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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/
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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.
Thank you!
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.
They are way passed being able to do anything.
Reddit staff have no idea how their platform works or how their users actually interact with the site. It’s completely embarrassing and unprofessional to the point of straight up incompetence.
Reddit’s API concessions were clearly not enough for the Blind community.
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.
I mean, it couldn’t have worked as they clearly didn’t even think about those communities in the first place, they had to be called out.
How is lemmy in terms of accessibility? I hope it goes well for them.
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.
In general, Lemmy isn’t as developed as Reddit. People are hoping that tools developed for Reddit can be easily reconfigured for Lemmy, but that isn’t guaranteed.
I think I saw that someone’s making a translation later of sorts so the Lemmy API is more like the reddit one, I suppose to help with easing migration.
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?
On that note, the developer of the iOS lemmy app mlem has said that he’s focusing on blind accessibility every step of the process during development and will be hiring accesibility consultants to make sure he gets it right.
Lemmy advantage is that it’s both open source and federated. Someone can make a version with accessibility feature (which will likely be integrated into main version) and deploy an instance for blind users. Blind users will then have access to the whole fediverse.
At least Mlem, the app for iOS is explicitly compatible to all accessibility functions in iOS. They wrote in their latest changelog that they have someone auditing their app to be compatible with this stuff.
It’s so impressive to see how the whole community is coming together to basically rebuild Reddit, but open source, and with all the feature everyone needed.
I’ll stay here forever if we keep it up.
Thank you, for-profit companies for your assistance to creating a better world by self-sabotaging and imploding. Lmao
I guess it was always bound to happen. Cannot have infinite growth, after all. Something has to give eventually.
Please add text description to your images/screenshots
Done!
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.
How scummy of a company do you need to be to purposely make it so blind people can no longer easily use your service
They tried to walk it back by only cutting deals with app developers that blind people rely on, like RedReader with its screen reading functionality. But that just highlights how selective reddit is being at working with third party developers. So fuck spez and reddit. I hope the blind community gets everything they meed from their Lemmy instances.
Plus, they made it so only non-commercial accessibility apps could use the API for free. So basically, reddit is saying: you can do our job for us and fix the shit we should have fixed on our end over 8 years ago, but you can’t get paid for it.
Most blind iOS redditors were using Apollo I believe.
This is exactly the beauty of the open source software movement! I’m glad they made the move and took the changes on as a community.
Indeed. People sometimes wonder why bother, but here we can clearly see why it’s so much better than a centralized organization with a closed codebase. Ultimately, if it is not open source, you’re subject to the whims and wishes of someone else, which may not align with your interests.
Open source is about freedom.
This shitty website calls itself frontpage of the Internet while it can’t even do accessibility right
OK next we need some sort of lemmy comment awards, that is savage
Can’t believe the sycophants at Reddit thinking the issue with assistive apps is a done deal. Can’t believe they fell or fit hook, line and sinker.
Hi! Looks like you accidentally posted this comment twice.
https://browse.feddit.de/ This is a link to the lemmy community browser. It looks like there are 7 communities focused on the blind. I am still learning how to navigate through the fediverse but maybe this will help you find or link to what you are looking for. I used the link and just searched “blind” hopefully the link will show that or you can use it as a search tool to find what you want.
Finally a group of people that can appreciate the beautiful UI Lemmy has to offer!
What type of tools does the blind community use? I can code, I’d love to make a tool to help out.
If you’re really serious I would first recommend you familiarize yourself with the needs of blind users generally. Like try using the internet with your eyes closed and a screen reader to understand how a blind person would interact with a website. Maybe you can ask around or Google some tips for getting started with that.
I had a former coworker who was a UX designer and he taught himself to use a screen reader for this reason since he was required to ensure anything he designed was accessible.
Interesting, and good advice, thx.
First one that comes to mind for me is RedReader, but I’m not blind so idk if that’s their only tool or if they have others they prefer.
What does it do for the blind community, like text to audio conversion or something?
I believe it’s a type of screen reader, this is what came up when I tried to find more info.
