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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

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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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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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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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Just got a comment from a fellow chastising me for talking about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon.

He thinks we’re dropping the ball on Twitter migration by not focusing 100% on Mastodon.

However, 30% of the Fediverse doesn’t run on Mastodon.

Some server software, like Friendica, was on the Fediverse 6 years before Mastodon was created.

Sorry we’re not shutting things down just because Twitter migrants recently showed up.

—@atomicpoet

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Hello Fediverse!

@Flipboard is currently a walled garden.

It’s a beautiful, highly curated walled garden filled with content from the worlds best publishers and creators curated by Flipboard’s editorial team as well as our community of magazine makers.

But it’s still a walled garden. Today that begins to change.

We’ve moved four of our most popular #curation desks into the Fediverse for you to enjoy.

@NewsDesk
@TechDesk
@CultureDesk
@ScienceDesk

Details below:

https://about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/flipboards-editorial-curation-comes-to-mastodon/

—@mike

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If countries want to ban TikTok, they should make privacy laws and then ban it legitimately on account of violating privacy regulations (along with many other sketchy companies’ social platforms as well – yay!) instead of trying to ban it because it’s Chinese.

Make privacy laws and then ban Meta and Twitter and everyone else who violates them.

—@topher

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my previous policy had been “no alt text, no boost”

but now, and i can’t believe i have to say this, my policy is “no useful alt text, no boost”

alt text is there to improve accessibility for sight-impaired users. just throwing some bullshit in the alt text field so you can say you did, w/o actually putting in a description that will be of use to anyone, is deeply cynical and i’m not going to reward it

it’s not hard, you fuckers

—@nerdybutcute

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Copied from a friend, too funny not to share. This gave me a good laugh.

Hilarious! 🤣

1. When one door closes and another door opens, you are probably in prison.

2. To me, “drink responsibly” means don’t spill it.

3. Age 60 might be the new 40, but 9:00 pm is the new midnight.

4. It’s the start of a brand new day, and I’m off like a herd of turtles.

5. The older I get, the earlier it gets late.

6. When I say, “The other day,” I could be referring to any time between yesterday and 15 years ago.

7. I remember being able to get up without making sound effects.

8. I had my patience tested. I’m negative.

9. Remember, if you lose a sock in the dryer, it comes back as a Tupperware lid that doesn’t fit any of your containers.

10. If you’re sitting in public and a stranger takes the seat next to you, just stare straight ahead and say, “Did you bring the money?”

11. When you ask me what I am doing today, and I say “nothing,” it does not mean I am free. It means I am doing nothing.

12. I finally got eight hours of sleep. It took me three days, but whatever.

13. I run like the winded.

14. I hate when a couple argues in public, and I missed the beginning and don’t know whose side I’m on.

15. When someone asks what I did over the weekend, I squint and ask, “Why, what did you hear?”

16. When you do squats, are your knees supposed to sound like a goat chewing on an aluminum can stuffed with celery?

17. I don’t mean to interrupt people. I just randomly remember things and get really excited.

18. When I ask for directions, please don’t use words like “east.”

19. Don’t bother walking a mile in my shoes. That would be boring. Spend 30 seconds in my head. That’ll freak you right out.

20. Sometimes, someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes you forever. We call those people cops.

21. My luck is like a bald guy who just won a comb.”

—@treehousedarren