I work in the accessibility field I know quite well why people do the things they do with ASCII art in posts and other online content, and none of that changes the fact that it's a huge problem for screen readers. Whether you decide to arbitrarily exclude or include emoticons or not.
Nikolett Till (mastodon.ml)
@acarson It works quite differently for everyone. I, for example, am totally blind, but played some ascii games such as Dungeon crawl stone soup. It wasn’t easy, but if the person really wants to do something, they can learn. On the other hand, half of these signs aren’t even processed by screenreaders if you turn off punctuation. That’s why I have several profiles in NVDA. One for everyday use, in which I turned off all kinds of punctuation. One for VS code, in which literally everything is turned on, so I have a better understanding of what’s happening in terms of punctuation. Earlier there was also a profile for such ascii games, in which all the punctuation was turned on, plus there were a few other settings changed. Besides that I speak multiple languages so I also have switch synth set to different synths, anyway for which I turned off punctuation.
@acarson It’s not trouble for anyone. It’s just a few clicks, in a few seconds. If we think about how it would be good for us, and only us, the sighted community is going to think the same. They aren’t going to describe pictures for us, because they don’t need it. And if they don’t need it, they won’t put any effort to explain because it’s unnecessary. It’s the same situation. You don’t like ascii, sighted folks do. They aren’t going to change it just because of YOU, because you are BLIND and they must respect you, and only you. An adequate person, or ambassador of accessibility should understand this. I really hope when you are working, you don’t go like “make this application accessible because I, I can’t use it!” because if yes, I’m ashamed of such representatives of the blind community. I have friends working in the field of accessibility, so I also see the situation a little bit from inside.
@acarson @Destranis
I also work in accessibility field and what you say sounds very unprofessional.
If some website or another product uses ascii graphics or emojis to show important information, then yes, this is something that should be reported and if this is the company which hired you as a specialist you can affect and they should fix it.
But telling people that you hate them just for the fact that they upload ascii pics to their personal feed is the same if I tell publicly something like “Hey girls! Stop wearing nice dresses because I don’t see them!”
Sounds strange, doesn’t it?
If someone who knows you sends you such content then of course you have a right to argue and ask for something different.
But you have no right to hate everyone just for the fact that he/she doesn’t care about your comfort.
Then I should hate my friends who share photos without alt texts?
Or should I hate people with nicknames like n1ntend0 (which means nintendo)?
Of course no.