Month: 17 Tevet 5784 (December 2023)

@cordova5029 Except this is a problem that musicians have been trying to solve for literal decades, and one of the criteria for anything being included in WCAG is that the technique has to be practical and actually work. Your solution of attempting to describe music via alt text isn't workable on several levels, let alone practical, and for Mastodon to push this is just performative accessibility.

@cordova5029 The most workable solution to the specific case of music is that it, like logos or similar, has an exception because there isn't a practical way to make all things accessible to all disabilities. It's kind of like saying "Blind people should be able to fly planes!" Well yes blind people should be able to do lots of things but flying planes just isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future for a whole bunch of reasons and it's just something that has to be lived with.

@fastfinge Mastodon could probably use long and short description with tooltips or similar to tell users how to use it. And yes WCAG does refer to captions and transcripts as media alternatives but that's not how Mastodon is using it either in the interface or culturally. And I think this is creating more problems than it's solving.

@jscholes Or media description would be better. But then this is getting into the idiotic choices that Mastodon makes for its incredibly opinionated decisions about how to implement AP, which is not your fault. But it's probably a rabbit hole you don't want to fall into.

@cordova5029 Let's just agree to hard disagree on this, because I'm getting the impression that for you, what you believe should matter/be the rule is what is actually the rule that you think should be enforced and I'm not going with that.

@cordova5029 I think it's great to hold yourself to a standard, as long as there's room for when you're unable to meet it. I'm very glad to hear though that this is a you holding yourself to a high standard thing though and not something else. OK back to things that should be but aren't. I should have a lifetime supply of free alcohol and chocolate. Oh and I should be appointed supreme ruler of the universe.

@fastfinge @cordova5029 Wait what? Someone actually said, out loud, that it took them months to write alt text? I mean I know this is the fediverse and all but damn.

@fastfinge @cordova5029 Seriously I think this wins the internets for the rest of the year.

@jscholes @cordova5029 lol I'm laughing so hard over here.

@jscholes @cordova5029 Wow.

@jscholes @cordova5029 You know it's bad when even GPT can't figure out how to spew some bullshit at it.

@jscholes @cordova5029 Yeah definitely on point.