubzilla doesn't have such a thing.
Friendica nodes have their own directories; I'm not sure if they only list Friendica accounts or accounts and channels of everything that uses ActivityPub, or if they even include diaspora* users. Hubzilla hubs have such directories, too, but they only list Hubzilla and (streams) channels because they can only list what uses the built-in and permanently activated Nomad protocol.
In your Hubzilla directory, you can hide channels that are flagged not safe for work.
Hubzilla has an option that gives those who are permitted to see a post the permission to also see any media embedded in the post, regardless of the permissions set for the respective media in your file space. This was introduced due to the wide-spread issue of people uploading images and setting them or the directores the images are in to private, then embedding them into public posts and the audience of the posts not seeing the images.
On Hubzilla, you can give guest access tokens to people whom you want to access certain files or directories in your file space.
The file space built into your Hubzilla channel can be accessed via WebDAV.
Hubzilla also has a built-in CalDAV calendar server which can use the event calendar as a simple frontend and an optional headless CardDAV addressbook server.
Hubzilla optionally has "articles", long-form text posts with the same full text formatting capabilities as normal posts, but which don't federate.
Hubzilla optionally has "cards", basically planning cards with the same features as articles plus a few extra features.
Hubzilla optionally has multiple wikis per channel with multiple pages per wiki. Wikis can be set up to use either BBcode or Markdown as their markup language with a few wiki-specific additions in both cases.
Hubzilla optionally has simple, static webpages which can be formatted with either BBcode, Markdown or plain HTML. Hubzilla's own official website hubzilla.org is a webpage on a Hubzilla channel.
I think that's about it.
As for diaspora*: Forget it. For one, it does not support ActivityPub, and it does not federate with most of the Fediverse. The diaspora* developers staunchly refuse to add any other protocols to diaspora*, especially ActivityPub. One has actually said that you don't implement ActivityPub, you implement Mastodon. And the diaspora* developers don't want to make themselves dependent on Mastodon.
Besides, diaspora* is withering away. Around December 29th, a number of major diaspora* pods shut down. According to one source, diaspora* lost over half its user accounts in three days. And the closure of diasp.org, one of the biggest pods, is scheduled for April 1st now.
Quote:
Are there any other networks I should know about?
End quote.
From the same creator as Friendica and Hubzilla, there is something he created in 2021 at the end of a long and somewhat complex line of forks. It is officially and intentionally nameless, brandless, not a project and released into the public domain. Colloquially, it is named (streams) in parentheses after the name of its code repository. You can find the latter with an extensive readme here. It is slimmed down in features from Hubzilla, and it doesn't offer nearly the connection and federation options of Friendica and Hubzilla. But it is easier to handle while still having a steeper learning curve than Friendica, and especially its permission system is both another bit powerful and significantly easier to use than Hubzilla's.
(streams) has no mobile apps and no compatibility with Mastodon apps either for the same reasons as why Hubzilla doesn't isn't compatible with Mastodon apps.
(streams) is included in my comparison tables, too. If you want me, I can rattle down another comparison with Friendica like the one with Hubzilla above.
In August, 2024, Mike made another fork based on (streams) named Forte. It's basically (streams), but with a name, with a brand identity, as a project, released under the MIT license and with no support for the Nomad protocol anymore. It does everything using only ActivityPub. This also means that it relies entirely on ActivityPub for nomadic identity. Since especially this is still highly experimental, Forte itself has not officially been released yet, it is not recommended as a reliable daily driver, nor does it have public, open-registration instances.
Quote:
Finally, will the interface of the page on Friendica change depending on my instance?
End quote.
As far as I know, different Friendica nodes have different default themes, especially now that the Facebook-like Bookface theme may be officially included into Friendica.
@Jupiter Rowland @Georgiana Brummell Wow, what an in-depth article. Thank You for that, interested people will love this, the Masto-microblog-guys will hate you for this 😉 Thank you.
@Jupiter Rowland Wow! My goodness! I can't even begin to thank you enough! That was absolutely amazing! I do hope you have a guide or website to the Fediverse, as you would be extremely good at explaining it! Perhaps, you can help with my Friendica accessibility problems. I'll tag you in that, and you can ignore it if you wish.
@Polibronson 🦋 @ChatJERRYPT @Tio @macfranc What is the difference between Glitchsoc and Hometown? I came across both when first trying to decide which network to join.
This is ridiculous. I can't even find where I am with a phone using Pachli. It's absolutely nothing like TweeseCake. I can read posts and respond to them, but I have to keep scrolling and can't immediately go to the top or bottom of a list. So if I haven't used this since October 2024, I have to arrow to the posts from the present, which means literally thousands upon thousands of keystrokes. Even when I go to notifications, I'm not sure if I'm reading current things or older ones. I'm sure Tusky is the same, since Pachli is based on it. I can try racoon, but I'm guessing it won't have great keyboard support either. Not everyone wants to use a touchscreen! Fortunately, from what I know, the makers of Pachli really do care about accessibility, so perhaps, something can be done to increas the number of keyboard shortcuts.
Content in timelines is generally shown with the newest items at the top. There is also an experimental control to change that, pachli.app/pachli/2024/08/30/2…
Pachli 2.8.0 is now available. This release introduces experimental support for reading the timeline in reverse order and significantly improves notification reliability, as well as the usual bug fixes and other small improvements.
I haven't tried it, but if your device supports Talkback then support.google.com/accessibili… lists the keyboard shortcuts for navigating around the screen.
I have just tried with Talkback gesture navigation and that lets me navigate to the menu, open it, and choose "Load newest posts", so I expect the keyboard shortcuts to do the same thing should work.
I normally use Windows for everything. But today, I had to use my phone for a short time. i can now confirm that the main Friendica site is almost as bad to use on an Android device as Facebook is everywhere. Instead of having a clear edit box for posting, I have to find the link to post. Then, I can't find said edit box. Yes, I can use Pachli, Tusky, or any, etc. but I shouldn't have to. For the record, I use my phone with an external keyboard (iClever bK03) and also have Chrome set to show desktop sites at the moment, which I will probably change, as I prefer mobile ones, even on a desktop! But the matter still stands. Even on Windows, I've had problems with the main site, most especially with regard to editing posts, and I'm sure the posting issue is there as well. Will someone please do something about this? It's not good for Friendica, for the Fediverse, and especially for blind people, such as myself, who came here as a Facebook refugee, when they decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app).
I normally use Windows for everything. But today, I had to use my phone for a short time. i can now confirm that the main Friendica site is almost as bad to use on an Android device as Facebook is everywhere. Instead of having a clear edit box for posting, I have to find the link to post. Then, I can't find said edit box. Yes, I can use Pachli, Tusky, or any, etc. but I shouldn't have to. For the record, I use my phone with an external keyboard (iClever bK03) and also have Chrome set to show desktop sites at the moment, which I will probably change, as I prefer mobile ones, even on a desktop! But the matter still stands. Even on Windows, I've had problems with the main site, most especially with regard to editing posts, and I'm sure the posting issue is there as well. Will someone please do something about this? It's not good for Friendica, for the Fediverse, and especially for blind people, such as myself, who came here as a Facebook refugee, when they decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app).
Accessible Youtube Downloader Pro stopped working properly a few days ago. Can anyone recommend anything that works with NVDA? I would prefer a client, but I have also used various youtube to mp3 sites in the past. I would prefer something that lets me set the bitrate to 128kbps or that defaults to it.
I found a very good site. I'm still seeking a client, but for now, this works. It is also free of ads, so I don't have to worry about viruses and such.
Accessible Youtube Downloader Pro stopped working properly a few days ago. Can anyone recommend anything that works with NVDA? I would prefer a client, but I have also used various youtube to mp3 sites in the past.
As someone who is totally blind, the Fediverse is the only place where I have ever been able to follow people such as photographers, artists, or even those who post pictures of their cats or the food they ate. The reason is that most of them use alt text. They take the time to describe the images that my screen reader can't recognise. Some write the descriptions themselves, and others use tools such as altbot. Some worry that their descriptions aren't good enough, especially when they are new at this. Let me assure you, not only are they good enough, they are extremely appreciated! If the rest of the world thought as you did, it would be a much better place. Don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure of something, but never think that we don't notice your effort.
I once had to convert MBA lecturers' slides into tactile ones and describe in braille. This was Cambridge Uni so intelligent lecturers you would have thought but finally one said - I guess a picture soes paint a thousand words. My colleague then put up one slide from a lecturer and none of the others could work out what it said as it has some many graphs superimposed on each other. My sheer coincidence I was working on a bible (why it have never been done no idea) when some travelling missionaries knocked on the door. I had just got to the bit in Samuel 2 where God's chosen, King David, sent a man off to certain death in a battle so he could marry the man's wife. They went away
I really appreciate your post Georgina.Before I came here I had no idea of alt txt but now make sure it is always on my photos. I also try to spread the word outside Fediverse.
@MelSedds I didn't know what the Alt was for until an account (or maybe a bot) boosting cat pictures told me I should provide it. I've done so ever since (and edited the ones I posted before that) and besides the obvious benefit, I find creating the descriptions and sometimes giving more context great fun ☺️ (I even learned some new words when I wanted to give accurate descriptions, like calyx.)
something I’m never sure about is how much text in alt-text is too much. I generally stay as coincise as possible by describing what’s actually interesting in the image for the conversation, which may include written texts or not. Do you think vision-impaired readers may prefer a more complete description?
@lydiaschoch I find that I will put extra information in the alt text. Joke that's not in the post itself, perhaps. Pointing out what's strange in the picture. Explaining the joke. Something like it's a SPOILER tag you're only going to get if you check the alt text.
@xinit ☕ @Fedo ¶ @Lydia Schoch Wow! What a wonderful idea! Please forgive my ignorance, but is alt text something that sighted readers can see, or is it only available to screen readers? If so, this is one of the few times in which we actually get to have something that the rest of the world doesn't. If not, it's a great way to encourage sighted people to pay attention to the importance of alt text.
all the client applications i see allow anyone to see alt texts, there's a little "alt" button in the corner of the images. i think that does helps a lot for people to remember to put alt texts
@zy Some Mastodon sites offer to translate a post into the reader's language, which also translates the ALT text. As someone who likes to read posts in languages I'm not fluent with, it helps a lot to understand the pictures as well (e.g. memes or comic strips).
@zy You can also follow an alt text not that will remind you when you forget to add alt text. It just sends you a message requesting that you add alt text
on desktop web browsers, there's a tag in the corner of an image - either ALT or just a scary red exclamation mark (indicating that there's no ALT text).
If a user drags the mouse pointer over the image, the alt text is visible to sighted users. I think most mobile apps show it on a click, but I don't really remember.
The IMG ALT tag (more correctly, the ALT attribute of the IMG tag) has been a part of the HTML standard since the mid 1990s. I'm sighted. I haven't tested with a screen reader, but when looking at a Fedi post from a Web browser, the alt text is in the IMG ALT tag. Mouse over, and it just displays the alt text. Most other social networking platforms seem to put the alt text behind a "click the small ALT button and a popup will pop up" mechanism.
I'm sighted and I often look at the alt text on Fediverse graphics!
It's great for things like "here's a person I don't recognise, are they famous, is it a clip from a show and what's the show and why is it relevant here". There are cultural references which would just whoosh over my head without the description.
Or sometimes there'll be one like "photo of woodland, with a squirrel" and I'll be like "oh yeah! there _is_ a squirrel in the corner there" 😀
thank you for your kind words and especially thank you for making me discover altbot! It will make it easier to write alt text (but I will try to personalise it as much as I can anyway) 😀
Filling out alt text can be fun too because you can put your own snarky spin on things, so the benefit is mutual. You and other people who need it are so welcome here!
I was always wondering "Am I trying to explain with too much detail? Is it too little? Does anyone actually ever use alt text of my images?" This post gave me all the answers I needed! Thanks! All hail fediverse 😀
@Lironah @HeliaXyana I sometimes write in what I was feeling when taking the photograph, like one time I took a picture of clouds, and I said something like they looked great when I looked up in the sky and saw them, but the picture is crappy.... I find it fun to add such silly details in the alt text.
@dilmandila @Lironah Yes, good point. There is space for a little fun in there. When the subjective is the point of sharing the image, I think that's precisely what you should do.
@HeliaXyana I often use alt text to better understand an image, so I think it would be helpful. What should the viewer take away from seeing the image? If you were describing it to someone over the phone, what would you draw their attention to? Mood and meaning are definitely part of that.
@Hareguizer Well, there in lies the difficulty. I dislike instructing others in how they should see my work. Like in a gallery or museum, I like to keep the accompanying text relatively objective, as I feel all interpretations are valid. But that's not very helpful for those who cannot see it.
@HeliaXyana yes, and I can see it could be easy to go too far. Still, a reader can choose to stop reading at any point. I have never been troubled by too much alt text. There are whole essays on writing ‘good alt text’ but I think the important thing is to have alt text.
@Hareguizer Yes, I might be overthinking this a tad. Still, it's good to differentiate between intensions for descriptions. I've seen a museum boast about accessibility when the images only had a description from the artists, clearly intended for those able to view the work.
@Lydia Vvinters @Kris Herbert I can understand why you're thinking about it in this manner. Certainly, there is a case to be made both ways. If it's strictly meant for information, then short and to the point is good. But if it's about art, photography, etc. then it might make sense to describe it in more detail. But not all of us have seen in the past. So using metaphors, for example, sound pretty but may not truly help us understand what is in the image. It would be like saying "a woman with a face that looks like my mother's is sitting in a chair, holding a book." If you know what my mother looks like, it's fine. But if you don't, it will have no meaning for you. Likewise, I could say "the chair is beautiful" or I can say "the chair has ornate carvings of flowers on the back and has a velvet cushion". The latter tells me a lot more.
Yes, that's the problem. I see it as something that should match the intension but in the case of art, that can also be subjective. So in this case, if it's a work of art, I would be tempted to describe why this chair is beautiful to me.
Something like, "The soft lighting on the chair and the delicate carving evoke a sense of nostalgia in me."
@ClintonAnderson I have read that Title Case / Camel Case in hashtags is considered more accessible and therefore the standard. Of course, hashtags here are not case sensitive, so you are not limiting your audience with differing capitalization schemes.
@nunesdennis My technique is to imagine that I'm sitting in a movie theater next to someone who can't see the screen, and I have to whisper what I see to them so that they can be part of the experience. Of course, I don't pretend that my ALT descriptions are perfect or accurate, but they are an extension of my own expression, with my own flaws, mistakes, and way of describing things. And well, I'm a human, not a machine, so I guess that's part of the homemade charm. 😺
@davidrevoy @nunesdennis also, at minimum, consider that the default is something like "image." So even the difference between "photo" and "screenshot" and "meme" at least provides handles on what they're missing.
Obviously enough detail to be included in the conversation is better & elaboration on what's notable or aesthetic is best. Someone could always ask a question if they were curious, but not if they have insufficient info.
I usually elaborate on why it's nice: see attached
Oh, one other alt-text rule I follow. Sometimes an image contains no additional information at all. When this is the case, I actually say so, as briefly as possible. If the post already describes the image fully, I just caption "As described". If multiple photos contain the same thing, I just say "ibid." (or maybe "a burning dumpster", "same dumpster from another angle", "ibid.", "ibid."). If I *say* there's no useful information, a screen reader user won't have to *wonder* why it's blank.
@davidrevoy @nunesdennis I suggest turning on audio description for a movie that has it available. You’ll usually find a variety of styles and not all are as elaborate as you might imagine. The most important thing is making an effort and understanding your purpose for sharing the image can guide your effort.
How well do very general descriptions of popular media references tend to work for members of your community? For example:
Scene from The Empire Strikes Back, Lando Calrissian muttering to himself "This deal's getting worse all the time..."
I'd hope major hits like Star Wars have been made as accessible as possible over the years, but still worry such minimal scene-setting might perpetuate a "you had to be there" feeling of exclusion.
Manche machen sich Sorgen, dass ihre Beschreibungen nicht gut genug sind, vor allem, wenn sie neu auf diesem Gebiet sind. Ich kann Ihnen versichern, dass sie nicht nur gut genug sind, sondern auch sehr geschätzt werden! Wenn der Rest der Welt so denken würde wie Sie, wäre es ein viel besserer Ort. Zögern Sie nicht zu fragen, wenn Sie sich bei etwas unsicher sind, aber denken Sie nicht, dass wir Ihre Bemühungen nicht bemerken.
Einige schreiben die Beschreibungen selbst, andere verwenden Tools wie altbot. Manche machen sich Sorgen, dass ihre Beschreibungen nicht gut genug sind, vor allem, wenn sie neu auf diesem Gebiet sind. Ich kann Ihnen versichern, dass sie nicht nur gut genug sind, sondern auch sehr geschätzt werden! Wenn der Rest der Welt so denken würde wie Sie, wäre es ein viel besserer Ort. …
I admit that sometimes I struggle with alt tags. Understanding what there is to see in a picture is one thing, but providing info within the context of the overall post seems like it can come in handy
Curious to know if you tried Bluesky. I ask bc I thought Bluesky has a way to caption images.
I have an old art school friend who went gradually blind, and think of how I would describe my photos to her when I write my alt-text. I remember when she was sighted how much she enjoyed the act of looking, really catching this or that detail I hadn’t noticed, and I try to satisfy that, however I can, in text.
The Fediverse is also one of the few networks that actually allows you to edit the alt text directly. The only other ones I can think of are WordPress and Pinterest.
For the people who worry that their alt text isn't good enough - just keep practicing.
And consider how long it takes to read the ALT text. Was this a throw-away decorative image? Something brief should be fine. Was this image the thing you wanted to share? Time to be more descriptive.
Thank you so much for posting this! I always include alt-text, but started doing so consistently mostly because self-appointed alt-text cops kept needling me anytime I left it out. This is the first time an alt-text user has actually said something nice about it (that I've seen in my feed, anyway).
Very kind of you to take a moment and say you appreciate it. I will continue to include it.
@SamanthaJaneSmith In so many different kinds of art - it depends! I would describe what strikes me. So, "Portrait of a person standing next to a window but entirely made up of straight brushstrokes no single one shorter than the length of the face." Or, "Bold black lines intersect across a white canvas with a single square of yellow towards the upper right corner."
@SamanthaJaneSmith Honestly, if you don't know how on something specific - reach out and ask. If I'm around I'm happy to give it a go, but there's also the hashtag ALT4Me which will summon a figurative army to help you out 😁
this is the first thing I read right after I went back in and edited my ALTtext for the second time because I didn't think it was detailed enough. Just need to keep trying. Thank you for posting this!
That's fantastic. Alt tags have been around since I started coding for the web 30 years ago and yet for some reason it's taken this generation of social media to integrate them fully. I'm so glad you can join us fully!
I always try to add Alt Text ... and I just discovered that on Pixelfed you can switch on a setting that forces you to add Alt Text. Great idea so I've turned it on on my Pixelfed account.
@Xanathon That would be truly wonderful! But honestly, even just using AltBot normally is fine, since the descriptions usually appear as a post right after the original.
@ConnyDuck So what? She says it would be nice Alt text in the photo, but if this is difficult, then alt text in the form of a post from an altbot is enough. This proves my point about inconvenience. It would be convenient if the image was recognized and the text was inserted at the stage of writing the post! I have already raised this issue with the developer of Tusky. I love this app and hope the developer will implement this feature.
THANK YOU for this! I struggle to create alt text and it feels like it is a waste of time as nobody actually reads it. I will now keep your post and use it to motivate myself to create alt texts and enjoy knowing it matters rather than feel like it is pointless.
Is it enough to have the Altbot text as a comment to my post or would it be better for you and others if I transfer the Altbot description to the image alt text?
@Xanathon That would be truly wonderful! But honestly, even just using AltBot normally is fine, since the descriptions usually appear as a post right after the original.
Thanks for the information. So far I used ChatGPT manually for descriptions of my scifi and fantasy renders because Google's LLM was very lacking. I will keep that up, but for photographies or simpler images I will use Altbot. That was a very valuable hint, thanks again!
@Memere I am a seeing person, but I love alt text for the added info or insight into the personality of the poster and what's important to them. Sometimes they contain jokes.
As a sighted person who posts pics, I find I enjoy writing alt-text descriptions, so I don't mind it or think of it as a burden. I often find something new to appreciate in the picture as I think about how to describe it, and it feels nice to be doing something intentionally inclusive as well. I hope you don't think we're all begrudgingly doing something we hate, because some of us embrace it and are glad to do it.
@josh susser Oh, no. Definitely not, and that's really the point. It's wonderful to see people who care so deeply about inclusivity. Your own experience makes it even more meaningful, since both sides are benefiting. All of this is a lovely change from what I see elsewhere.
I'm so glad it's helpful! It's such an important skill for us to practice, too. It is so heartening to see not just the accessibility itself, but the solidarity—many people won't share a post that lacks alt text. That helps keep it front & center as an expectation rather than a bonus.
@Nat Oleander It's just a pity that if you post about an obscure enough niche topic like I do, it's the more difficult to make image posts perfectly accessible to everyone, the more obscure the topic is. For the more obscure the topic is, the more you have to describe, and the more you have to explain. (Caution: Never put explanations into alt-text! They must go where everyone can access them.)
I currently write the longest image descriptions in the whole Fediverse by a wide margin. But they may not actually be accessible enough, even though I describe all my original images twice.
The short descriptions in the alt-text don't always contain text transcripts, especially not all of them, and being only short descriptions, they aren't full, detailed visual descriptions either. The long descriptions for the same images in the post regularly end up with a five-digit character count. They may not be accessible because they're way too long. But sometimes they're the only place wher
... show more
@Nat Oleander It's just a pity that if you post about an obscure enough niche topic like I do, it's the more difficult to make image posts perfectly accessible to everyone, the more obscure the topic is. For the more obscure the topic is, the more you have to describe, and the more you have to explain. (Caution: Never put explanations into alt-text! They must go where everyone can access them.)
I currently write the longest image descriptions in the whole Fediverse by a wide margin. But they may not actually be accessible enough, even though I describe all my original images twice.
The short descriptions in the alt-text don't always contain text transcripts, especially not all of them, and being only short descriptions, they aren't full, detailed visual descriptions either. The long descriptions for the same images in the post regularly end up with a five-digit character count. They may not be accessible because they're way too long. But sometimes they're the only place where all text transcripts can be found. And they are the only place where explanations can be found.
So the consequence should be that I quit posting my original images because they're impossible to make perfectly accessible to everyone, at least as long as there is no rock-solid definition for what's actually required in image descriptions in my obscure edge-case. But there isn't even any consensus on whether text that's illegible or that's so tiny that it's basically invisible must be transcribed if it can be sourced.
@Jupiter Rowland @Nat Oleander I'm a bit confused. If you write long descriptions, why wouldn't that help to make your images accessible? Alt text doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to give us an idea of what is in the image. It's certainly wonderful when more details are given, but even having an idea of what is going on is better than nothing.
@Georgiana Brummell I'd say not everyone would consider almost 1,000 characters of image description in a 1,500-character alt-text accessible. And even fewer people would consider a long image description in the post itself that's tens of thousands of characters long accessible if your screen reader spends an hour or several rambling it down.
My most extreme case is a post with only one image. That one image is described twice like all my halfway recent original images. The short description in the alt-text is a bit over 1,400 characters long which barely leaves any room for the note that there is also a long description in the post itself. That long description is over 60,000 characters long. I'm not kidding. It took me two full days from getting up to going to bed to research for it and write it.
Now, there are a few dozen bits and pieces of text all over the image. At the resolution at which I've posted the image, two of them are ever so barely le
... show more
@Georgiana Brummell I'd say not everyone would consider almost 1,000 characters of image description in a 1,500-character alt-text accessible. And even fewer people would consider a long image description in the post itself that's tens of thousands of characters long accessible if your screen reader spends an hour or several rambling it down.
My most extreme case is a post with only one image. That one image is described twice like all my halfway recent original images. The short description in the alt-text is a bit over 1,400 characters long which barely leaves any room for the note that there is also a long description in the post itself. That long description is over 60,000 characters long. I'm not kidding. It took me two full days from getting up to going to bed to research for it and write it.
Now, there are a few dozen bits and pieces of text all over the image. At the resolution at which I've posted the image, two of them are ever so barely legible for sighted people. They're on a large logo on a building. Four more, two of them on that logo, too, two more on a sign on an easel, are illegible, but still visible. At least more on signs inside the building are visible, but they can't easily be identified as text. All the others are so tiny that they're invisible. It takes the long image description to even know where they are, for example, on the control panels of teleporters.
And yet, they are all within the borders of the image. And I can transcribe them. I can't read them in the image, but I can go to the place shown in the image and take closer looks.
Unfortunately, the rule or guideline that any and all text in an image must be transcribed verbatim does not take into consideration text that can't be read in the image, but that can be sourced and thus transcribed by whoever posts the image. No confirmation, no exception. And so I have to assume that I have to transcribe illegible text as well. And so I do transcribe them all.
But there's no way for me to put all these text transcripts into the alt-text, not if I want to keep Mastodon, Misskey and their forks from chopping it off at the 1,500-character mark. I'd also have to explain where all these pieces of text are, after all. And so the text transcripts are only available in the 60,000-character monster of a long image description.
It isn't really accessible to expect blind users to have their screen readers ramble and ramble and ramble for hours, just to get information that should actually belong into the alt-text which, in turn, shouldn't be longer than 200 characters.
On the other hand, it doesn't really seem accessible to me if I expect people to ask me to describe things in the image for them. It rather feels sloppy, if not out-right ableist to not describe everything that someone could possibly want to know right away.
The problem with my images is that they're renderings from very obscure 3-D virtual worlds. This means that nobody knows what anything in these images looks like unless they can see these images. This, in turn, means that I cannot expect anyone to know what something in my images looks like anyway. They don't.
At the same time, I can't expect everyone to not care about my images. In fact, I expect the very topic of 3-D virtual worlds that actually exist to make people curious. At this point, it doesn't matter what's important in my images within the context of the post. Sighted people will go explore the new and unknown world by taking closer looks at all the big and small details in the image.
But blind or visually-impaired people may be just as curious. They may want the same chance to explore this new world by experiencing what's in that one image. Denying them the same chances as sighted people is ableist. But giving them this chance requires an absolutely titanic image description.
Sure, I describe lots of details which a sighted person can't possibly recognise when looking at the image, especially not at the resolution of the image as I've posted it. But I simply can't keep telling blind or visually-impaired people that certain things in the image can't be recognised due to the image resolution. It feels lazy, like weaseling out. I mean, I can see all these details. Not in the image, but where the image was made, simply by walking closer to them or moving the camera closer to them.
If there are two dark objects inside a building that may or may not be plants, but that can't be identified as plants by looking at the image, why shouldn't I describe them as follows: "On the sides of the teleport panel, there are two identical açaí palms in square terracotta pots with wide rims. Like the other potted plants, these mostly dark green plants with long pointy leaves are kept at an indoor-compatible size, namely about three and a half metres or eleven and a half feet tall. Also, like the other potted plants, they are made of only four flat surfaces with partially transparent pictures of the plant on them, arranged in angles of 45 degrees to one another."
If there's room for improvement in my image descriptions, I improve my future image descriptions and declare my past image descriptions outdated. In fact, the 60,000-character-long description is outdated because it's bad style to describe dimension using measures. Instead, dimensions should be described by comparing them with something everyone is familiar with like body parts.
Right now, by the way, I'm upping my game at describing avatars, using rules and guidelines for describing people which I've discovered over the last few months. The last time I've described an avatar, I've done so in about 7,000 characters, but according to my new discoveries, I may have missed something.
However, I can't go into so much detail while still making my image descriptions short enough that a screen reader can read through them in under a minute.
@Jupiter Rowland @Nat Oleander Oh my goodness! Now I see what you mean. Even as a lover of nineteenth-century writing and proper English, that's long, especially for alt text!
What went into the actual alt-text of the image were 1,402 characters of visual description + 97 characters of notice that there's a long description in the post. The over 60,000 characters went into the post text body, right below the image itself.
I could have put the long description into the alt-text. But it would have been a nightmare for blind or visually-impaired people because screen readers can't navigate alt-text. Also, Mastodon, Glitch, Hometown, Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp, CherryPick, Sharkey, Catodon and the other Mastodon and Misskey forks chop long alt-texts from outside off at the 1,500-character mark. Mastodon would simply have deleted almost 59,000 characters from my image description on their side, had I put it into the alt-text.
Thank you for the encourageing words. I am one of those people who always think that the descriptions are somehow not good enough and end up overthinking it...
Thank you for saying this. I had never written alt text before joining the fediverse, but I’ve come to appreciate the opportunity it gives me to think about why I posted the image and what’s worth knowing about it. I still do worry, but I feel more relaxed thanks to your post.
I often spend more time writing alt text than the text in the toot itself - not just to keep the toot itself as short as possible.
Writing alt text, even if using energy, is useful for myself as well. In particular in the case of photo's, it makes me look better. Often I notice details that I missed before.
What I like about Mastodon is the enormous variety in people, from all over the world, one can meet here and discuss with. Even if I'm not an "easy person", it enriches my life.
I often spend more time writing alt text than the text in the toot itself - not just to keep the toot itself as short as possible.
I always spend more time describing my images than writing the post that they go into.
For my meme posts, that's because I have to explain the picture and find the appropriate links to external explanations (KnowYourMeme etc.) to shorten my explanation block if possible.
For my original images, it's because I have to describe them twice. There's always an alt-text which, as of late, fills the 1,500-character limit imposed by Mastodon, Misskey etc. to the brim. But that alt-text is only a shortened and slightly adapted version of an extremely long long description which goes into the post text body and which also includes transcripts of any and all text in the image, readable or not, as well as all explanations which I deem necessary for outsiders to understand the image.
I often spend more time writing alt text than the text in the toot itself - not just to keep the toot itself as short as possible.
I always spend more time describing my images than writing the post that they go into.
For my meme posts, that's because I have to explain the picture and find the appropriate links to external explanations (KnowYourMeme etc.) to shorten my explanation block if possible.
For my original images, it's because I have to describe them twice. There's always an alt-text which, as of late, fills the 1,500-character limit imposed by Mastodon, Misskey etc. to the brim. But that alt-text is only a shortened and slightly adapted version of an extremely long long description which goes into the post text body and which also includes transcripts of any and all text in the image, readable or not, as well as all explanations which I deem necessary for outsiders to understand the image. Since the images are about an extremely obscure niche topic, this means I have to explain a lot.
A while ago, I spent two full days, morning to evening, researching for and describing and explaining one single image. The result was probably the longest image description ever posted in the Fediverse. And I actually had to limit myself, otherwise the description would have been even vastly longer and taken over a month to complete. Good thing I don't have any character limit to worry about. The only exception is that Mastodon may reject posts from outside with over 100,000 characters.
@modulux Also, thanks for the simple fact, that every Fediverse server has a publicly full-featured API, so it is possible to write a client which you want to use, and you do not have to use what some corporation gives you, on platforms of its choosing. Also, thank you again for the image descriptions, they're really appreciated.
Thanks for this post. I’m a person who always try to add descriptions, reallly wonder if I am doing it right, and have always wondered if anyone ever looked at them.
A while back, I built an exhibit I thought people would find interesting.
The first place I took it, I was thanked for having an exhibit which was accessible for the visually-impaired (I'm not certain about totally blind). I hadn't even thought of it that way!
You can read my write-up here. Unfortunately, the "caption" property on the images kind of conflicts with the "alt text" property, and I don't know which one you'll get.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds themselves paying more attention to their alt text than the actual post or image, both because it just seems right but also because it's kind of fun to put a little lighthearted humor. If a picture is a thousand words then the inverse must also be true.
I'm so glad to hear this! I put alt text on my photos and I try to get the important bits without overthinking it. I say what a thing is, list the colors it's in if that's important, explain the composition if that's important - all those old photo classes discussing images help with doing this, I've found.
If there’s no #Alt4Me tag on the undescribed image, it’s still worth being polite as no one wants bad feelings generated around the topic of descriptions. You might want to just reply with a description and #Alt4You tag, and if they’re abled they will hopefully get the message that descriptions are preferred.
I struggle with mine, that are not photos. The asemic art collage compositions I create can be very chaotic. Asemic writing & deconstructed text removes meaning, leaving the codes and conventions of writing and text. A combination of various colours, textures, irregular shapes and lines is an accurate over all description, but the devilishness is in the details. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. I've tried using the Alt-for-me tag, but nobody responded.
If you don't mind my asking - as a comic artist, I usually post full comic pages. There isn't enough alt text room to fully transcribe the page, so usually l will write something like "Page X of the comic Love and Hex. Full transcript: (link to an external page with both the comic image and a complete transcript)" followed by a broader description of what's going on without much detail.
Does that sort of thing suffice, or is there a preferred approach?
Are there things your screen reader has trouble with or that make listening more tedious?
I remember from years ago there was a sequence preference for some things. For example, with lists, I think the preference was word first, then tick box or radio button.
Yes. That still exists and is all part of WCAG, the guidelines used to create accessible websites, documents, etc. I am still learning it, so I can't answer from a professional point of view. But from a personal one, I find emoticons, emojis, etc. to be annoying, especially when they're used consecutively. "hands clapping" twenty times, for example, or during e-mails or other important communication. I don't mind if someone includes a few in his posts. Websites with clutter, such as adds in the middle of articles, hamburger menus, strange edit boxes, and pages that try to refresh when I read them are annoying, and of course, captchas without any audio option can be not only frustrating but actual barriers. I also convert all pdfs to txt. But as far as alt text, not much causes trouble. Sometimes, having many tags in the beginning or middle of a post, instead of at the end, can be confusing, since I have no way of just scrolling passed them.
I often get tasked to write alt-text descriptions for the images accompanying SEO blogs. I've read a couple of guides with recommendations for what's most "salient" in alt-text (some of them said, "Don't lead with 'image of' & I thought "'oh ... DUH'"), but is there anything particular that you find especially helpful? Like identifying overhead view or differentiating between foreground vs. background?? Is it context-dependent?
Don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure of something, but never think that we don't notice your effort.
I do have a few questions, specifically because my image posts have gone unnoticed by blind or visually-impaired users so far.
Judging and assuming from the information I've gathered so far, my original images require very extensive and detailed descriptions. A full description is too long for alt-text, so what I do is write a full description with all text transcripts and all necessary explanations, put it into the post text body and then condense a shorter, but still long alt-text from it. What's your stance on this method of describing the same image twice over?
Also, where would you personally prefer a long description? In the post itself? Or in an external document that's linked into the post? If you're on a phone app, remember that the external document will inevitably open your Web browser.
Do you prefer images described, based on what a sighted person can see in the image as it is posted? Or do you prefer a description that is
... show more
Don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure of something, but never think that we don't notice your effort.
I do have a few questions, specifically because my image posts have gone unnoticed by blind or visually-impaired users so far.
Judging and assuming from the information I've gathered so far, my original images require very extensive and detailed descriptions. A full description is too long for alt-text, so what I do is write a full description with all text transcripts and all necessary explanations, put it into the post text body and then condense a shorter, but still long alt-text from it. What's your stance on this method of describing the same image twice over?
Also, where would you personally prefer a long description? In the post itself? Or in an external document that's linked into the post? If you're on a phone app, remember that the external document will inevitably open your Web browser.
Do you prefer images described, based on what a sighted person can see in the image as it is posted? Or do you prefer a description that is not limited by the restriction of the image itself, for example, assuming an infinite image resolution and an infinite zoom factor that would let sighted people theoretically see even tiniest details?
If I mention something in my image description of which you don't know what it looks like, do you need a detailed visual description?
Concerning text transcripts: Let's assume a bit of text in an image is too small to be legible for sighted people, but I can read it at the original source, so I can transcribe it nonetheless. Shall I transcribe it? What about if said text is too small to be recognisable as text or so tiny that's it's practically invisible? I mean, after all, the concept of image resolution should not matter to totally blind people, so writing that a piece of text can't be read because the resolution of the image is too low ought to sound like a lame excuse for skimping a transcript.
If there's a building in one of my images, I can safely assume that you don't know what that one specific building looks like, so I guess I can also assume that you need it described. If I could, I would do so using architectural terms and then explaining all these architectural terms right after using them. Would you say that's the correct way? Because that's why I avoid having realistic buildings in my images.
If there's an image in my image, do you need it described? At a level that I can source right where the image is without moving away too far, or at a level that I can only source by moving farther away to the place shown in the image? What about an image in an image in my image? (I'm serious. I've actually described images within images within my image, but I've stopped when this was about to go out of hand due to there being too many to describe.)
I'm currently working on a series of posts with images showing a virtual-world avatar in various but similar outfits; in fact, I have been since last year. I may have questions later regarding at what level of detail I have to describe that avatar.
And - everyone sighted, please, let us worry a bit about our descriptions. It's a good thing to worry about. That is, many of our worries are about things that are completely out of our hands. Alt texts are something we can act on. We can think about what we see in a picture, what's important to us, what we want to convey, what we should describe. We can talk about it with each other, try things out, and get better at it.
I've shared this post of you because more people need to know that Alt Text and Image Descriptions are not only good but are appreciated by those that rely on them!
The strenght of the Fediverse is based upon it's diversity, and that must include accessibility!
After all it's easy for sighted people to dismiss it when in reality it doesn't take away anything from them if they just write a sentence or two per image.
I hate it when I can't edit the alt text exactly for this same reason! Every social network shoud let everyone do it! I forget from time to time because I'm always rushing to get the post done and be gone x'D and it's enfuriating
I do my best with this. It's extra writing, and I love the sound of my own voice even in text, so I actually find it fun and not a chore.
Still, Fedi really taught me how important it is and how to do it well, and I'm thankful for that. I've been on the periphery of web dev since before it was called "web dev" so I knew what alt text was. But I'll confess to never doing it particularly well before I came here.
You know what? This is a nice post. I never thought much about this. #Fedilab gives me a big yellow warning when there's no #alttext so I just fill it in. But as someone who's only worry is overstimulation it rarely really crosses my mind. This is a good reminder that it dóés matter, and reading it makes me happy I fill it in.
BlueSky has an option in the settings that forces you to add alt-text before posting an image or video. If people still aren't adding alt text, that is definitely a choice they are making, and it's not a good choice IMHO.
I appreciate you saying this. Is there a list of alttext generators that most people here use? I am trying to use them as much as possible. I will definitely look up altbot.
This is wonderful! Please may I ask - I was just adding some alt text to an image and wondered if there's a convention when the text on the post adequately describes the image or I struggle to describe it again without repetition, is alt text still needed/is it annoying listening to it again, or do you always prefer alt text? Thanks!
@James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺 No. if you describe it, then the alt text really shouldn't be needed. The whole purpose of the alt text is to describe the image, so if that's what you're doing, you don't need to do it twice. However, there may be an exception. Let's say that you have a picture, and "grandma's delicious cake" is written on the picture. Since it's inside the image, a screen reader most likely wouldn't be able to read that without some other extraction/ocr tool. So in that case, you could write the text. Whether you choose to add details "the cake is in a pan, sitting on a large table", is up to you.
@James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺 I actually just saw something very interesting, directly related to our conversation! Someone posted an image with two descriptions. It seemed that he wrote one and then something like Altbot wrote the other. It was fascinating, because while they were describing the same thing, the second was more detailed. Yet either one could have worked and provided the same information. That said, here, the focus was on the image. It wasn't just there in the background with text, so while the double description wasn't technically necessary, it worked.
I'm curious about your browsing setup, do you mind if I ask about it? (I've gone back and added alt text to any images I've posted to try and be worthy)
@Gary Brazzell The only other social platforms I've used are Facebook and Dreamwidth. On Facebook, I've never seen alt tags at all. Dreamwidth is a journalling site, so it's really a different thing entirely. I do love the alt text here, though. I was very surprised when I first saw it, and even more so at how many people use them and even refuse to boost images without them! So it was an extremely wonderful thing to realise. As for accessibility, the Basic Mobile site (not app) of Facebook used to be very accessible. Their shutting it down is what made me come to Friendica. I mostly use it via a client called TweeseCake. I am finding various inaccessible features, or at least ones that cause a lot of a nnoyance, on the main site and intend to write to the Friendica Support group about it. Mastodon seems to be accessible from my glancing at it while reading people's profiles.
This is uplifting. May there be a riddle to honor people with visual impairments who found themselves welcome within the Federation. “Whom does not see, yet has thousands of eyes writing for them?”
@zy @shred @dandylover1 When I get a message in German, the alt text is also in German (for example). It makes it easy to copy and paste into an internet translator.
I have found it helpful when the words are embedded in the picture too. Just go to the alt text and cut and paste.
I'm so happy that it helps people with vision problems.
(I had no idea German would be so important in 2025, but here we are.)
I previously used alt tests only on my Mastodon posts (I post images here only very occasionally), but this kind of comments really convinced me that I should just bite the bullet and write alt texts for Pixelfed images from now on, too. Because that's what I *ought* to be doing.
*Updated.* Hello. I joined Friendica in October of 2024, after Facebook closed their Basic Mobile site (not app). I live in New Jersey and am forty-one years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, and the Regency. I like coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, hot baths, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I also love cats. In classical music, I enjoy Baroque through a bit of early Romantic, while in popular, I usually prefer 1950's through 1970's. I love theatre (especially English and Viennese operettas, Edwardian musical comedies), and some Regency/Georgian plays. I prefer antique menswear and accessories. It's my dream to either buy a genuine Edwardian suit or have one commissioned. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. My parents are lesbians, and I am a huge gay rights supporter, but I stop short of using singular they and promoting the idea of more than two sexes, though you c
... show more
*Updated.* Hello. I joined Friendica in October of 2024, after Facebook closed their Basic Mobile site (not app). I live in New Jersey and am forty-one years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, and the Regency. I like coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, hot baths, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I also love cats. In classical music, I enjoy Baroque through a bit of early Romantic, while in popular, I usually prefer 1950's through 1970's. I love theatre (especially English and Viennese operettas, Edwardian musical comedies), and some Regency/Georgian plays. I prefer antique menswear and accessories. It's my dream to either buy a genuine Edwardian suit or have one commissioned. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. My parents are lesbians, and I am a huge gay rights supporter, but I stop short of using singular they and promoting the idea of more than two sexes, though you can certainly lean more towards one while being the other (as I do being a masculine woman), or change from one to the other via hormones, surgery etc. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.
I am happily childfree and am not religious. I hardly ever write about politics. I tend to get along better with people older than I, but I will accept friends twenty-one and over. I have no understanding of chronic illness, anxiety, depression, loneliness, etc. I enjoy hearing about cats, cooking or gardening adventures, antiques, and interesting life stories.
This is my journal. Anyone can read or comment, whether or not he is a member.
Things I have no interestt in seeing: Politics, posts in foreign languages that I don't understand, posts with obscenities, bickering over who joins what network, posts about what leaders of various networks do, vegan activism/ promotion, images without descriptions, world affairs (non-Western), posts about mental health, etc.
Things I am Constantly Seeing Politics, posts in foreign languages that I don't understand, more politics, posts with obscenities, bickering over who joins what network, posts about what leaders of various networks do, yet more politics, vegan activism/ promotion, images without descriptions (very rare here, thankfully), still more politics, world affairs and wars (non-Western), posts about mental health, and you guessed it, even more politics! At least I don't see all of the inspirational/love yourself, or religious posts. Those are just as annoying.
Posts I Would Like to See: Animals (especially cats and birds), plants, insects, high culture (theatre, classical music, fine dining, literature, fashion, etc.), cooking/recipes, history, s
... show more
Things I have no interestt in seeing: Politics, posts in foreign languages that I don't understand, posts with obscenities, bickering over who joins what network, posts about what leaders of various networks do, vegan activism/ promotion, images without descriptions, world affairs (non-Western), posts about mental health, etc.
Things I am Constantly Seeing Politics, posts in foreign languages that I don't understand, more politics, posts with obscenities, bickering over who joins what network, posts about what leaders of various networks do, yet more politics, vegan activism/ promotion, images without descriptions (very rare here, thankfully), still more politics, world affairs and wars (non-Western), posts about mental health, and you guessed it, even more politics! At least I don't see all of the inspirational/love yourself, or religious posts. Those are just as annoying.
Posts I Would Like to See: Animals (especially cats and birds), plants, insects, high culture (theatre, classical music, fine dining, literature, fashion, etc.), cooking/recipes, history, science for non-scientists, technology (not just how to write websites or who's doing what in the Fediverse), audio games, good news, interesting discussions, people's daily lives (yes, I know this is not Dreamwidth), etc.
@Meg I would absolutely love to know how to block specific words and phrases! I have looked all over the Friendica.world site and I couldn't find any way to do this. I also couldn't find anything in TweeseCake itself. @Fedi.Tips Can you please help? Is this possible? I had to unfollow several otherwise wonderful people over this.
Has everyone except Dreamwidth and the makers of TweeseCake forgotten how to make an edit page/option that is actually easy to use? It's an absolute mess on the Friendica page itself, so that it could take me up to ten minutes just to be able to edit a post, and Enafore, which is supposed to be an improvement on Semafore has an edit page that is completely inaccessible with NVDA. It just says "Dialogue". Whatever happened to choosing "edit" and having a normal page open, with edit boxes, combo boxes, and a "save" button? See Dreamwidth's page for a perfect example of this, both for creating and editing posts.
TweeseCake also works wonderfully, but it only allows you to go back so far in your own posts. There is no way to enter a link and have TweeseCake open it.
I just tried the friendica app on Windows, and I don't understand it at all. It's exactly the same as the website, from the layout, to the inaccessible parts. Why would I want to install any program that acts and looks exactly like a website? Is this some strange sighted thing?
Here we go again, with the same old questions that were never answered or resolved.
I have an old post of mine that I want to edit on Friendica. I can go to the site and see it. I can even click on "edit". Then, no matter what I do, I am unable to change anything. I am put in a text edit box, and when I leave it, I am sent back to the page, as if I never hit "edit" at all. In the past, I have, with extreme patience and a lot of wasted time, been able to edit posts from the main site, but this time, it's not working. I'm not sure if it's simply a lack of screen reader accessibility or if there is a time limit to edit posts. This one that I specifically put on my profile for people to read. If posts expire or if I can't properly edit them, I will need to delete this repost it, then readd it to my profile. Even Tweesecake can't help, since the post is beyond its time range! Can anyone please help me? I don't know why certain things on Friendica are so difficult to do with screen readers.
Here we go again, with the same old questions that were never answered or resolved.
I have an old post of mine that I want to edit on Friendica. I can go to the site and see it. I can even click on "edit". Then, no matter what I do, I am unable to change anything. I am put in a text edit box, and when I leave it, I am sent back to the page, as if I never hit "edit" at all. In the past, I have, with extreme patience and a lot of wasted time, been able to edit posts from the main site, but this time, it's not working. I'm not sure if it's simply a lack of screen reader accessibility or if there is a time limit to edit posts. This one that I specifically put on my profile for people to read. If posts expire or if I can't properly edit them, I will need to delete this repost it, then readd it to my profile. Even Tweesecake can't help, since the post is beyond its time range! Can anyone please help me? I don't know why certain things on Friendica are so difficult to do with screen readers.
Okay. I was able to do it. But honestly, it's incredibly difficult and time-consuming! There is some kind of dialogue that I must get into, and I must do it exactly right or it won't work. Whever happened to just hitting a link and being placed in a normal edit box! I do this so rarely from the main site that I'm sure I will forget again. Seriously, can someone please fix this?
Since this post is about fashion, let me start by answering the question that I am sure will be on your mind upon seeing my name. No, I am not related to The Beau. However, I love dandyism as a whole, and I took this name in tribute. I am also working to have his book, Male and Female Costume, published online freely, but that's for another post and time. At any rate, I am forty-one and am passionate about antique menswear, Regency as a scholarly pursuit, and Edwardian for daily wear. Naturally, I am constantly researching and trying to expand upon my knowledge. I am totally blind, so I must rely on descriptions rather than images.
I am the type who would like to wear a three-piece suit and accessories everywhere I go. I've decided that for my first one, I should get a lounge suit, since I can wear it almost anywhere during the day, provided it's not a formal occasion. I will eventually have morning wear, white tie, black tie, and informal evening wear, but that's for later. I have found some sites which create reproductions of men's Edwardian suits, but most use synthetic m
... show more
Since this post is about fashion, let me start by answering the question that I am sure will be on your mind upon seeing my name. No, I am not related to The Beau. However, I love dandyism as a whole, and I took this name in tribute. I am also working to have his book, Male and Female Costume, published online freely, but that's for another post and time. At any rate, I am forty-one and am passionate about antique menswear, Regency as a scholarly pursuit, and Edwardian for daily wear. Naturally, I am constantly researching and trying to expand upon my knowledge. I am totally blind, so I must rely on descriptions rather than images.
I am the type who would like to wear a three-piece suit and accessories everywhere I go. I've decided that for my first one, I should get a lounge suit, since I can wear it almost anywhere during the day, provided it's not a formal occasion. I will eventually have morning wear, white tie, black tie, and informal evening wear, but that's for later. I have found some sites which create reproductions of men's Edwardian suits, but most use synthetic materials and/or zippers, which I refuse to wear, and none uses fabrics of the proper thickness. I found sites that make women's suits with men's specifications (no ridiculous enhancements of breasts, butt, shallow pockets, soft colours, buttons on the wrong sides of shirts, etc.) but they only make modern clothing. Ebay and Etsy occasionally have some authentic pieces, but most are too formal for daily use, even by Edwardian standards! I am also having difficulty with finding some accessories, such as proper ties and socks without elastic. My other option is to have a suit commissioned, but for that, I need to find a good tailor. The best in the world, in my opinion, is Zack Pinsent, but he's in England and I'm in America (New Jersey).
I am seeking those who share my interest in antique menswear, and perhaps some advice as to where I can find such clothing and/or accessories.
For those who are interested in my journey so far, here is my dreamwidth post containing all sorts of links related to Regency and Edwardian menswear.
I am seeking assistance with singing and learning music theory. This could be in the form of teaching, giving advice, or just listening to me and sharing your opinion of my progress. This is not for a career, just for my own enrichment, though after the correct amount of time has passed, I may decide to take it further and sing publicly in some form or other, perhaps in a choir or a radio play. However, my requirements are quite specific, and I do realise this will be a long process.
Requirements 1. I have no interest in modern singers, musicians, or their techniques. I am using the book You Can Sing, by Clara Novello Davies, as a basis for everything, especially my physical and vocal exercises. I am interested in the techniques of her time and that of her son, Ivor Novello, with a focus on operetta, and perhaps, choral singing.
The above also holds for music theory. I am aligning my knowledge and methodology with what was taught during Ivor's time. A list of all the books I am using, as well as an explanation of the knowledge I have attained so far can be foun
... show more
I am seeking assistance with singing and learning music theory. This could be in the form of teaching, giving advice, or just listening to me and sharing your opinion of my progress. This is not for a career, just for my own enrichment, though after the correct amount of time has passed, I may decide to take it further and sing publicly in some form or other, perhaps in a choir or a radio play. However, my requirements are quite specific, and I do realise this will be a long process.
Requirements 1. I have no interest in modern singers, musicians, or their techniques. I am using the book You Can Sing, by Clara Novello Davies, as a basis for everything, especially my physical and vocal exercises. I am interested in the techniques of her time and that of her son, Ivor Novello, with a focus on operetta, and perhaps, choral singing.
The above also holds for music theory. I am aligning my knowledge and methodology with what was taught during Ivor's time. A list of all the books I am using, as well as an explanation of the knowledge I have attained so far can be found here. This includes the differences between modern and older singers.
Please be aware that I am totally blind. I cannot use images, graphical charts, tables, musical notation, etc. Braille music does exist, but I don't know how to read it, and would need to have appropriate texts transcribed, in any case. I do, however, have perfect pitch, an excellent sense of rhythm, and a very good musical memory, so perhaps, we can work on modifications that don't truly cross the boundaries into modernity but that are still accessible.
If you do more than just give occasional advice, I'm sure you will want to be compensated for your work, as that's only right. Please be aware that I can only pay $25 per hour at the most, via Paypal. In that case, I can only work with you for about four hours per month, due to financial constraints, but of course, I will also study on my own. I may be able to do more, but not as a normal practice.
If you are a descendant of anyone who knew Clara Novello Davies , her students, or Ivor Novello, even if you yourself know nothing about singing, I would still love to hear from you if you have stories to share!
This is something I wrote on Dreamwidth in September. I think some of you may find it interesting. I myself am beginning to study all of this, as I am fascinated by the singing methods and knowledge of the time. It is a bit difficult doing it being blind and unable to read music, but fortunately, there are ways around that. My perfect pitch and good memory for lyrics also helps.
Below, you will find various links related to theory, harmony and counterpoint, and a comparison of older and modern methods of teaching and singing. While this relates to choirs and opera, it also relates to the theatre, particularly operettas and such.
Studying Music: Part I dandylover1.dreamwidth.org/205…
My one criterion was that the methods and books used had to be from the time of Ivor Novello, preferably from his youth (born 1893). If I were to start in the early nineteenth century, which is where most of my preferred non-musical educational material is from, I would miss extremely important developments in classical music. Starting at the birth of his mother, Clara Novello Davies, in 1861, would be fine. However, since her own book, which I am using as my main text and guide, was written in 1928, I went with that of her son. In the following sections, you will find the books I am using. One thing I have not included, though it was a huge influence in Ivor's own writing style, was theatrical music, such as that found in operettas and Edwardian musical comedies. That is such a large topic for discussion that I feel it deserves its own separate post, as does Ivor's music, since it's an interesting blend of all of the above. But this is well outside the scope of traditional musical study.
In the next entry, we will delve into vocal training and why the singers of Novello's time sound so wonderful.
Studying Music: Part II dandylover1.dreamwidth.org/205…
Finally, since I mentioned the exercises, here they are, for anyone who wants to try them. Note that these are the Preliminaries and Breathlock Physicals, not the vocal exercises. But I have provided the link to her book as well, for those who may wish to go further.
I know a little bit about music theory and enjoy singing myself, along with playing clarinet and sax. Happy to talk about music related stuff most anytime.
this may not be totally useful, but since you posted here you are obviously adept at novel internet things 😊 so I just thought I'd add that I have always found excellent music tutorials of all sorts on #SoulSeek
@Avalon Jazz Thank you. I sincerely appreciate it. But these are most likely quite modern, so aren't what I am seeking. But they can probably be of great use to others.
It has just come to my attention that there is only one developer of Friendica. It's a truly wonderful site, with a lot of potential, particularly for those of us coming from Facebook. It allows for extremely long posts, local posting, and you can follow and interact with people from various sites in the Fediverse. But there are a few issues regarding screen reader accessibility, and perhaps some things that I'm not aware of. I have therefore decided to create a Friendica development tag, in order to find people who are willing and able to help resolve these issues.
@Nick's world I use TweeseCake with it and it works very well. The main problems are on the site itself. Even then, it's not truly inaccessible. It's just that it could be better, with normal links instead of menus, and a way to edit posts without resorting to a client. But things do read, and it is possible to make and edit a profile, read and respond to posts, etc. TweeseCake just makes it easier. Pachli for Android also works well, but I prepfer Windows.
@Nick's world Oh, yes. It works very well! And unlike TWBlue, you can edit posts with it. I'm still not sure why they don't have that feature. They also don't allow long posts, as TweeseCake does, but if they're primarily built for Mastodon, that, at least, makes sense. They do allow you to see favourites, though, which TweeseCake seems to have a problem doing. They'll be displayed and then turn to numbers (1 of 250, for instance), and then disappear.
I am not sure how much Friendica has diverged from Hubzilla, Streams, or Forte, but they are all from the same family tree. They all come from Mist Park and Friendika (the MIT licensed version of Friendika before it was renamed Friendica and switched to AGPL).
There are some opportunities for collaboration, but the biggest obstacle is incompatible licenses. Hubzilla is MIT licensed and Friendica is AGPL. That means that Friendica can use code from Hubzilla, but Hubzilla can never use any code from Friendica. The exception being addons, themes, and widgets, that can be any license.
If I truly need to research something and ensure that the answers are accurate, I do so on my own. But for many things, I use Perplexity. It has helped me in numerous situations, from simple things to writing code to help me use Supermium more efficiently. But I do have a few questions.
Why isn't it possible to delete conversations from the website? It forces me to use my phone.
Why, when I try to search my threads for keywords that I know were used, it never finds them? I do this on the site.
Finally, why is their Android app so inaccessible? I can do basic things, such as delete threads, with it, but I certainly couldn't replace the website with it.
To make a very long story short, I am considering entering the field of accessibility. More specifically, website testing. For those interested, I wrote about it here. If you can offer any suggestions, recommendations, etc. either here or there, please do so. I would love to hear from you!
The long story, for those who are interested in my background in technology and how I came to this decision, can be found here. My blind peers, in particular, may enjoy this, though it may also take you on a trip down memory lane.
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 commu
... show more
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
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)
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.
@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.
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)
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.
A social media charity The Newsmast Foundation is an educational charity, supporting the use of social media for good. We’re at the forefront of new, open social media.
I can't believe I didn't post this earlier! Anyway, here is a Dreamwidth entry of mine containing all sorts of links related to dandyism, including an entire section on Beau Brummell. As you can tell, this is another one of my great passions.
(This is a companion piece to my dating post, but here, I am strictly seeking friends. Therefore, the beginning will look similar.) Hello. I live in New Jersey and am forty years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Received Pronunciation, and the Regency. I like coffees, teas, and nasal snuffs, and enjoy cooking, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, crafts, and playing cards and dice. I like Baroque through Classical and a bit of early Romantic music. I love theatre (especially Regency plays, English and Viennese operettas, and Edwardian musical comedies). I prefer antique menswear and accessories (no feminine clothing). I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. I am happily childfree and am not religious. I respect those who are, as long as they don't try to convert me or base their lives around it. I also have no time for mind games, drama, or political correctness/sugar coating. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.
... show more
(This is a companion piece to my dating post, but here, I am strictly seeking friends. Therefore, the beginning will look similar.) Hello. I live in New Jersey and am forty years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Received Pronunciation, and the Regency. I like coffees, teas, and nasal snuffs, and enjoy cooking, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, crafts, and playing cards and dice. I like Baroque through Classical and a bit of early Romantic music. I love theatre (especially Regency plays, English and Viennese operettas, and Edwardian musical comedies). I prefer antique menswear and accessories (no feminine clothing). I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. I am happily childfree and am not religious. I respect those who are, as long as they don't try to convert me or base their lives around it. I also have no time for mind games, drama, or political correctness/sugar coating. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.
I am seeking friends, either online or off, though offline would be ideal, so we can meet and do things together. I don't care about your sex or sexual orientation, but I would prefer friends no younger than twenty-one. I tend to get along with those who are older than I, since we usually have more in common, but it's not a requirement. I am blind, but it's not the focal point of my life. Still, it does mean that I can't drive. I really don't have any understanding of chronic illness, anxiety, depression, loneliness, etc. so if you need someone who could help you through that on a personal level, I'm not the one you're seeking. I also have no children and tend to avoid them, though I am polite when meeting them. I love cats, so if you have any, I would love to meet them or hear about them. I also enjoy hearing about cooking or gardening adventures, antiques, etc. and I love learning about interesting lives. If we do meet, I need to get to know you a bit first.
For those who would like to know more about me, this is my journal. Anyone can read or comment, whether or not he is a member.
I wanted to add tags such as cards, classical music, fashion, gardening, Regency, theatre, etc. but I don't want to abuse them, because while I am seeking a man who likes these things, my post isn't really about them. Perhaps, a veteran Friendica or Fediverse user could instruct me in this.
Hello. I live in New Jersey and am forty-one years old. I am seeking a man over sixty who is well-dressed, well-spoken, confident, and witty. You can be either straight or bisexual. You should enjoy the finer things in life, but you need not be rich. I have no interest in bdsm, role-playing, etc. I simply adore the voices and bodies of older men. That said, I do love it soft down there and enjoy bedroom fun. I would prefer you to either live in or near New Jersey, or to be able to visit me frequently. No one-night stands, parents or men who want children, caregivers, workaholics, or recreational drug users. I am open to both fun with no strings attached, and a committed relationship, but I must get to know you first.
Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, and the Regency. I like coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, hot baths, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I also love cats. In classical music, I
... show more
Hello. I live in New Jersey and am forty-one years old. I am seeking a man over sixty who is well-dressed, well-spoken, confident, and witty. You can be either straight or bisexual. You should enjoy the finer things in life, but you need not be rich. I have no interest in bdsm, role-playing, etc. I simply adore the voices and bodies of older men. That said, I do love it soft down there and enjoy bedroom fun. I would prefer you to either live in or near New Jersey, or to be able to visit me frequently. No one-night stands, parents or men who want children, caregivers, workaholics, or recreational drug users. I am open to both fun with no strings attached, and a committed relationship, but I must get to know you first.
Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, British history, and the Regency. I like coffee, tea, wine, nasal snuff, cooking, hot baths, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I also love cats. In classical music, I enjoy Baroque through a bit of early Romantic, while in popular, I usually prefer 1950's through 1970's. I love theatre (especially English and Viennese operettas, Edwardian musical comedies), and some Regency/Georgian plays. I prefer antique menswear and accessories (no feminine clothing). It's my dream to either buy a genuine Edwardian suit or have one commissioned. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. I am happily childfree, am not religious, and speak my mind. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.
I really love Tweesecake. The more I use it, the more wonderful things I learn about it. I am now able to view my Local Friendica.world timeline, Home (which is basically the people whom I follow), the Federated Timeline, my Favourites/Likes, my mentions (when people Mention me), etc. all in one place! Everything is customisable, too! I only wish they made a 32-bit version, so that I could use it on all of my machines, both physical and virtual. Still, as long as I can use it on one, it's good, since I can just use NVDA Remote to access it with another. Oh, and it doesn't try to insert nonsense when I write tags! I hate when I write in text fields and receive suggestions.
Yay!!! I got Tweesecake to work! I couldn't understand, for the life of me, what was going on! I thought the folder was corrupted, so I redownloaded it, and whenever I started it, it kept saying "Welcome to Tweesecake", and then "Config". Then, when I tried to navigate through the window, it completely disappeared. So I thought, maybe, they had discontinued their service, but that was not the case. It turned out that this is not a fully portable app. Unlike the ones at portableapps.com, and like both Serpent UXP and IceDove UXP, it stores information in a separate folder and not just the main one. I may change this behaviour in the future. For now, I deleted the separate Tweesecake folder (in App Data), and restarted the program. And now I have a perfectly functioning Windows client, including the ability to edit my posts!
This is truly ridiculous. In order to post here, I have to use Semaphore, TWBlue or Pachli, because I can't figure out how to do it on the main site. I know I did it a few times, but it's very difficult to find and is not available as and immediate edit box. In order to read my own posts, I have to go to the main site or Pachli, because I can't do it on Semaphore or TWBlue. (Note. I figured out how to red them but can't reply on Semaphore, since there is no edit box.) So I basically have to use several sites plus an app (I almost never use apps for any websites) just to be able to use Friendica. I specifically left Facebook due to inaccessibility! Even with this mess, it's still not as horrible as there, but It would be nice to have one site where I could do it all, like on Dreamwidth, or at least one Windows client that would allow me to do everything, without having to resort to using my phone! Tweesecake was nice the few times it worked, but now, no matter what I do, I can't even get it to load. It says something about configuring and then disappears! Enafore is supposed to all
... show more
This is truly ridiculous. In order to post here, I have to use Semaphore, TWBlue or Pachli, because I can't figure out how to do it on the main site. I know I did it a few times, but it's very difficult to find and is not available as and immediate edit box. In order to read my own posts, I have to go to the main site or Pachli, because I can't do it on Semaphore or TWBlue. (Note. I figured out how to red them but can't reply on Semaphore, since there is no edit box.) So I basically have to use several sites plus an app (I almost never use apps for any websites) just to be able to use Friendica. I specifically left Facebook due to inaccessibility! Even with this mess, it's still not as horrible as there, but It would be nice to have one site where I could do it all, like on Dreamwidth, or at least one Windows client that would allow me to do everything, without having to resort to using my phone! Tweesecake was nice the few times it worked, but now, no matter what I do, I can't even get it to load. It says something about configuring and then disappears! Enafore is supposed to allow me to edit my posts, but I have no idea how to do that since there is no normal edit link or button, and half the time, when I go to my page, the edit box for me to type in isn't even there! Semaphore inserts rubbish when I'm trying to write tags, so that I have to write everything in Notepad and paste it in.
Update. I did figure out how to read my own posts, though Friendica itself has a more direct option called My Posts. Anyway, on TWBlue and Semaphore, I can find them, and some others, on the Local page. But I still can't reply with Semaphore. There is a reply button, but when I press it, there is no edit box to type into. I also can't edit there, but no one can. That was supposed to be something fixed in Enafore.
Update. I can read my posts (and some others) on the Local page and option of both Semaphore and TWBlue. However, I cannot reply on Semaphore. It shows a reply button, but when I press it, there is no edit box for me to type into. I also can't edit my posts there, but I already knew that. It's one of the things that Enafore was supposed to have fixed.
@Robert Kingett I'm a very happy Friendica user and I use Tweesecake which works well with it. Do you mean that a client should be on a Friendica instance? If so, I agree.
Does anyone know what is going on with Tweesecake? It worked well until today. Now, when I start it, it shows the welcome screen and says "config", but when I try to use the arrows to select my Friendica profile, the whole program disappears. Then, when I try to restart it, I have to go to the Task Manager and end the task tree, or it will tell me that it's still running, even though I don't see it when I alt+tab through my open programs. For the first time in my life, I have to say that a phone application is better than a Windows client or even website, as I have full access to everything on Friendica with Pachli and not on Tweesecake, Semafore, or Phanpy. Obviously, I can edit things, from posts to my profile on the Friendica site, but it's not as intuitive as it could be and has strange menus and such, instead of normal links. That is why I was seeking a simpler alternative. #accessibility #Android #blind #Friendica #Mastodon ##Pachli Tweesecake #Windows
Okay. Never mind that about Pachli. It works for some ethings but I still can't easily read posts, since I have to scroll through everything. This is why I hate mobile apps. I use a keyboard and its very annoying. So now, I have to use two or three different sites/apps just to be able to post and edit things. I'm beginning to consider just not having any friends at all, since I can barely use Facebook now that they eliminated the Basic Mobile site, and even Friendica, that I thought would be truly accessible, is proving to be cumbersome. The only place for making friends that is completely accessible now is Dreamwidth.
"I'd use blue but right now it doesn't support edits to my knowledge, which is a dealbreaker. Cake and Enafore are the only accessible Windows clients I know of that do. Enafore is pinafore which merged in all the accessibility fixes of Semaphore and is more compatible with Glitch, which is what places like the cave have switched to anyway. So unless Semaphore starts to have a major uptick in development it should be regarded as superseded by Enafore."
Okay. So how am I supposed to edit thing? I thought it would be decent, with a normal edit link or button. But of course, no one thinks with common sense these days! I tried the menu and selected "more" and "edit" but it did nothing! I tried looking for an edit box and found nothing. Then, I selected the checkbox and still nothing. But of course, it had a delete button. I guess it was too difficult to make an edit one, too.
Those who love antique fashions will enjoy this. It is a compilation of links related to Regency and Edwardian mensware. If you have any to add or wish to make any suggestions, please do so.
Robert Kingett
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •patricus
in reply to Robert Kingett • • •it's better to have a smartphone because of all the features.
Robert Kingett
in reply to patricus • • •systematic decline in quality of online platforms over time driven by greed
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)patricus
in reply to Robert Kingett • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •didn't an SMS require a phone, too?
QR codes are perfectly usable by the blind.
I agree that a text message works on a dumb phone, but if you're blind the accessibility of those is generally poorer anyway.
As a balance of security, SMS spooffing and whatnot is a real risk.
Simon Jaeger
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •