Trent 🤟
TamDid you know that if you capitalize each word in a multi-word hashtag, #ScreenReaders can read them as words, but if you leave them lowercase, they can't? Well, now you know! So, for #accessibility, please capitalize words when there's more than one in a hashtag.
Kiva-Marie Belt (they/she)@Tam5 I thought this might be the case but I don’t use a screen reader so I wasn’t sure. I’ll try to remember that from here on out 😊 Thank you!
Tanner Hearne@Tam5 thank you for that info!
Nick Sergeant@Tam5 !! this makes so much sense and yet I never considered it.
Steven Zekowski@Tam5 I’ve been trying to do that since someone else also suggested it a few days ago (@aral ?). When composing toots I’ve noticed that hashtag autocomplete tries to lowercase everything. I don’t know if that’s a #mastodon thing or client software. (I use iOS official app and web app.) Would be good improvement if it could be fixed.
@steve_zeke @aral I've noticed that, too. It's that way on Twitter, too, but, like you, I don't know where the control for that lies. I'd love to see it fixed so autocomplete doesn't strip capitalization.
Charly Hamlyn Ceramics 🏴@Tam5 @steve_zeke @aral I think most hashastags are autocompleted to match other tags, so if everyone started using #PascalCase it should spread?
Charles Roper@Tam5 @steve_zeke @aral @tchambers Is this something that can be controlled at the instance level, or is it at the federated network level and therefore uncontrollable?
Maria@Tam5 thank you so much for this tip!
Adam Hall 
🇳🇿 🇺🇸@Tam5 I did not know that! Thank you for sharing :)
Sean Lawson 
@Tam5 I did not know that, in fact. Good tip!
Anatecture@Tam5 also easier for human reading!
J.D. Sheridan (he/him)@Tam5 I read about this some time ago and have been a proponent of it ever since.
Alex Simmons 🪼@Tam5 Best practice absolutely, also one will make less typos if they're paying attention like that.
CJ the Awkward Lefty@Tam5 Did not know this! I will be sure to do this from now on!
Grant Wood@Tam5 Ooh! I didn't know screen readers understood camel case hashtags, that's great to know. Thanks!
ℹ️❤️🖥 aka Compy-chan
oshy@Tam5 Yee, that kinda thing is hard on people with screenreaders and it's also just generally not a great feature for readability
Personally I just recommend not using Hashtags
Personally I just recommend not using Hashtags
Sophoife@ocean @Tam5 That's an interesting point of view for someone using Mastodon, as searches only work with #Hashtags not with general terms, apparently.
Some of us migrants have been doing our best to use #CamelCase even on the bird app, and to use alt text for images too.
@Tam5 @ocean Oh that makes a lot of sense. All the newbie guides I've seen have suggested #CamelCase and hashtags, but I know from IRC back in the day that users of anything tend to find their comfy place and comfy way of things and then (certainly in my case) get surprised when they find out not everyone does it how they do. I was part of a group that was horrified when it discovered there were peeps on IRC who were not always kind or polite. Ah the innocent days...
rest in peace freenode
undead enby of the apocalypse@Tam5 @ocean @Sophoife I think I remember a shitpost that was going around some time ago (long before the twitter stuff) in german about the differences between queer leftist german mastodon and mainstream centrist german mastodon that included something about how they use hashtags, while we don’t. I guess this is a perfect example of the cultural differences that existed on different parts of pre-twitter-trashfire mastodon
@enby_of_the_apocalypse @ocean @Sophoife This seems to really vary a lot. The folks who told me that people use a lot of hashtags here have also been here for a while. Maybe it depends on the culture of an instance and the topics folks want to discuss.
That said, at least on Mastodon it's easy to not pay attention to hashtags if someone doesn't want to see them. Twitter often put them in the feed, regardless.
Disco Sexual@ocean @Sophoife @Tam5 oh that is interesting. I've never really been one for microblogging to begin with, so this is all pretty new to me.
I've personally been getting a lot out of clicking on hashtags, but I understand that after a while the folks and groups one follows will probably settle into a stable number.
I love hearing more about early mastodon and its philosophy. We recent members still have a lot to learn, I see.
davidak@ocean hashtags are essential here to find relevant posts and people. please use them
AlaskanElise@Tam5 This is such a practical tip, thanks!
Wenwei@Tam5 As a #ScreenReaderUser , I appreciate when hashtags are readable in this way! I also read #braille ; words in hashtags that are capitalized are faster to read because I read in #Grade2Braille , which means that certain symbols correspond with certain letter combinations for faster reading and writing! Braille takes up a lot of space otherwise.
@wenwizzle I hadn't known that about braille, but it makes sense. Thanks for teaching me something!
Chris Carnahan@Tam5 I did not know that and I appreciate the information on a couple levels. Thank you.
Opiniated Charles@Tam5 One of my pet issues with corporate Yammer
BlueRoseNZ (she/her) ⚫️⚪️🟣♾️@Tam5 unfortunately I’ve tried to save hashtags on my profile but it won’t do camel case even when i type it like that. It’s very frustrating
Julien Delpierre@Tam5 The search is not case sensitive for # right?
Stef Jucker@JulienDelpierre @Tam5 afaik it's not case sensitive :)
@JulienDelpierre Correct. Search isn't case sensitive, thank goodness!
TweetingTechno@Tam5 And it works better for ordinary readers, too.
Dark Matter Zine@Tam5 The problem is that, on platforms like Instagram, it will autocorrect to all lowercase and does NOT offer a shortcut for camel case.
@DarkMatterZine ugh. That's such a common issue. Unfortunately, we can't count on social media platforms to make accessibility the default. But wherever we can, it's good practice to make our posts accessible.
Mary@Tam5 Thanks for the tip. Is there a guide on what to do to make posts more accessible? I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve given this very little thought.
@maryeffrancis Great question!
Some basics of social media #accessibility that are useful for pretty much all platforms:
- capitalize each word in multi-word hashtags
- add alt text to your images. Actually describe the image; don't just use the space for jokes or Easter eggs
- don't overuse emojis (the screen reader reads each one)
- if you create videos, caption them
- if you share a video that doesn't have captions, provide a description
@Tam5 thank you!
Neil Batchelor@Tam5 That's a great tip.
Raymond Wilton@Tam5 Thank you Tam. I didn’t know
Mattias Villani@Tam5 This is also a great argument for making camelCase the convention in #julialang. I could replace some podcasts with wonderful Julia code read out loud to me! 😂
Andrew Thompson
LFpete
Nael@Tam5 humans can read it easier too in capitalized form :)
Herr haekelschwein@Tam5 Weiß jemand der Mitlesenden, ob das bei deutschen Screenreadern auch so ist? Kann dort ja eigentlich nicht so sein, weil es völlig normal ist im Deutschen, dass man zusammengesetzte Wörter ohne Leerzeichen schreibt. Also muss man das Leerzeichen dort auch nicht durch eine Binnenmajuskel simulieren, oder?
RealZero@haekelschwein
Gerade mal mit deutschem "Talkback" (Android) ausprobiert:
Talkback ließt beide Versionen DEUTSCHER Hashtags mit "deutscher Stimme" praktisch gleich, trennt auch bei "komplett klein aneinander" die Wörter überraschend gut.
Aber das ist natürlich nur eine Sprache und nur EIN Screenreader. Ich werde es also mit Großschreibung beibehalten, war von Talkback aber positiv überrascht. 🙂
Virginie@Tam5 oh I didn’t know that, thanks for sharing such a great tip! I am still #NewHere #TwitterMigration
Rita Giordano@Tam5 Thanks for posting this useful information. I will try to keep in mind what I will hashtag with multiple words.
Russell England 💉💙🇪🇺🧳🌻@Tam5 Yep, do this all the time with hashtags
We call it Camel Case in coding because variable and function names can't have spaces
@russellengland Yep. Using either camel case (the first word isn't capitalized, but the rest are) or Pascal case (the first word and all the rest are capitalized) works.
Konomi Kitten@Tam5 hmm at the moment at least on my instance Mastodon suggests lowercase hashtags and not camel case. I wonder if putting a GitHub issue to have Mastodon suggest camel case would be a good idea ~