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For those who help out blind people by only boosting images with helpful Alt text descriptions, thank you so much. Y’all are the reason, along with Mastodon being based off of an open API, that Mastodon is not just accessible to blind people, but somewhere that we’re flocking to. Like blind people aren’t just using this space to talk to non-blind people about our issues anymore. It’s a place where we can talk amongst ourselves too! And when you get to a point where you can comfortably, on many operating systems and apps, just not even remember that this *isn’t* a space for yourself and people who share your experiences, even for a minute, then you’ve moved in the right direction! The API allows for accessibility, as blind people can make interfaces for blind people. Alt text, #HashTagsWrittenLikeThis, and general acceptence, though, means blind people are going to appreciate, and thus stay on, Mastodon and the Fediverse at large. And that is far more important than money, or the users on Twitter who, if their blind, will have to deal with Twitter’s website and apps where before they could pop open a compose window with a single key command, or read their tweets from anywhere on Windows, like glancing at an open Twitter tab. All that freedom and flexibility is now on Mastodon, Telegram, and Github, and not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not Discord, not Reddit, and definitely not Tiktok. Of course, website accessibility is still very important. If I’m not mistaken, sighted people generally interact with Mastodon through the site and first-party app. But having that open API means a heck of a lot.

#accessibility #blind #Twitter #Mastodon #fedi

—@devinprater

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This is the cover of the ›Jewish Address Book of Greater Berlin‹ of 1931, published in good faith as an attempt to service the #jewish communities of Berlin.

Today, it is a valuable resource in #research of the fate of people murdered or evicted in the #Shoah.

I use it in my research on #MiesVanDerRohe‘s work during his time in #Berlin & #Chicago.

When I hear ›I have nothing to hide‹ or ›#Electronic #Medical Record‹, the address book springs to my mind.

🌺

🏷️ #Fascism #Holocaust #LGBT #MAGA

—@jpreisendoerfer

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Pro tip for those who would want to read scientific papers on ArXIV with a screen reader. ArXIv usually offers “source” versions of their papers, usually written in LaTeX, which is much easier to deal with than PDF. You can retrieve the source by clicking the “other formats” link. On the page that opens, you can also change your default download format. If the file downloads without an extension (as it does for me), set the extension to .tar and extract it with any serious archive extraction tool (7Zip and WinRAR should both work.) If you don’t understand LaTeX (and if you’re reading papers on arXIV, you probably do), you can find some nice tutorials by Googling.

—@miki

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If you use #AltText, I have one thing to say to you.
Thank you. You may not get commentary on a post every time you write it out acknowledging that you did, but as someone who’s #Blind, trust me. We notice.
If you don’t write AltText on your photos, we notice that too. Please give it a try. Imagine how you’d feel if you came across picture after picture that looks like a blank screen to you. You’d be frustrated, right?
If you don’t know where to start, check out my pinned thread on AltText.

—@JesseF8693