Image Text:
Since the news broke regarding the forthcoming changes to reddit’s API and the ippact that will have on the third party apps and tools many of us rely upon the mods here at r/blind have been working on an accessible option for those who either cannot or will not be staying on reddit. As talk of alternatives like mastodon, lemmy, and the like have increased we decided that it would be best to reveal what we have been working on, hence this post. Several days ago we shared this with those of you on our Discord server and have been asking for feedback. This project is by no means finished or polished, and is currently operating on development backend code and a beta UI to allow for access to still unreleased features that our community needs such as up/down votes displaying state changes, and nested comments, read this as there are and will be bugs and outstanding accessibility problems. However, the advantage of this platform is we control the servers, the UI, and can fix accessibility concerns ourselves instead of relying on a for profit company or the generosity of app developers to do it for us, not that the latter is unappreciated. So please be understanding of the above and we hope those of you who decide to join and see what we have done so far for all of us, and please report problems as you find them. https://rblind.com/
This post is inaccessible to anyone who is blind.
So here’s the content of the original post on /r/blind:
Since the news broke regarding the forthcoming changes to reddit’s API and the ippact that will have on the third party apps and tools many of us rely upon the mods here at r/blind have been working on an accessible option for those who either cannot or will not be staying on reddit. As talk of alternatives like mastodon, lemmy, and the like have increased we decided that it would be best to reveal what we have been working on, hence this post. Several days ago we shared this with those of you on our Discord server and have been asking for feedback.
This project is by no means finished or polished, and is currently operating on development backend code and a beta UI to allow for access to still unreleased features that our community needs such as up/down votes displaying state changes, and nested comments, read this as there are and will be bugs and outstanding accestsibility problems. However, the advantage of this platform is we control the servers, the UI, and can fix accessibility concerns ourselves instead of relying on a for profit company or the generosity of app developers to do it for us, not that the latter is unappreciated.
So please be understanding of the above and we hope those of you who decide to join and see what we have done so far for all of us, and please report problems as you find them.
The submitter on /r/blind also had the following to say:
There are no plans currently to close the sub, but several mods may have to leave reddit, leaving only a couple BVI mods, the website does not have a slash, and we do have another domain that will be being set as a landing page for the reddit, lemmy, and discord of ourblind.com (that’s O U R).
There’s something ironic about this being a screenshot of text that talks about accessibility.
Image text: Announcement
1!Open Alpha!! RBlind - A community on Lemmy, brought to you by the moderators of the /r/blind subreddit.com
Submitted 11 hours ago by user DHamlin Music (flair: Bilateral Optic Neuropathy)
Since the news broke regarding the forthcoming changes to reddit’s API and the ippact that will have on the third party apps and tools many of us rely upon the mods here at r/blind have been working on an accessible option for those who either cannot or will not be staying on reddit. As talk of alternatives like mastodon, lemmy, and the like have increased we decided that it would be best to reveal what we have been working on, hence this post. Several days ago we shared this with those of you on our Discord server and have been asking for feedback.
This project is by no means finished or polished, and is currently operating on development backend code and a beta UI to allow for access to still unreleased features that our community needs such as up/down votes displaying state changes, and nested comments, read this as there are and will be bugs and outstanding accessibility problems. However, the advantage of this platform is we control the servers, the UI, and can fix accessibility concerns ourselves instead of relying on a for profit company or the generosity of app developers to do it for us, not that the latter is unappreciated.
So please be understanding of the above and we hope those of you who decide to join and see what we have done so far for all of us, and please report problems as you find them.
Reddit’s API concessions were clearly not enough for the Blind community.
It’s not great. The people running rblind.com have forked Lemmy and hope to remerge upstream at some point in the future. Their own fork has a number of outstanding issues: https://rblind.com/post/569070
Thank you. This is what I was thinking of. Lemmy/kbin is great but idk how mature they are in terms of accessibility. I wish them luck.
With that being said… Lemmy is still a huge win for the /r/blind folks. Being able to fork the project puts the power to be better into their own hands. It’s also another glowing endorsement to the power of federation that blind community members will be able to browse any Lemmy/Kbin community while still enjoying the benefits of their fork’s accessibility enhancements.
The current state of the fork is already a better screenreader experience than browsing either version of the Reddit website. The fork has been running for 8 days compared to /r/blind being founded 15 years ago. I repeat my previous statement: their fork is already a better in-browser experience. What more needs to be said?
Spez didn’t care, it was just a small negotiation so he doesn’t come across as “fuck disabled people”. It didn’t work though, he has been a PR disaster.
It’s pretty crazy that "Reddit refused to define the term “accessibility-focused app”. How are they going to determine which apps have free API access without this definition!?
They have a definition, they just won’t tell the users because it’s not a realistic definition and they plan to pull the rug out later on.
If third-party apps were only 3% of total traffic and reddit was willing to destroy its image and massively increase the viability of its only competitor just before IPO over it, I’m sure they’ll have no problem getting rid of whatever percentage of blind people who can’t see the ads reddit wants to serve anyway.
They have the same problem with moderator-focused tools. Lots of third party tools are useful for moderation, but aren’t necessarily composed only of moderator-specific functions. Analysis of what public activity a specific user has engaged in, like where they’re active and what kinds of comments they tend to make, are helpful for moderators to decide how to handle a report that a particular user is a serial harasser, a troll, a spammer, or a bot.
So which tools get an exemption from the API fees/rate limits, if they’re useful for both moderation and just plain old people watching?
How are they going to determine which apps have free API access without this definition!?
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from this trainwreck, it’s that they’re not going to define it publicly. If the internal definition is fluid, it can serve as a moving target to be whatever is most beneficial to them at the time.
It wouldn’t have made any difference long term anyway. They would’ve made a teeny tiny change to the official app, proclaimed it as proof they were working hard on it, then cut off API access for the accessible 3rd party apps. Kudos to r/blind for knowing this and taking proactive action.
Reddit has made it clear they don’t care at all. The amount of lying and gaslighting is sickening.
