So one thing I notice about #blind Internet culture: even back on Twitter, and now here in the #fediverse, blind people tend towards having discussions in giant threads, sometimes with as many as 10-12 people in them, that can often stretch on for days. I rarely (if ever) see sighted culture do this. I wonder why? It's not a criticism, it's just interesting to me. Maybe because Discord and other chat apps were historically less #accessible, so blind culture tends to use the fediverse more as a discussion platform? Or maybe it's something UI related that makes it easier for blind folks to track giant threads of doom? The few times I've been involved in this style of discussion with sighted folks, they've become confused and begged for everyone to move to Discord or Slack or somewhere. On the other hand, I rarely see blind people do a single, lengthy post broken up and threaded the way sighted people do, with (1/N) at the end. We tend to just move to instances with longer character limits, or put our long form thoughts on a webpage or something.
Edit to add: I'm pleased to say that this post has now become a perfect example of the thing I was talking about; my last post in the thread included the phrase "transsexual furry puppygirls". It makes me happy that people unfamiliar with what I'm talking about need do nothing more than look at the thread on this post.
@fastfinge I think it might be related to the tooling being reasonably comfortable for following threads (TW Blue and friends) and not having the overwhelm from "text walls" sighted people seem to get sometimes.
@modulux I used to think it was something about Discord. But other than IRC, I can't think of a single chat app that I enjoy using. Discord, Matrix, Slack, Teams, I find them all terrible! This either means that all modern chat apps are bad and broken, or that I'm old and cranky. Or maybe both.
@fastfinge I feel the same way, in fact I still use IRC for that very reason. I do think the modern chat apps are really heavy and unresponsive with typical accessibility tools and have bad usability, often because they're web-based. But then I may also be old and cranky.
@modulux@fastfinge As someone who works on the accessibility of Slack, I'm both dismayed and completely unsurprised people feel this way about it. It's probably a drop in the ocean but if there's ever something specific I can pass along, even if it's usability related rather than a strict accessibility problem, please let me know.
@jscholes@fastfinge I haven't tried slack myself yet, haven't had the need. But matrix (specifically through Element or whatever it's called now) and Discord I find really annoying to the point I don't use them except in dire need.
@modulux@jscholes Slack is yet another Electron app, it's true. And yet...Apple Music is a web app. YouTube and Spotify are web apps. I use dozens of electron apps daily, but it only really bothers me in the case of chat. So I have to assume that it's something about chat, and my personal preferences, rather than something about electron/web apps. But I can't put my finger on what, exactly. Maybe it's that IRC puts unformatted text first? All the other chat apps offer text, formatting, images, audio, reactions, emoji, videos, calls, etc. That might contribute to the feeling of...heavyness we're experiencing. Especially when compared with IRC.
@jscholes@modulux@fastfinge I love Slack on mobile. And it's gotten a lot better on Windows. Glad to hear a familiar voice is on their team and in their space.
@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux That's an interesting point actually. I do like Discord, Slack, Zoom, Teams, etc, much better on mobile than on Windows. Maybe because IRC isn't a mobile first experience? And the modern chat apps are, with notifications etc, so they feel more awkward/unusual to me on the desktop as a cranky 37 year old who's first internet connection was a 14.4k modem.
@fastfinge@Rosalyn@jscholes I'm bad with mobile. I don't find the interface comfortable (data entry is a big part of it, but just exploring the screen and such seems like a waste of time). So I haven't really attempted to chat on mobile. The closest I do to that is WhatsApp, and I try to avoid groups; just use it like I might have used SMS in the past.
@modulux@jscholes@Rosalyn A lot of the time these days I find myself using my phone with a full-sized mechanical bluetooth keyboard. On mobile, because there's less screen space, interfaces tend to be a bit simpler and more task oriented, making them easier to use. As well, mobile apps these days tend to be more up to date and feature complete, and better tested for accessibility. But by the time I've connected my full-sized keyboard, and my over-ear wireless headphones, my phone is pretty much a desktop running a different operating system from my perspective; I'm not looking at the screen, after all.
@fastfinge@modulux@jscholes Oh geeze. Most of the time, I'm using BSI and no headphones. From time to time, I use a trifold BT keyboard that fits in my purse, + airPods. But that case is cute and tiny.
@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux I tried for months to get on with BSI. I'm still faster on the on-screen keyboard than I am with BSI. Brailling without some kind of mechanical feedback just doesn't work for me at all.
@fastfinge@jscholes@modulux Interesting. Did you know that iOS 26 added keyboard clicks. So I now have my typing feedback set to words. I wonder if that would help at all. But also, I'm using a 15 Pro Max in tabletop mode. So I may be having a different experience.
@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux I have the key clicks on. It's something about my fingers just hitting a flat screen, without any downward pressing motion, that throws me right off. It actually took me quite some time to get used to the Braille Lite when I first got it; I wanted to slam the keys like I would a manual Brailler. But I managed to adjust to that just fine in a few months. But an unmoving screen seems to be my limit.
@fastfinge@jscholes@modulux So you can touch type on a piece of glass but not braille on it. I get that. Brailleing on glass was weird at first. But now? I just lift my fingers up about two inches, and I consider that my feedback. That way, I'm still reaching down and then up again. Looking at it that way helped me to adjust.
@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux I find that if I lift my fingers up like that they get...out of position, though. Not right away, but after four or five words. Something about hitting the keys causes my involuntary nervous system to correct itself when a finger doesn't hit right in the center of a key, whereas that never happens on a touch screen.
@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux As I reflect, one thing I notice is that the people I know who are best at BSI have had some kind of musical training. I wonder if something about finger positioning on a keyboard or instrument, or the different pressure forces used when playing keys, make BSI easier? I never learned any instrument at all, ever.
@fastfinge I've had training on two instruments, and self-learned a third. I don't get on with BSI even a little bit.
Admittedly, that doesn't mean much as a single datapoint. And mentally it probably doesn't help that I somewhat view features like BSI and Braille Access Mode as papering over the cracks. When VoiceOver can't remember the cursor or focus position in literally anything, building a braille notetaker into the device as a workaround is definitely a choice.
@jscholes@fastfinge@Rosalyn Same, I learned the piano and recorder as a child. And I can't get along with BSI, at all. Maybe I need to practise more consciously, but the whole iOS UI annoys me. I'd probably use a Nokia N70 by choice if they updated it a bit.
@fastfinge@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux I find BSI difficult because I need something that gives me a physical representation of the keys, so something like a Speed Dots screen protector with dots for the Braille Keys would work much better! I get so annoyed at typing "CC" when I want to type "I," for example, that most of the time I just go back to the on-screen keyboard and dictation.
@modulux@fastfinge@jscholes Interesting. I find it easier to find things on mobile because I remember the general orientation of frequently used items on screen. This thread just got me thinking about the differences between how blind people navigate even with great skill and knowledge.
@jscholes@modulux@fastfinge I didn't know you worked for Slack. Just so you know, I have reported a few Accessibility bugs to them within the last year since I've started using it, and they have always been super responsive and usually fixed my bug within one or two releases. Out of all the chat apps that I have used, I am the most impressed with Slack.
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