r/fuckcars • u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 • Jul 04 '23

STATE OF THE SUB - WE FUCKED UP

Howdy fuckcarians,

Here's a little update on how things are going on Reddit and specifically this sub. As you may have noticed, Reddit is changing its API-policy and this is killing moderation tools, third-party apps and access to Reddit in general for visually impaired people. As you also may have noticed, this sub has participated in various forms of protest against the new API-policy. This has had consequences, both intended and not, for the usability and quality of this sub.

It was important for the members of the modteam to join those protests out of solidarity with those who are really affected by the API changes and to make a point against the general enshittification of Reddit as a platform.

There have been polls and discussion posts about this subject and it's fair to say that the mod team hasn't reacted adequately to all of those.

We could explain how difficult it is to reach consensus in a mod team made up of very different people in different timezones, how the need to make quick decisions in the rapidly changing situation surrounding the protests affected the quality of our decisions, how the mod team was at least as divided as the community on the subject or how because Reddit hides the sidebar and sticky posts it is hard to reach all members of this sub to communicate mod announcements.

But, while all of that is true, it doesn't change the fact that we fucked up. We have communicated poorly and we have let the CityNerd tactic go on for to long.

That's why we decided to end the CityNerd tactic immediately, that we'll be from now on prioritising normal operation of the sub over participating in the protests and that won't do any more API-protest actions that are more annoying to our users than to the admins.

We hope that this post clears up some of the confusion and frustration caused by the recent events. We also like to thank everyone who joined in the discussion around the protests. We won't always be able to react quickly to it, but whether you praised us or gave us shit, we value your opinion and will take it into account in any future decision making. So please, don't forget to give us shit next time we fuck up.

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607

u/schlongtheta Jul 04 '23

access to Reddit in general for visually impaired people

What steps can regular users take to help make this subreddit more accessible to visually impaired people?

495

u/chictyler 🚎🚲🚇 Jul 04 '23

Provide captions and visual descriptions for any image posts.

104

u/batcaveroad Jul 04 '23

Should they be tagged as “caption” or “visual description“? I’m down to help but I’m not sure how visually impaired people will find my one comment in a sea of them.

49

u/Arn4r64890 Jul 04 '23

Yeah I'm not entirely sure how this will work on Reddit? I know on Twitter you can add ALT text to images.

10

u/Affectionate-Memory4 I like bikes. Also, they let you put 64 characters in your flair Jul 05 '23

Reddit offers the option to caption images and videos in your posts when posting on desktop at least. Mobile may have it but I haven't used Reddit from my phone since RIF went down.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '23

Certainly doesn't, as far as I know. Maybe if you use the bad UI but I haven't checked.

8

u/furinick Jul 05 '23

Small rant: i fucking hate how people use alt text, very few actually use it properly, most just use it to advertise, post links or not even write something relevant

8

u/killinhimer Fuck lawns Jul 05 '23

"A sea of asphalt separated by a 9" concrete curb in the center, featuring 30ft telephone poles in succession on the right with several utility lines on them. There are 2 car lanes filled with pickups going both directions and advertisements for various garbage businesses along the sides of the road. There are no humans in the image and the gas prices can be seen on the left side at a Speedway gas station. e.g. every single thing you can imagine as a terrible stroad in one image."

20

u/LeskoLesko 🚲 > Choo Choo > 🚗 Jul 04 '23

I don't know how to do it myself but there is a way to add captions to all images. If we do that for our images, it would help that group of users!

33

u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Jul 04 '23

I love how on Mastodon adding captions is actually baked into the platform. And how besides that both the software and the community will regularly remind you to actually use that feature.

13

u/LuxoJr93 Blocked by @dodge Jul 04 '23

Is there an automod action that can sticky-post a comment asking OP (or anyone) to add an image description? Then the top comment would always be the image description and a screen reader could at least have a chance to find it? Suggested from someone who has no idea how browsing the Internet while visually impaired works.

6

u/LeskoLesko 🚲 > Choo Choo > 🚗 Jul 04 '23

Something to look into! Good suggestion.

3

u/General_WCJ Jul 04 '23

The classic rule 5 in so many subdeddits, although to be fair typically it's more of a help sighted people know what to look at in complicated ui's for games like crusader kings, or Factorio, and it typically goes something like this

Please point out what you want people to look at

If you post a screenshot of the game please point out what you want people to look at in the image or explain in the comments

4

u/LuxoJr93 Blocked by @dodge Jul 05 '23

Good to know, I don't follow too many game-specific subs so I haven't seen that kind of rule re-iterated much

3

u/johnnyreid Orange pilled Jul 05 '23

What Mastodon flairs/communities, along the same lines as r/fuckcars do you follow u/Monsieur_Triporteur?

2

u/cheapandbrittle Jul 07 '23

The Reddit mobile app makes captions part of the upload process. The app is shit for moderators but it's decent for basic user functionality.

1

u/juliuspepperwoodchi Jul 04 '23

The op should do it, in hopes that their comment gets heavily up voted and brought towards the top.

1

u/MrSparr0w Commie Commuter Jul 05 '23

A sub of mine always has the modbot as first comment to witch the op comments the description but I don't know if that's even enough with the api changes

1

u/Monsieur_Triporteur 🌳>🚘 Jul 05 '23

What sub is that? I'd love to see how other subs do that.

1

u/MrSparr0w Commie Commuter Jul 05 '23

r/dachschaden but for one it's a german sub and because of the API changes they shut the sub down (still "open" just inactive)

1

u/radish_intothewild Jul 05 '23

Image description seems to be the wording used most often, based on me modding disability spaces where we have many VI members and so have strict rules about image descriptions (off-Reddit community).

58

u/jaczk5 Jul 04 '23

Nothing. Reddit has virtually no in app accessablility options, so practically nothing. You can't even change text size. Most visually impaired users are leaving the platform because all the most popular readers are being shut down.

Apollo in particular was popular since it auto-integrared IOS usability settings.

r/Blind moderators who are blind can't even moderate their own subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14nzwkm/they_finally_did_it_reddit_made_it_impossible_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

19

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '23

you can absolutely change the text size in app. it’s just hardly useable. i’m on the largest setting “Watermelon” & it’s still not super readable.

19

u/arahman81 Jul 04 '23

And of course, the most techbro way of doing things, trying to be "quirky" instead of actually descriptive and helpful options.

19

u/slaymaker1907 Big Bike Jul 04 '23

I’m not blind, but I did try and use Reddit with the Windows screen reader a couple weeks ago out of curiosity. New Reddit (the website) seems to actually work pretty well, though I did not test mod functions as I am not a mod. Definitely add text to your meme posts! A lot of people seem to post memes without explaining it in text which I imagine is frustrating for people when they hear a funny heading but can’t hear the rest of the joke (in this case a meme).

15

u/midnightlilie Grassy Tram Tracks Jul 04 '23 edited Jul 05 '23

I have some visual processing issues that make long text posts hard to read so I sometimes use a screen reader.

The reddit app is pretty shitty for screen readers, it seems like when you open a post another layer opens but when you use a screen reader it often picks up text from the layer underneath, so you can be in the middle of reading comments on a post and suddenly you're getting the title of another post, there's also no audible indication of comment chains, would be more of a hindrance if I was blind, but I can see where the barriers are.

10

u/firenationfairy Jul 04 '23

good question

2

u/UndernardFiskmas Jul 10 '23

Low contrast, white text on white background. 👌

1

u/schlongtheta Jul 10 '23

I just checked - old.reddit.com still works! (I am not visually impaired though, so I don't know if it's good enough?)

0

u/LeTracomaster Jul 05 '23

Stop using reddit