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[189/366] maybe a little head shake
Jul. 7th, 2020 10:43 pmI inadvertently ended up being in the middle of some Mastodon Discourse this evening. ( This will be long and probably boring but I want to record some thoughts and another person's words that might get deleted. )
I wrote my own little thread instead:
As soon as I'd recoiled from my urge to reply to someone who just told me to get out of their mentions, I combed over everything I'd said in a panic that I'd done something to provoke it but I couldn't find anything and the responses from friends who I think would tell me if I was out of line were universally supportive.
A nice conversation sprung up with a potential solution for how people who struggle to describe their images could indicate this and ask for help with it, maybe by use of a custom emoji (masto loves custom emojis; each instance has their own but a few have become common across instances as like meta-commentary, such as "please boost this" or "don't @ me about this"). I've reminded people there's a bot you can follow that'll flag up if you post an image without a description, I'm gonna collate some more advice about how to write them. I'll ask if there are any volunteers to design that emoji.
It's been a busy evening! Ironically one of my eye conditions, the nystagmus, is worsened by stress and it was so bad before I mistook it for a migraine aura at first. I'm not stressed because anything bad happened to me, luckily -- the consensus seems to be that this was a shocking escalation from the other person and it was inappropriate to tell somebody off for adding a bit of nuance when they're in a group you're purporting to help -- but it still took an amount of my brain's bandwidth that I really hadn't budgeted for when I was just chilling out in front of the TV. By the time I got around to making dinner, I dropped the jar of tahini (plastic, luckily! my kitchen floor has had its kill for the week already!) and it spilled everywhere. But otherwise, no harm seems to have been done. It's just a surreal thing to have happen.
Maybe my favorite thing about this, early on, was a reply from a friend that said "Every time I post an image, I imagine this slightly disappointed look on your face, maybe a little head shake, if I don't write a half-way decent description. It's very effective." With the caveat that I'm not disappointed in everyone who doesn't describe their images, I told her this was absolutely delighted to be the imaginary person doing this.
I wrote my own little thread instead:
I appreciate sighted fediverse users concern about image descriptions and ways to be "screenreader friendly." Mostly I agree with you, maybe with quibbles but they're not worth trying to nitpick and I'm aware I'm not the sole authority, just one visually impaired person. But sometimes you all end up talking to each other and I worry that some of the advice that makes me wince is getting solidified into prescriptivism. Please make sure visually impaired people are part of these conversations.All of that has gotten a lot of attention (for masto; it's a much smaller scale than twitter), lots of replies and friend requests from strangers, and a lot of kindness from friends, many of whom saw this play out on their timeline because me and this person had a lot of friends in common.
If you don't know any other visually impaired fedinauts, feel free to tag me in! I love conversations like this and I'm usually happy to give this labor away for free. If you do know other ones, make sure you ask first if they're willing to be consulted! Because it can be a real pain in the ass and people don't always like being the ambassador for their marginalization. But it happens to be one of my Special Interests, so you can't say you don't have anyone to check with when this comes up.
People have asked for examples of the kinds of things that are being taken as gospel and aren't necessarily helpful. Which is great, I'm so glad for the interest! I'm coming up with a little list, but it might take a bit; this is not how I expected my evening to go! If other blind fedinauts have noticed anything similar, do get in touch! Visual impairment has some of the most wide-ranging access needs, people can need literally contradictory things and I both can't and won't speak for everyone. Not everything I say is gospel either.
As soon as I'd recoiled from my urge to reply to someone who just told me to get out of their mentions, I combed over everything I'd said in a panic that I'd done something to provoke it but I couldn't find anything and the responses from friends who I think would tell me if I was out of line were universally supportive.
A nice conversation sprung up with a potential solution for how people who struggle to describe their images could indicate this and ask for help with it, maybe by use of a custom emoji (masto loves custom emojis; each instance has their own but a few have become common across instances as like meta-commentary, such as "please boost this" or "don't @ me about this"). I've reminded people there's a bot you can follow that'll flag up if you post an image without a description, I'm gonna collate some more advice about how to write them. I'll ask if there are any volunteers to design that emoji.
It's been a busy evening! Ironically one of my eye conditions, the nystagmus, is worsened by stress and it was so bad before I mistook it for a migraine aura at first. I'm not stressed because anything bad happened to me, luckily -- the consensus seems to be that this was a shocking escalation from the other person and it was inappropriate to tell somebody off for adding a bit of nuance when they're in a group you're purporting to help -- but it still took an amount of my brain's bandwidth that I really hadn't budgeted for when I was just chilling out in front of the TV. By the time I got around to making dinner, I dropped the jar of tahini (plastic, luckily! my kitchen floor has had its kill for the week already!) and it spilled everywhere. But otherwise, no harm seems to have been done. It's just a surreal thing to have happen.
Maybe my favorite thing about this, early on, was a reply from a friend that said "Every time I post an image, I imagine this slightly disappointed look on your face, maybe a little head shake, if I don't write a half-way decent description. It's very effective." With the caveat that I'm not disappointed in everyone who doesn't describe their images, I told her this was absolutely delighted to be the imaginary person doing this.