(no subject)

[kradeelav]

there's a half written essay in my mind that i feel like """accessibility"" has been a trojan horse for 'increasing engagement' by less discerning types who are not plugged into what strict slices of disabled people need and who use it as a way to shoehorn in ways of 'we need Moar users' without asking whether or not those users are actually wanted. (because true accessibility-for-disabled-folks is hard to implement properly on a larger scale and requires focus testing groups, money, and time.)

and the third leg to all of this is that friction is desired to keep online places healthy which is a hard pill to swallow for said accessibility/(growth)-first people (all of my favorite places to actually talk with nuance have some comparatively extreme roadblocks to keep the bad actors & spammers out; invite-only servers, hand-coding personal sites & talking only over emails, dreamwidth due to its nature of being text heavy and hardcore privacy filters...)

i'd probably title this essay 'effort is not the enemy'

idk i saw a discussion on the indie web that word for word was 'we need more accessibility' and i'm over here violently shaking my head no which is an irony considering how many levels of 'visibly disabled' i am, lol.

like i really don't think the effort needed to create a personal site as it stands is a bad thing. there's plenty of education out there for those who want it, way more than in the 00's. and it being a thing you pay for a nominal amount probably helps keeps the spam & bad actors lower than it would be otherwise. and at some point you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Comments

[eff_ess_oe]

Ok now I wanna see this essay. Especially the bits you were alluding to about the difference between "accessibility" as making it easier for disabled ppl to participate in communities vs "accessibility" as ease of entry for the common Joe....

[kradeelav]

yeah! like i use close captions all the time, so podcasts/webinars having transcripts discretely is a perfect example (like i think TED talk did for ages) for actual accessibility in my opinion. but then other times i hear 'accessibility' being used interchangeably for 'how can we evaporate friction for signups' and ... hmm. that's a load bearing "what friction do you exactly mean" to me haha.

[uskglass]

I really feel this in my workplace/field in a different way, lol, as far as the level of... hype attached to the idea of streamlining everything as vs the concept of desirable difficulty or friction, especially in learning or memory, being seen as passe or even obtrusive. It's the whole war-for-attention thing & the arms race of streamlining UI to prevent losing clicks, whether or not "maximizing clicks" is something you really and actually want to happen. It's HARD to advocate for the value of useful friction without somebody (often disingenuously) wondering if this is Uphill Both Ways In The Snow-type nostalgia. See also: gates, keeping them, whether or not there should ever be a gate anywhere...

[karel]

I'd looooove to see this essay if you ever get it out. It sounds compelling as hell.

I think about this sometimes with relationship to vetting/closed spaces as you mention some with invite-only, and the complaint, "well I'm not good with people/don't know anyone, so I don't think anyone will vouche for me" and how I actually fell into that camp of complaints for a long while. But having since spent time in spaces that without getting into the weeds of it, I did Not belong in... Sometimes, gates are in fact for everyone's benefit.

[vsitante]

echoing the support for this essay--and I'm sure this says something about me but the first thing I thought of is how both on Bluesky and Mastodon, if you forget to put alt text, you don't know how to do it (esp for comics) or you're just plain tired and you don't want to/can't expend more energy...

The idea that is promoted that in order to be "entitled" to a retweet for further reach (I use entitled on purpose, even if folks don't say that's what they mean), you should add alt text to your pictures or else you're ableist, rude, inconsiderate, what have you. And your work deserves to be ignored as a result.

And I have seen people on both platforms get scolded or ignored because of no alt text. Because of course, you must be ontologically evil. Never mind that most people scolding aren't even the ones who need the alt text in the first place :v

In fact, I'm reminded of an anime account on Twitter years ago who didn't have transcripts for her podcast, got chided about it by someone who kept harassing her and when said account said "I don't have the time, if you care so much, you can just help me, I'd be okay with it," the harasser just dipped lmao. As always.

The person behind the anime account also has health issues of her own and the podcast is free, to boot.

That aside, I'm often of the mind of "more accessibility is good but AI is also rewiring brains to be even stupider than before, so no, you WILL learn how to do this and this like we did back in the day in the snow and only Altavista!" XD