@Georgiana Brummell First of all, I've just noticed that you seem to not have joined the Friendica support forum yet. As far as I know, you can't post to a Friendica group/forum without fully connecting to it first.

As for the accessibility issues: To most people, it appears like Friendica has only just been made since they haven't heard of it before mid-January. But actually, Friendica is from 2010. And its frontend is largely stuck in the early 2010s, including technologically.

Friendica has always been a spare-time hobbyist project. It was mostly developed by one single man for almost two years. That guy is a protocol designer and not a frontend developer. Also, I think Friendica never had more than two regular developers, and it definitely never had any developer who really knows how to make a modern and appealing user interface. I mean, you've obviously never seen Friendica's user interface, but let me tell you that it's quite old-fashioned. It's just meant to do its job.

Hobbyist, spare-time developers of such an extremely niche piece of software who are not trained in Web UI design normally don't know a thing about accessibility. And truly, they don't care. If the UI covers all features, and the users don't have to SSH or telnet onto the Web server to use it, it's often good enough.

Friendica's regularly active user community has never been more than maybe a few thousand at a time, maybe even only a few hundred, as opposed to the over two million at which Mastodon has topped out. Thus, Friendica has never encountered blind or visually-impaired users yet.

You can see it all over the place. Alt-text is not part of Friendica's culture. Some Friendica veterans staunchly refuse to describe their media because they think alt-text is another Mastodon fad that Mastodon fundamentalists want to force upon the whole rest of the Fediverse with Mastodon's entire culture. Alt-text, to them, is like limiting your posts to 500 characters.

All this is why nobody has noticed yet that Friendica is not accessible at all.

I've got a suspicion that Friendica can only be made fully accessible by throwing the entire Web frontend away, developing an entirely new one from scratch and then also making all-new themes for it.

Also, it's only natural that TweeseCake doesn't support many of Friendica's features. As it looks to me, TweeseCake's Fediverse side is built against Mastodon and only Mastodon. If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, TweeseCake doesn't cover it either. Thus, TweeseCake probably only covers about 20% of Friendica's features because Mastodon doesn't have the other 80%.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #TweeseCake #A11y #Accessibility

I tried to post this to the Friendica support forum, but it kept timing out when I entered my information. I am now attempting to subscribe to their e-mail list. However, I thought I would write this here so that those who know coding, etc. might be able to offer a solution, or at least, to pass this on to the developers.

I joined Friendica in October of 2024, when Facebook decided to shut down their Basic Mobile site (not app). I am totally blind, and their main page is a nightmare to use with a screen readre (NVDA in my case). I chose Friendica because of the huge character limit, the ability to edit and delete posts, local posting, extensive profiles with keywords, and the ability to connect with all sorts of accounts in the Fediverse. For the most part, I am enjoying my time here. However, I am noticing a lot of inaccessibility on the Friendica page. I am not a programmer, but I'm guessing this is at the core of the software and is not due to the instance I'm using (friendica.world). I am also guessing that the page is not written in HTML5 and does not follow WCAG guidelines, though I may be wrong about that. If not, I strongly urge the developers to review them and implement them if possible. If so, perhaps, some changes can still be made that would make this a more screen reader-friendly site. Note that I tried this with Firefox and Supermium (a direct fork of Chrome).

Mostly, I use TweeseCake to access the site, but there are some things I can't do with that client. All of the following refer to the site itself.

• There is a list of links at the top of the page that acts like a menu. This causes many problems while trying to perform basic tasks, particularly editing posts and handling notifications. I can't always activate said links/menu either.

1A. I can't stress how frustrating editing posts is. It sometimes takes over ten minutes. The "edit" option is a link/menu, and it can only be found via another menu. Once I finally find and activate it, I hear the sound indicating that I have entered focus Mode. Usually, this means that I am in an edit box and can type. However, in this case, I am taken back to the main page, as if I never entered the option to edit my post. Using e to try to find an edit box doesn't help, as it just sends me to the replies to different comments. So I am forced to find the post, and start all over again. The only way I can do this successfully is to try to tab through the links/menu at the top of the page (when it works), then through other posts, until, finally, I am placed in an edit box where I can type.

1B. When I go to the Notifications" link, I have to tab to "Mark all System Notifications as Seen". This isn't even a regular link, as I can't copy and paste the text from it. Once I tab to and out of that, I can then read my notifications. But here is what I have to do if I want to see follow requests.
1. Try to get the notifications link to work, then click on it.
2. Tab to marking notifications.
3. Perform a search for the word follow.
4. Click on the link of the notification that someone wants to follow me. I open this in a new window, to try to keep the original one available.
5. Make my choice as to whether to approve that notification, then close that window.
6. Return to the main window. Only now, I am not where I left off. Instead, I am placed back at the beginning of the page and the Notifications menu is not open.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 3.
Ideally, I should be able to go to a normal notifications link, perform steps 3 through 5, then return back to the link, and perform steps 3 through 5 again, as many times as necessary, without having to repeat 1 through 3.

• I can't just go to the site and enter an edit box to post. I must go through a menu to find the link to do so. Yet there is an edit box for searching for content, tags, etc.
  
• Some pinned posts don't always read properly. I can see my name, when I posted, that it's pinned, a public message, tags (if applicable), buttons for resharing, etc., and the number of comments. But I cannot simply read the post itself. ""Comments" is also a button, not a link. Even when I expand them, I still can't see my post, and finding the button again to close them takes a lot of time, as posts also have their own buttons. Note that unpinned posts are read properly.
  
• While the process of editing my profile is completely accessible, finding the edit option might be slightly confusing for new users, as it requires entering yet another link/menu, this time with the user name as the title..
  
• If I go to a profile of someone not on Friendica (usually Mastodon) and wish to reply to a post, after I enter my credentials, it takes me back to my profile, not to the relevant post. It only worked once.
  
• The Friendica app for Windows is basically the site itself. I don't understand this at all.

If you want to see a truly accessible site, try this link. I don't work for them, though I do have an account there.

http://www.dreamwidth.org

Please, if any changes can be made, I urge you to do so. The site is otherwise a pleasure to use, but my frustration at not being able to easily perform such basic tasks is increasing.

#accessibility #blind #coding #Chrome #Developers #Dreamwidth #Facebook #fediverse #Firefox #Friendica #HTML #HTML5 #NVDA #ScreenReaders #TweeseCake #WCAG #Windows

What are the differences between Diaspora, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Hometown, and Glitch? How do they compare to Friendica as far as features? I've heard there are Mastodon instances that allow for longer posts, editing, and deletion. Do they also allow for extensive profiles with keywords, etc? Are there any other networks I should know about? Finally, will the interface of the page on Friendica change depending on my instance? Maybe, it's just a matter of changing that! If I changed to another network, I'm guessing I couldn't export my profile, followers, etc. there. Most importantly, I need something that is truly compatible with Mastodon, because that's technically what TweeseCake was designed for. Since Friendica is very compatible, I can use TweeseCake without any problems.

#accessibility #blind #clients #Diaspora #Fediverse #Friendica #Glitch #Hometown #Hubzilla #Mastodon #NVDA #Pleroma, #TweeseCake #Windows

I left Facebook in October of 2024 precisely to avoid inaccessibility, clutter, and frustration of their main site. Now, I am feeling the same thing with regard to Friendica. I joined here because of the extremely long character limit, the many sites with which I can interact, and the fact that I can edit and delete posts, as well as post locally. Whenever I try to edit a post on the main site, I have problems. This has been true since day one. Now, I'm going to my posts, and instead of seeing the content, I'm only seeing my profile and the tags. I have to go through that same process of editing just to be able to read what the post is. Yes, I use TweeseCake most of the time and it works well, but I have no way of searching posts. So I must use Lukol or try to use Friendica itself to find them, which isn't easy either, unless I tagged them with something unique. On Facebook, I would type my name, a few words from the post, and it would show up. I also have no way of simply sorting comments on TweeseCake as I do, for example, on Luna for Reddit. So I have been missing people's replies to my posts, because I keep getting notifications and other things in my timelines that bury said replies. That may be my fault, as I have several people marked to show all posts. Still, their posts shouldn't show under Mentions if they're not tagging me or replying to my posts, and yet, they do.

I just want to find a site that is easy to use like the Basic Mobile version of Facebook used to be or like Dreamwidth still is, or a client like Luna for Reddit that makes Friendica truly accessible. TweeseCake is 98% there, but there are still a few things that I can't do on it. Perhaps, a dedicated Windows client would be best, and no, I don't mean some strange app that looks like the website.

I would try another instance, but I have a feeling that it will look similar, since it's based on the same software. If I am wrong, please tell me, and I will gladly switch!

#accessibility #blind #clients #Friendica #frustration #LunaForReddit #NVDA #TweeseCake #Windows

I am vaguely aware of something called Lemmy, which is similar to Reddit, including the inability to delete posts. Why, I don't know. Anyway, I read that it can interact with Friendica. But I'm confused regarding finding forums, joining them, and posting to them. Usually, I go to a website, enter friendica.world, am taken to my homepage, and then authorise the connection. But this seems different. Can anyone help me? Also, I primarily use Tweesecake, not the main site, so I have no idea what the bit about widgets means.

https://wiki.friendi.ca/docs/post_to_lemmy_from_friendica

#blind #fediverse #forums #Friendica #Lemmy #posting #Tweesecake