Mastodawn

Many thanks to everyone who replied to my post yesterday asking: Folks using screen readers: How annoying is it to come across posts with a lot of emojis?

I got so many helpful replies that I've summarized what I learned into the following post, which took every character my instance allows for posts!

Yesterday's post is here, if you want to reference and see the individual replies.
https://sfba.social/@jeridansky/114971894672483573

Jeri Dansky (@[email protected])

Folks using screen readers: How annoying is it to come across posts with a lot of emojis? I know those that use the clapping hands every other word are ones to avoid boosting, but what about someone who just adds five or so emojis in a row? Or scatters them throughout the post? How many is too many? I often see posts I'd like to boost, but the many emojis makes me hesitate. Edit to note: Thanks for all the replies so far! (More are still welcome, too.) I feel a summary post coming on, since many folks who don't use screen readers were oblivious to the concerns with emojis (and unicode characters, while I'm at it). #accessibility #a11y #AskFedi

SFBA.social

Jeri Dansky Aug 5, 2025

Please, for the sake of folks using screen readers:

Add decent alt text to your images. You don’t need an elaborate description, but something as minimal as “dog” isn’t kind.

Don’t overdo the emojis. These have alt text associated with them, but it gets tiresome to hear (rather than see) a string of them. Some are worse than others; hearing “red heart” repeatedly isn’t as bad as hearing “smiling face with smiling eyes.” Emojis at the end of a post are the best, as they are easier to skip over.

Don’t use emoticons at all; a screen reader can’t make any sense of them.

Remember that ascii art is largely inaccesssible, too. Listen to how sign bunny and some others are heard: https://adrianroselli.com/2021/10/blaming-screen-readers-red-flag.html#Handle

Don’t use unicode mathematical symbols in your display name or posts to create bold, italic or script letters. Think of the poor person hearing something like this: “Mathematical symbol italicized s, Mathematical symbol italicized c”, etc. (Alternatively, the characters may not be read at all.)

Georgiana Brummell Aug 5, 2025

@jeridansky Yes. I turned off the NVDA's setting to read such things because they're simply too annoying. Hearing the same thing twenty times in a row gets really old really quickly.

Geoff Mackenzie Aug 5, 2025

@jeridansky I hadn't heard or thought about the problem with emoticons. I'm not a heavy emoticon (or emoji) user but I'll bear that in mind from now on, thank you!

LovesTha🥧Aug 5, 2025

@jeridansky Anyone know of a way to determine how common screen readers are going to handle a given emoji?

verified_gaelic

@LovesTha @jeridansky They will read their official Unicode name, which is listed at https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html

LovesTha🥧Aug 7, 2025

@gunchleoc @jeridansky woah that page loads slowly, I'll have to check it out later.

Thank you for the info

verified_gaelic

@LovesTha Yes, it's always really slow 🙄

LovesTha🥧Aug 7, 2025

@gunchleoc Some genius thought a single html file with all the images embedded in the html was a good idea....

LovesTha🥧Aug 7, 2025

@gunchleoc And all that to figure out that my display name is reasonable, 🥧 is just 'pie'.

It is plausible that my display name is probably less annoying to screen reader users than to visual readers: it takes less effort to hear 'pie' than to figure out what the emoji is.

Hapi Aug 6, 2025

@jeridansky
I'm a simple Blåhaj cuddly shark and posting is already difficult for me: all these humanist devices are not designed for beings with fins. But I want everybody to be able to enjoy my posts, so I am very happy that in some miraculous way always an alt-text appears to my posts.

I don't know who does this, but the mysterious being doing this seems to have a mind on their own and describes my pictures with running gags and always adds some commentary, joke or even a secret to it...

SensAble Aug 6, 2025

@jeridansky Thank you for sharing such insights!

Jeri Dansky Aug 6, 2025

@Sensable You're very welcome!

RealGene ☣️Aug 6, 2025

@jeridansky
Part of the problem is uneven support of markup on Mastodon, which drives the use of Unicode to add emphasis.

Ölbaum Aug 6, 2025

@jeridansky Poor screen reader developers, emoticons are so new they haven’t had the time to implement basic support for them, and everyone is unjustly bagging on them.

(I have no objection with your post, but that part surprised me.)

Victor Aug 31, 2025

@jeridansky I always keep this in mind and put a lot of effort into my image alt text. I never thought about the emoji descriptions, though I will now.

Jeri Dansky Aug 31, 2025

@victor I think a lot of people are (or were) in your situation!

Jonathan Schofield Feb 28

@jeridansky good to be reminded of the emoji factor. Thank you. I knew it but slip into complacency

Cavyherd Aug 5, 2025

Would you mind if I branched off this discussion with a related question?

We just ran into a question at work where (it seems to me) AP Style conflicts with basic readability & accessibility.

The specific instance is whether or not to spell out the month in paragraphical text.

Does anybody have pointers to any work that's been done lining up Accessibility with style books?

#Accessibility #APStyle

Jeri Dansky Aug 5, 2025

@cavyherd It might be better to just post your question independently, as it might find answers from a different group of people than my question did. I don't think I heard from any editors, and I didn't use any editing-related hashtags.

But if you want to branch off, go ahead!

Note: As a prior editor, and still a subscriber to the AP Stylebook, you have me curious. If you have a subscription, have you tried submitting a question to "Ask the Editor"? Sadly, I think many people I might have directed your question to are on Bluesky rather than Mastodon.

Cavyherd Aug 5, 2025

Oh, excellent. These are all very useful suggestions, thank you!

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 5, 2025

@cavyherd @jeridansky At least for blind folks, we could set our screen readers to say "January" when encountering "Jan." Most folks don't, because it's not confusing, but almost every screen reader has a setting for this. In the case of Braille reading, the abbreviation is actually more accessible; most Braille displays can only display between 20 and 80 characters at a time, so anything that saves space helps there. I won't speak to folks with cognitive challenges.

Cavyherd Aug 5, 2025

@fastfinge @jeridansky

And this is one of those places where we get into conflicting accommodation needs. Where screen readers may be able to navigate abbreviations, speaking as someone who is sighted but has Old Eyes, spelled out months are noticeably easier to read than abbreviations, which is the perspective I'm coming at the question from.

That's a good point about Braille displays, though. That's yet another level of accommodation, entirely separate from screen readers.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 5, 2025

@cavyherd @jeridansky To me, this is a perfect example of why we (the indiweb) need to double down on standards and customizations. With microformats, non-obfuscated HTML and JavaScript code, and an open browser ecosystem that allows everyone to modify the online experience as they like, there's no reason why conflicting accommodations should be a problem. Why can't I set a "date display preference" in my browser, and have every website respect that? We can't expect every developer to know about every possible accessibility need. But we can expect them to use open APIs and follow open standards, so that everyone can interact in the way that works best for us, even if it wasn't the way the developer planned for. That's why the fediverse took off in the blind community. Don't like the Mastodon app? Use one that works with Braille displays, voice control, switch systems, game controllers, or whatever else is best for you. Don't like the Mastodon server? Activity Pub means you have a dozen to choose from. My personal server just drops anything from pixelfed servers, because I'm the only user and image-based content just doesn't interest me. I also just have display names turned off, and only see everyone by their username, solving the problem of emoji in display names entirely. The primary issue with this approach is tech literacy. Unfortunately, most people who use the word "tech literacy" are ablest, classist, or working for big tech. Tech literacy doesn't mean knowing how to program and compile your Linux kernel. Nor does it mean knowing how to use Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Cloud. It means knowing how to discover your available options, determine what works for you, when to set things up yourself, and when you shouldn't, how to judge if the person or organization you're allowing to do it on your behalf has your best interests at heart and is doing a good job.

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@fastfinge @jeridansky

Yes, to everything you said. Someday...someday....

Jon Aug 6, 2025

Great points. It's an area where corporate offerings have major limitations, and not something they're likely to prioritize, so a great chance for a strategic advantage.

And agreed about "tech literacy." That said, developers can do a lot more to make it easier for people to discover and choose the options. It would be great if a search for "Mastodon hide display names" took me to a page in the Mastodon documentation describing the setting (either in Mastodon or at the browser level) that lets me do this -- or even the CSS to insert, if that's the only way to do, along with a link to how I can insert custom CSS without tweaking the code and running my own server.

@fastfinge @cavyherd @jeridansky

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 6, 2025

@jdp23 @cavyherd @jeridansky I don't even know if you can in the official Mastodon app; you might need a third party one for that. And now we're getting into the biggest problem we have: there are nine thousand different apps with fifty different ways of accomplishing everything. There's something here about trying to rethink the way we talk about tech "problems". IE, instead of documenting "how to do X", document "You need/use accomodation Y, these are some useful things you can do". I don't know what this looks like at scale. But users who have no idea that a thing is even possible if they just change a setting/use another app/update/whatever are not going to search for how to do that thing. It happens to me countless times where I tell a fellow blind user about a setting they can change in their screen reader to help with something I'm hearing them struggle with, and the reaction is "Wow! I had no idea that was possible! That makes my life a thousand times better." How do we surface useful customizations to people, when they don't yet know that they want them, while not being annoying, making assumptions, or violating privacy?

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@fastfinge @jdp23 @jeridansky

And also deal with the flipside of that where an app updates, & then I open it with the intention of continuing a task I'd been in the middle of, & suddenly have to bat away a bunch of "Here's a new thing you can do!" "Take the tour!" (between finding the controls for the customization the update broke—which have now moved). It's maddening.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 6, 2025

@cavyherd @jeridansky @jdp23 One of the issues is that the incentives are all wrong. The marketers and developers all have adoption targets they need to hit in order to justify the feature/pay cheque/etc. Those pop-ups are to make the adoption number go up, not to help you.

Jon Aug 6, 2025

Yes, and also developers tend to fall in love with the feature they're developing so assume that everybody will want to use it -- so they think they're actually doing you a favor (and of course typically don't think about how confusing it can be for somebody who unlike them isn't intimately familiar with every detail of the software).

Back to Samuel's point:

"There's something here about trying to rethink the way we talk about tech "problems". IE, instead of documenting "how to do X", document "You need/use accomodation Y, these are some useful things you can do".

Totally agree. I think about this a lot in terms of helping people have a good experience in the fediverse. And not just from an accessibility perspective -- "here are your needs / here's some useful things you can do" is a general pattern. Still, accessibility is a great place to focus on initially.

"How do we surface useful customizations to people, when they don't yet know that they want them, while not being annoying, making assumptions, or violating privacy?"

RIght. "Clippy done right" -- easier said than done. Although, it doesn't have to be the software itself surfacing the suggestions.

@fastfinge @cavyherd @jeridansky

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@jdp23 @fastfinge @jeridansky

I mean, •eventually• these things will shake out as the technology matures. Books have standardized formats and configurations, kitchens likewise. Cars.

Each represents a pretty complex human activity, but we've been at it long enough that you encounter a new thing & can mostly figure it out by first principles.

We forget how young computer technology is; the web is younger still, & accessibility is only just starting to crack through its egg shell.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 6, 2025

@cavyherd @jdp23 @jeridansky I hope you’re right. But the insentives online are far more perverse than in any other endeavour. Advertising incentivizes obfuscation to prevent ad blockers. Vendor lock in incentivizes closed standards. I’m even starting to see creators pull back from microformats and intentionally violate standards to make things harder for AI, without caring about the accessibility side effects. Nowhere else in the entire field of human accomplishment have things been so perfectly aligned against useful standardization. The standards that do exist are used as a tool to lock small players out, more than anything. For example Microsoft’s xml office format, and the w3c embrace of drm. Not to mention that the standard has become so complex that writing a new browser isn’t realistic anymore, unless your Google, Apple, or Microsoft. Even Mozilla gave up and are still using what is effectively the Netscape browser engine. Yes, I’m aware of ladybird and servo. I’d say wake me up when they’re accessible and a viable browser replacement, but I expect to be long dead by then.

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@fastfinge @jdp23 @jeridansky

Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see how society navigates this next passage. The psychology of extreme wealth is deranging everything, & it's an open question whether we've reached our Fermi threshold. I'm not optimistic. But then I'm also old and tired and just kind of Done with it all.

You can do some really neat things with technology. But this is also true of arsenic & cyanide....

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 6, 2025

@cavyherd @jdp23 @jeridansky I’m 37. Can I also be old and tired and done with it all? Lol

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@fastfinge @jdp23 @jeridansky

I sure as hell was at 37.

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@fastfinge @jeridansky @jdp23

And this in turn loops back to why websites aren't more configurable:

"Every website will have to adopt robust, accurate semantics that describe its navigation and offerings, standardized across every domain of human activity. This would be great. The semantic web people have been trying to make it happen since 1999, with no success to speak of, for reasons I identified more than 20 years ago"

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/02/inventing-the-pedestrian/

Pluralistic: AI’s pogo-stick grift (02 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦Aug 6, 2025

@cavyherd @jeridansky @jdp23 Something something AI? Hey, that’s a more detailed plan than several vc funded AI companies!

Cavyherd Aug 6, 2025

@fastfinge @jeridansky @jdp23

You laugh: the first half of that quoted paragraph above is: "The latest agentic AI pitch 'solves this problem by asserting that the whole internet will simply have to accommodate itself to AI agents."