Robert KingettI just boosted a question, but I have a slightly reworded question. Why is Linux and FOSS tripping over themselves to comply with Fascism surveillance capitalism instead of the long established international and national accessibility laws and accessibility guidelines and disability inclusion guidelines? Surely, one thing is better than the other, no? And it ain't Fascism surveillance capitalism that's the better option. #Linux #FOSS
D. Moonfire@WeirdWriter Because it personally affects them.
@WeirdWriter Just a minor expansion. I spent a lot of time with the UX designers saying their screens are difficult to work for people with vision problems. They don't see it and kept pushing back.
I didn't really get much progress until I showed them the website with a 1.0 Gaussian Blur which is relatively close to what I see when I look at the screen. Even then, I have to keep coming back and saying "the company's chosen font as italic is not sufficiently distinct for those with vision problems".
Or "your DBA has red/green color blindness. He can't see the difference between these two notices."
Every month, they treat that information as some new revelation and information but I know they are going to forget it in a matter of days because they have good eyes, steady hands, and massive monitors. It doesn't personally affect them on a day-to-day basis so it becomes nothing more than an abstract concept.
Since we've had to recently change our application to be more accessible, half our development team has been forced to use NVDA or JAWS. Which is great, but most of them are complaining about how painful it is and are already looking forward to not using it. Which sucks for them because we have to keep maintaining the accessibility of our application until the end of time. But I think the key part is that they see it as a "once I'm done, I can move on" whereas there are a lot of people that there is never a "once I'm done".
Age Verification, at first blush, seems like a "simple problem" and it is one that affects them, mostly because a lot of people use social networks and enjoy porn, the two major things AV is targeting. So, it becomes something that personally affects them, something they can't be "once I'm done" so they are more driven to jump on it.
I think it is an integral demonstration that a lot of folk don't have the compassion to really understand what other people experience. Or, in my dad's words:
Why do you care about people you will never meet?
Yep, I think so! And this is such an obvious step to even worse tech fascism, I can't articulate my rage loud enough. I absolutely hate all of this timeline. @dmoonfire
@WeirdWriter I agree 100%.
I've just spent six months writing a program to cover my ass because of an irrational fight-or-flight mechanism because of crappy AV laws put me at risk since I have queer characters enjoying mostly offscreen sex. And one book where queers are having very graphic, on-page sex.
(Admittedly, I could have gone with an off-the-shelf approach but they were based on paying money when my patrons and donation income stream is effectively nil.)
Kynx@dmoonfire @WeirdWriter interested in how you did the Gaussian blur on the site… iirc there’s css to do it on an image, but not the whole page. Was it an extension? Sounds useful for convincing devs to do their job, though I note your pessimism about that.
@Kynx @WeirdWriter In my case, I used GNU Image to do it since I was trying to be precise, but you can also do it in Chrome with:
- Open up Developer Tools
- Go to the console
- Press the three dot menu to the upper left of the "Console" tab
- Go down to "Rendering"
- Go to "Emulate vision deficiencies"
- Select "Blurred vision"
Sadly, Firefox doesn't have blurred option.
@dmoonfire @WeirdWriter gah, so chrome it is then 😬 OK, thanks for the advice