This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/modcoord by /u/demmian on 2023-06-27 19:29:18+00:00.
Hello everyone,
In the past few weeks, the reddit admin has shown a callous disregard regarding the demands of users and mods alike to ensure continued access to the site. If reddit persists down this path, third party applications will have to shut down for good (many have already announced that), and many users and mods will lose valuable tools, that have enriched communities and allowed reddit to become the social phenomenon that it is.
One of the hardest hit groups will be redditors with disabilities, especially those with visual disabilities. We call to action all communities who support these causes; beginning on July 1st, please consider engaging in one of the following forms of protest:
1.turning your forum private/restricted
2.from June 28th, post to your community the message linked below;
3.reduce moderation in your subs, to the bare minimum (illegal/TOS breaking content);
4.mark posts as nsfw if they contain profanity (blasphemy)
Some further options you can consider:
- allow only text posts;
- allow only megathreads, on the main topics of your community;
- require a long tldr for each post
Proposed sticky/announcement:
We stand with the disabled users of reddit and in our community. Starting July 1, Reddit's API policy blind/visually impaired communities will be more dependent on sighted people for moderation. When Reddit says they are whitelisting accessibility apps for the disabled, they are not telling the full story.
TL;DR
- Starting July 1, Reddit's API policy will force blind/visually impaired communities to further depend on sighted people for moderation
- When reddit says they are whitelisting accessibility apps, they are not telling the full story, because Apollo, RIF, Boost, Sync, etc. are the apps r/Blind users have overwhelmingly listed as their apps of choice with better accessibility, and Reddit is not whitelisting them. Reddit has done a good job hiding this fact, by inventing the expression "accessibility apps."
- Forcing disabled people, especially profoundly disabled people, to stop using the app they depend on and have become accustomed to is cruel; for the most profoundly disabled people, June 30 may be the last day they will be able to access reddit communities that are important to them.
If you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks:
Reddit abruptly announced that they would be charging astronomically overpriced API fees to 3rd party apps, cutting off mod tools for NSFW subreddits (not just porn subreddits, but subreddits that deal with frank discussions about NSFW topics).
And worse, blind redditors & blind mods [including mods of r/Blind and similar communities] will no longer have access to resources that are desperately needed in the disabled community.
Why does our community care about blind users?
As a mod from r/foodforthought testifies:
I was raised by a 30-year special educator, I have a deaf mother-in-law, sister with MS, and a brother who was born disabled. None vision-impaired, but a range of other disabilities which makes it clear that corporations are all too happy to cut deals (and corners) with the cheapest/most profitable option, slap a "handicap accessible" label on it, and ignore the fact that their so-called "accessible" solution puts the onus on disabled individuals to struggle through poorly designed layouts, misleading marketing, and baffling management choices. To say it's exhausting and humiliating to struggle through a world that able-bodied people take for granted is putting it lightly.
Reddit apparently forgot that blind people exist, and forgot that Reddit's official app (which has had over 9 YEARS of development) and yet, when it comes to accessibility for vision-impaired users, Reddit’s own platforms are inconsistent and unreliable. ranging from poor but tolerable for the average user and mods doing basic maintenance tasks (Android) to almost unusable in general (iOS).
Didn't reddit whitelist some "accessibility apps?"
The CEO of Reddit announced that they would be allowing some "accessible" apps free API usage: RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna.
There's just one glaring problem: RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna* apps have very basic functionality for vision-impaired users (text-to-voice, magnification, posting, and commenting) but none of them have full moderator functionality, which effectively means that subreddits built for vision-impaired users can't be managed entirely by vision-impaired moderators.
(If that doesn't sound so bad to you, imagine if your favorite hobby subreddit had a mod team that never engaged with that hobby, did not know the terminology for that hobby, and could not participate in that hobby -- because if they participated in that hobby, they could no longer be a moderator.)
Then Reddit tried to smooth things over with the moderators of r/blind. The results were... Messy and unsatisfying, to say the least.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14ds81l/rblinds_meetings_with_reddit_and_the_current/
*Special shoutout to Luna, which appears to be hustling to incorporate features that will make modding easier but will likely not have those features up and running by the July 1st deadline, when the very disability-friendly Apollo app, RIF, etc. will cease operations. We see what Luna is doing and we appreciate you, but a multimillion dollar company should not have have dumped all of their accessibility problems on what appears to be a one-man mobile app developer. RedReader and Dystopia have not made any apparent efforts to engage with the r/Blind community.
Thank you for your time & your patience.
