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Nolan Darilek @nolan@gts.thewordnerd.info
4mo
So what is the likely self-hosted Discord alternative for folks wanting to host a chat/online community these days and not be at Discord's mercy whenever it chooses to alter the deal even further?

I don't think it's Matrix unless Element accessibility has improved significantly since I checked last, which was a few months ago.

Delta Chat might be interesting if they get their supergroups idea specced and merged, but even that would just be a simple single group whereas what I'd like is more like a Discord server or Matrix space.

I hate this so much. Been watching alternatives flounder with accessibility issues for years. Then the corporate incumbent does something shitty and blind folks are just stuck with it because it's the most accessible option even with its huge glaring flaws. See also Windows, GitHub, GSuite, etc. This has to stop.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@nolan @svenja Maybe xmpp? Or something involving IRCV3?
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
4mo
@fastfinge @nolan @svenja To be fair the a11y of discord was sort of there, but also crappy. I never understood how people put up with it.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@modulux @nolan @svenja Because everything else is worse.
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Svenja @svenja@mstdn.games
4mo
@fastfinge @modulux @nolan exactly this.
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Nolan Darilek @nolan@gts.thewordnerd.info
4mo
@modulux @fastfinge @svenja Sure, but at least they were trying. Meanwhile a few years ago the folks at Element made some blog post or other about how privacy/private communication was a human right, I tried applying for a job with them making the case that accessibility needed to be factored into that human right calculus, and radio silence. That was, like, 2019. Here we are in 2026, Discord at least seems to be sort of on top of a11y issues, but I see some of the same issues in Element I saw in 2019. So yeah, it wasn't great, but I could at least participate in Discord in ways I can't easily with Element. Other clients are certainly an option, but if there's one that's both more accessible and featureful then I don't know it.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
4mo
@nolan @fastfinge @svenja I use thunderbird as a Matrix client. It's far from ideal but it works. The only reason I use it is some software projects have their support channels there.
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Nolan Darilek @nolan@gts.thewordnerd.info
4mo
@modulux @fastfinge @svenja Do you have any tips to speed it up? Thunderbird with my Matrix account enabled reliably hangs for several seconds when it gains focus. Granted, my account/server is nearly 12 years old so I'm in lots of rooms/spaces, maybe I should clear out of some of those but in any case I had to disable the account so I could read my mail again. Not sure if there are settings that might make things faster.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
4mo
@nolan @fastfinge @svenja Unfortunately not much useful. It doesn't seem to happen to me that way. I wonder if removing the chats tab with ctrl-w might help, then opening it with alt-5 when you need it?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@nolan @modulux @svenja And the sad thing is any one of us in this thread could do better. But that doesn’t matter for chat apps. We have to use whatever everyone else picks.
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Emil Jacobs - Collectifission @collectifission@greennuclear.online
4mo
@fastfinge The thing with XMPP is that the implementations are all over the place in maturity and not cross platform.

I really want to like XMPP, but I simply can't recommend it to people in the state that it's in.

@nolan @svenja
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@collectifission @nolan Not cross platform is a win imho. I’d rather a native app for each platform. Far more accessible. And I don’t want an electron app to eat another 3 gigs of ram.
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Emil Jacobs - Collectifission @collectifission@greennuclear.online
4mo
@fastfinge I'm not sure how cross platform automatically means "electron app". There are many software projects that offer native solutions cross platform.

@nolan
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@collectifission @nolan Sure, there’s always Jaba. Or gtk, where accessibility only works on Linux. Or qt, where accessibility is broken by default. Wx is the only cross platform library that does accessibility for most controls, most of the time, on most platforms. A native app will always be faster, lighter, feel more like the os, and more accessible. And it can use native os features like the system keychain.
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Alex Chapman @alexchapman@tweesecake.social
4mo
@fastfinge @collectifission @nolan I think WinUI is the best for Windows, but then you've got to work out the other systems, I've actually been keeping a close eye on React Native Windows, Microsoft has been doing a lot in that space, so that mostly solves the native issue on Windows. I also think they have a thing for MacOS as well, but I don't have a mac so can't test it out.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
4mo
@fastfinge @nolan @svenja problem of ircv3 is the standard moves very slowly and implementations even more so (though imo that's also a benefit under certain circumstances). i wouldn't consider it ready for most users yet, and i say that as someone who actually likes irc. though most of the useful features people would ask for a minimum viable platform are already in the works, just, as a draft, which are unstable and may change any time, which scares implementations away
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@SRAZKVT @nolan @svenja Also getting voice rooms into irc is an awful hack no matter how you do it.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
4mo
@fastfinge @nolan @svenja i don't think irc is the protocol for that, i would find it much more useful if a client could talk both irc and for example mumble for voice chat. the problem there though is users will need an identity for both which is also annoying, unless you get a mixed identity thing, but then, you're changing the protocols
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4mo
@SRAZKVT @nolan @svenja Ah yes, mumble. Another app where accessibility has been broken for years.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
4mo
@fastfinge @SRAZKVT @nolan @svenja Mumble has improved, but yeah, it's not all there either.
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