@Alien_Sunset

Making editing posts and alt text easier is a thing that could be done.

But you'll still never be able to edit a Friendica or Hubzilla post from Mastodon. They're too different. Trust me, I know, I've been using both for longer than Mastodon has even been around.

Let's push Hubzilla's massive permissions system that wouldn't let you at Hubzilla content anyway aside.

First of all, Friendica and Hubzilla handle images completely differently from Mastodon. On Mastodon, an image is a file attached to a post, and there can only be four of these. Each image has its own dedicated text field for alt-text.

On Friendica and Hubzilla, an image is a file uploaded to the file space that's part of each Friendica account and Hubzilla channel and then embedded into the post inline as a hotlink. With text above the image and text below the image. Like a blog post. And there can be as many images as you want.

There's no alt-text data field either. Alt-text is part of the image-embedding markup code.

All this has been the way it is since July, 2010, when Friendica was launched, five and a half years before the very first Mastodon alpha version. And Hubzilla is older than Mastodon, too.

So if you want to add alt-text to an image in a post from Friendica or Hubzilla, you inevitably have to edit the post itself.

You have to get your hands dirty on raw BBcode with software-specific additions in an editor box that has zero support for any kind of text formatting or markup code.

You have to figure out what in the code of a post or a comment corresponds to which image to which you want to add alt-text.

You have to turn this...
[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295][zmg=800x533]https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photo/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295-2.jpg[/zmg][/zrl]
...into this...
[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295][zmg=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photo/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295-2.jpg]Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery.[/zmg][/zrl]
...all with no WYSIWYG, no documentation at hand, no preview because Mastodon doesn't have a preview button and an editor that may not even support over 500 characters (Friendica and Hubzilla both have no character limits).

And this only covers the UI side. I haven't even talked about what'd have to happen in the background yet.

Again, all this is assuming that Hubzilla lets Mastodon users edit posts in the first place. Which it won't.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla

@Elena Brescacin @Charlotte Joanne @Andre Louis @Pratik Patel @Devin Prater :blind: @Robert Kingett, blind

I'm terribly sorry for writing to you out of the blue, but absolutely all more acceptable ways of trying to get some feedback or advice from Mastodon users have failed me this week. And I take it that you are in the right position to give me competent feedback or advice in accessibility.

So here's my question right away: What do blind users prefer when it comes to explaining images? Externally linked explanations? Or everything explained in the post, even if this amounts to tens of thousands of characters of only explanation?

Now allow me to elaborate. This is going to be long.

I am someone who always tries to get image descriptions and explanations as right as possible. You may or may know that already.

So here's the thing: I've started posting memes again just recently. And I'm trying hard to max out the accessibility of my meme posts. Since I'm not on Mastodon, I don't have Mastodon's limitations in my way. In particular, I don't have character limits to worry about. This means that I can describe and especially explain a whole lot of things in the post itself rather than having to squeeze it into the alt-text.

Until now, it has always looked to me like it's better to give all necessary explanations in the post than to link to external explanations. One or a few people have told me so. And I've run a poll a while ago, and eight out of the nine sighted voters as well as the one sole non-sighted voter preferred explanations in the post over externally-linked explanations.

Now, if I want to explain a meme post in a way that everyone understands it, I have to explain a lot. I've written a half-experimental meme post based on the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme. Here is a link to that post.

So I had to explain the post itself. But I also had to explain the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme. In order for people to understand that explanation, I had to explain snowclones, image macros and advice animals. In order for people to understand these three extra explanations, I also had to explain Something Awful and 4chan including a general explanation of imageboards. Also, in order for people to understand my post, I had to explain FEP-ef61, nomadic identity, Hubzilla, the streams repository and the whole 14-year history of the latter two from Mistpark from 2010 to this year's Forte and their various underlying protocols.

That one meme post required nine explanations with some 25,000 characters. And in fact, I could have explained The Lord of the Rings and the ActivityPub protocol on top of that, but I took both for common enough knowledge that my post is understandable enough without explaining them.

Again, 25,000 characters of explanations for one image, just so the image can be understood without any external information. Apparently, it's exactly this which the Fediverse prefers.

But I can't believe that this is actually what the Fediverse prefers. First of all, I've been told again and again that tens of thousands of characters are not accessible because they're much too long, regardless of where I put them. It's hard to believe that they're supposed to still be more accessible than external links. Besides, my information almost entirely comes from sighted people.

So here's my question again: Do blind people really prefer 25,000 characters of explanation for one meme post over externally-linked explanations?

(Deliberately without a content warning this time to make this post more easily accessible.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility