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 moreI 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.
dreamwidth.org
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.
#accessibility #blind #coding #Chrome #Developers #Dreamwidth #Facebook #fediverse #Firefox #Friendica #HTML #HTML5 #NVDA #ScreenReaders #TweeseCake #WCAG #Windows
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •@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%.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #TweeseCake #A11y #Accessibility
Droppie [infosec] 🐨 reshared this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • •@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.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • •Robert Kingett
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •GoToSocial - Fast, fun, ActivityPub server, powered by Go.
gotosocial.orgGeorgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Robert Kingett • •Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • •@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett I just saw this.
"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."
homehack.nl/when-to-use-friend…
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
... show more@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett I just saw this.
"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."
homehack.nl/when-to-use-friend…
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.
joinfediverse.wiki/Akkoma
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.
like this
caos likes this.
caos reshared this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • •the esoteric programmer reshared this.
the esoteric programmer
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell
in reply to the esoteric programmer • •the esoteric programmer
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to the esoteric programmer • •the esoteric programmer
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •@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.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #TweeseCake #TWBlue
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • •@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.
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.
Jupiter Rowland likes this.
Robert Kingett
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Robert Kingett • •Robert Kingett
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Robert Kingett • •Robert Kingett
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Robert Kingett • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •@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.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #GoToSocial #TWBlue
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •@Georgiana Brummell Quote:
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
... show more@Georgiana Brummell Quote:
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:
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.
CC: @Robert Kingett
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Akkoma
Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Robert Kingett • • •@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.
CC: @Georgiana Brummell
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #A11y #Accessibility
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
the esoteric programmer reshared this.
Matthias
in reply to Robert Kingett • • •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 ;)
@Georgiana Brummell
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
caos
in reply to Matthias • • •@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.
@Jupiter Rowland @Robert Kingett @Georgiana Brummell
like this
Matthias and Georgiana Brummell like this.
Jupiter Rowland
in reply to caos • • •@caos Wasn't there something in discussion or even in the making in this regard?
CC: @Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett
caos
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •(to be able to enter the Alt texts directly during the upload?)
@Robert Kingett @Georgiana Brummell
jakob 🇦🇹 ✅
in reply to caos • • •@caos @Georgiana Brummell @Robert Kingett
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!!!)
like this
caos and Georgiana Brummell like this.
Robert Kingett
in reply to Matthias • • •Also, this original post has actionable suggestions already! How hard would it be to make a friendica work on more HTML 5 code? friendica.world/display/84b6ef… @feb @jupiter_rowland @dandylover1
Also, this original post has actionable suggestions already! How hard would it be to make a friendica work on more HTML 5 code? friendica.world/display/84b6ef… @feb @jupiter_rowland @dandylover1
Georgiana Brummell
2025-01-27 21:53:57
Georgiana Brummell likes this.
Michael Vogel
in reply to Robert Kingett • • •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 moreI 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).
like this
Matthias, Len and Georgiana Brummell like this.
Ruud reshared this.
Robert Kingett
in reply to Michael Vogel • • •Meeting with Robert Kingett - Robert Kingett
CalendlyGeorgiana Brummell likes this.
Michael Vogel
in reply to Robert Kingett • • •Georgiana Brummell likes this.
pasjrwoctx
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell likes this.
C.Suthorn
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Michael Vogel
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •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:
There were also some other things that needed to be fixed, see here for a summary: github.com/friendica/friendica…
I will try to work on this. I recently got hold of an iPhone, so I can now check with VoiceOver.
like this
caos, Georgiana Brummell, Matthias, Tobias and Jupiter Rowland like this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Michael Vogel • •Matthias likes this.
Michael Vogel
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •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).
like this
Krone Randegg machts und miradlo erzählt and Georgiana Brummell like this.
Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Michael Vogel • •Matthias
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •@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.
Georgiana Brummell likes this.