Bring your karma
Join the waitlist today
HUMBLECAT.ORG

Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2016 - 11 - 08 - ID#5bu1gl
4
Community and Coordination of Blind Web Users (self.Blind)
submitted by acejang
Hi r/blind,
We're a team of two sighted developers investigating blind web use. We're curious about how:
Blind users report poor accessibility of websites - do you inform the site directly, try to coordinate through some advocacy organization, or compile usage reports for others to see? Have you found it easy to get websites to respond to your concerns?
Do you think you might benefit from some database of site usage reviews?

How do you feel about community on the web? Are sites like r/blind fulfilling? Active forums? What more might you want to see? Are there any other important community sites for blind or low-vision users?

Any feedback or concerns?
fastfinge 2 points 6y ago
Generally, I report issues to the web owner directly. Response varies wildly from site to site. Though as a rule, the larger the site, the less likely they are to care.

As for community: Reddit is really going a long way towards making that better. Currently, there are two many different blindness specific communities, that have no interaction with the rest of the internet. Places like ZoneBBS or Klango just hide out in there own little corners of the web, totally isolated from modern internet culture. But the folks who contribute to /r/blind are usually active, or slowly become active, on other parts of Reddit. Plus, other parts of Reddit frequently show up here to contribute. I think that's good both for raising awareness of blindness related issues, and for getting blind folks more active other places online.
-shacklebolt- 1 points 6y ago
> Blind users report poor accessibility of websites

I simply avoid those sites if possible. I'd rather expend my self-advocacy energy on things I have a real chance of influencing.

> Do you think you might benefit from some database of site usage reviews

Probably not? How accessible a site is can change rapidly, and is generally readily determined by the user when accessing the site.

But I guess it depends on how you implement it. Sharing workarounds? Alternate suggestions? Maybe then.

Culturally I like this subreddit for a lot of the reasons /u/fastfinge/ mentioned. Overall I wish Reddit was more accessible, and that we had more users, but that will happen with time.

I also subscribe to several NFB mailing lists and other blindness mailing lists, which are good for interest-specific discussions.

I do wish we had enough users on reddit to support a subreddit *for* blind people (and not necessarily 100% on topic.) I also wish there were good realtime TEXT (not voice) chats for the blind community.
This nonprofit website is run by volunteers.
Please contribute if you can. Thank you!
Our mission is to provide everyone with access to large-
scale community websites for the good of humanity.
Without ads, without tracking, without greed.
©2023 HumbleCat Inc   •   HumbleCat is a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Michigan, USA.