#cwfediversemeta — Public Fediverse posts

Allow me to chime in here, everyone.

First of all, accessibility is a basic human right.

There actually are blind or visually-impaired users in the Fediverse, also because they're more welcome here than in the corporate silos.

This also means: Just like alt-texts, a Web UI that works with screen reader software (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack, Narrator, Orca etc.) is not just another dumb Mastodon fad.

If activists like @Robert Kingett (who, by the way, is blind, and who has some significant range in the Fediverse) criticise Hubzilla for being unusable, this has to be taken seriously. Even though, admittedly, Hubzilla's Web UI using the Redbasic theme isn't even that friendly towards sighted users.

In my opinion, Hubzilla has two options now.

One, carry on as usually, consider it a Mastodon fad that must under no circumstances be adopted, shrug it off, chase all the blind users away back to Mastodon and eventually be branded utterly ableist.

Two, if that's possible in any way, make the Redbasic-based default Web UI accessible to screen reader users and become one of the currently not exactly many Fediverse server applications that do care for UI accessibility.

The latter explicitly welcomes blind users. The former flips the bird at them, now that the "Hubzilla is inaccessible" cat is out of the bag.

Combine this with Hubzilla's notoriously condescending attitude towards Mastodon (where just about everyone who is blind hangs out because they literally don't have much of a choice), and you get a condescending attitude towards disabled people.

Ideally, at least @Saiwal should do the same with his themes. Even though many hub admins refuse to install them because they were written entirely by AI, especially Solidified appears to make using Hubzilla much easier in general.

I can see many veterans who have come from Facebook or nothing at all to Friendica to Hubzilla, whose contacts are all on Hubzilla, Friendica, (streams) and/or Forte, or who have intentionally left PubCrawl uninstalled, shrug it off. We've never needed accessibility. Even if it comes back to bite Hubzilla because the whole platform is being ostracised, sanctioned or even gradually blocked from lots of other Fediverse servers, they'll say that's no loss. For it's no loss to them.

But they mustn't wonder then how come Hubzilla can't get enough of a foothold in the Fediverse for more people to come over from all that underequipped stuff. Especially if Hubzilla not only ignores, but explicitly rejects accessibility.

And no, third-party add-ons can't fix this. Many Hub admins won't install these either.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility