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I see dueling opinions about whether the Fediverse needs to be easier for “normies” to use, against whether the “official” Mastodon app promoting the “official” server is a betrayal of the very idea of federated social media. This could be a spicy take, but I think both can be true at the same time.

The Fediverse is great because it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be – you have the choice of what your experience is. You can have the easy app, or pick your favorite server, or even build it all yourself. Both can coexist!

I get the fear of one big player dictating the experience, but undoing the open standards already in place would be very difficult. I think the pendulum has plenty of room to swing toward being welcoming without endangering what we’ve already built 🙂​

—@courtney

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The highest ranking search result for accessibility auditing tools is accessibilitychecker.org. The design and initial messaging had me suspicious out of the gate, but I didn’t see immediate branding for an overlay company.

That is until I submitted a sample test of Google and saw one of the overlay monsters appear as a recommended solution.

Equally as gross, to my mind, is the “legal action” modal that appears when you attempt to use the “back to home” link.

Don’t fall for this one, folks.

—@belwerks

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You know the view you get in the MySQL command line, where vertical lines separate all the columns and it can be really hard to track what’s what with a screen reader? I learned today that you can terminate a query with G (uppercase G), or add -E (or –vertical) when invoking mysql. This puts each field on its own line, as in field1: value1. It’s way, way easier to read with a screen reader. I wish I’d known this years ago.

—@alexhall