Kind: Notes

I’m writing this because the trend of blind people using Facebook Live is unfortunately spreading.

So, friendly reminder to blind people who are using Facebook Live that it still doesn’t support captions or transcripts and we don’t know when or if it evere will.

I get wanting to do video, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

But if you care about accessibility, then you shouldn’t be using a platform that makes it pretty much impossible to not actively discriminate against an entire class of people, in this case deaf and hearing impaired people.

We can sit here and talk about positive impact and other buzzwords all day long. But you can’t good intention or positive impact your way out of this as long as you’re using Facebook Live.

We can sit here and say “don’t do dos and don’ts because it hurts feelings” all day long. But there are somethings that really are as simple as “do” and “don’t” when it comes to accessibility, and prioritizing convenience over one of the most critical and impactful aspects of accessibility by choosing to use a platform that explicitly doesn’t support captions or transcripts is one of those things.

So, if you really do care about accessibility, such that all the hell-raising about inaccessible apps and websites really is more than just looking out for your own interests, don’t use Facebook Live.

I got breakfast from Dunkin Doughnuts for myself and the sweety this morning.

Mmmm Munchkins. I haven’t had these since forever.

Not gonna do this every day by any means because it would get too expensive, but it’s definitely a very nice treat.

OK, post properties do not carry over.

I need to think about how I want to resolve this. It’ll take some code.

I think the links themselves would carry over, but then we’re back to the problem of contrast issues for low-vision people viewing from the Facebook app, and there’s at least one of those who likes this page.

Photos I believe I’ve figured out. I’ll either need to attach a featured image using the standard featured image box, or add them directly to the content.

Checkins should be OK because location and weather data get attached automatically to the content, so there will be something, even if it’s just a weather status.

I’ll need to figure out how I want to work around book posts and other similara content.

I just accidentally closed my browser and lost a ton of work. How’s your Friday going?

This post is a test of how post kinds will display when sharing to Facebook.

I’m biting the bullet and letting WordPress.com manage syndication to Facebook since I really don’t want to rangle Facebook and Facebook seems to be giving Micro.blog a hard time by (seemingly randomly) discontinuing publishing to Facebook pages.

Specifically, I want to see if I can publish without manually adding a custom message and still have the contents of titleless posts post in their entirety to Facebook.

There’s a bit of an issue for low-vision users of the Facebook app on iOS at least when you post just the title of a post and the link without an accompanying message.

I seriously doubt Facebook is going to do anything about this, since they pretty much don’t listen to their accessibility team unless someone somewhere in management decides it’s time to throw them their occasional bone, so I’m trying to mitigate it from my end.

I of course have zero control over the styling of the app, and I can’t pass those kinds of changes through from my websites.

Apologies in advance to those who are following me on Facebook while I test this.

I have a feeling I’m going to be doing a lot of extra looking in the near future for hotels skipping the smart speaker craze. I do not want to walk into my hotel room and say anything to Alexa. If Amazon gets its privacy act together, (same with Google et al), then I’ll be happy to jump on board, but until then, I’d like to hold on to at least some choice in the matter.

The wireless network is down because of a thunderstorm, and I have one out of four bars for cell phone signal. I think this might actually be slower than dial-up. Time for an unscheduled break from work. Hoping the rest of the day doesn’t go like this. Oh well, at least the radio is still working. L

I think I’m going to change my site’s footer to “Site best viewed with a computer and a cold one.” I suppose I should modernize that a bit, since people use more than just computers to view websites, but I’d dearly love the opportunity to poke fun at the whole “site-best-viewed-with” (insert browser, usually Chrome) nonsense.

The surprise heat wave broke today, so the windows are open and there’s a wonderful breeze coming in. I looked at the temperature in Augusta and it’s 94 compared to our 72. Glad I’m not there.