Yet again, X, the social media firm formerly known as Twitter, has gone through an abrupt design change. As of Wednesday, users can no longer see headlines to links shared on the platform. While it’s a blow to news sites, the change also hampers the site’s accessibility to screen readers, software that people who are blind or have low vision use to read text and other features of web pages.
Alexa Heinrich, creator of resource and education hub Accessible Social, says Musk’s latest update “further proves that the platform does not prioritize accessibility anymore.”
Now, when a screen-reader user encounters a link, “all their device says…is ‘link, image,'” Heinrich explains. That lack of descriptive information, she says, is “horrible for accessibility and user experience in general.”
The oversight is perhaps not that surprising: Musk did lay off the site’s accessibility team last fall. As Kate Knibbs wrote for Wired at the time, “there may be no one left to ensure the site complies with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act.” Since then, the platform has made a series of drastic changes that slashed accessibility. The decision to charge a lot of money to operate Twitter-based apps meant the end of multiple services that helped disabled people use the platform, such as bots that created alt-text descriptions or captioned videos.
As early as February, United States Senator Ed Markey wrote to Musk demanding the company reinstate its accessibility team:
Many people who are blind and low vision preferred using third-party apps that were more compatible with screen readers than Twitter itself, but those apps are no longer available. Your most recent decision to charge a fee for access to Twitter’s application programming interface (API) has sparked concerns that automated accounts that help users write alt-text for images, will cease to exist. All of these changes under your leadership signal a disregard for the needs of disabled people. Consequently, Twitter users with disabilities are questioning their ability to continue to use the platform, and many have already left it.
In the meantime, developer Matt Eason has shared tips on keeping content accessible to those using screen readers:
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Just let the site die already. I don’t understand why anyone cares at this point.
I’m sure they’re falsifying numbers to some degree, but use numbers are barely dropping.
The average dope doesn’t care.
11% can be substantial, especially if the users were the ones generating a majority of the “good” content for the platform. Just look at Reddit. User numbers may not be down that much, but the quality of the site is far, far worse than it was just a few short months ago.
Very true. And replacing actual users with bots to keep up appearances doesn’t help with the content or user experience. Of course these companies don’t care about either of those things so long as the shareholders think all is well.
A time will come that instead of lemmy operating bots to do reposting from reddit sources, the opposite will happen, reddit bots will start reposting with lemmy sa it’s source.
Hopefully by the time that happens nobody will be left there to notice.
it’s honestly incredible how stupid and petty he is and it’s just dumber and dumber every day. you can’t even predict it, i don’t have a mind that inhumane
I wonder if he’s spiraling due to drugs or mental illness. The fake obituary post really seems to have upset him.
He’s not spiraling. He’s always been this batshit.
His drug use is an open secret
I saw someone on here talking about ketmine and cocaine but open secret and common assumption are two different things.
I’ve never heard of drug use rumours.
First I’ve heard of it
Elon is pretty open about his ketamine use and Farrow wrote about it in his recent Atlantic piece
In my opinion he’s just doing it on purpose. Tanking this platform. He got burned buying it. He hates it and now just doesn’t care. So he uses it to talk shit and dick around. Nobody who seriously used Twitter in the past can say it’s the same experience now. I say leave the platform.
He’s not going to suddenly change course and revert any of these changes. So move on to greener pastures, and stop giving him so much attention.
I would love it if every website change on Twitter/X didn’t result in endless “news articles”. I need to find a way to block this crap. I literally don’t care. Stop using X if you don’t like it. Done. Stop talking about it. This is worse than celebrity gossip.
This is terrible for xitter. Which is of course the point, Elon is intentionally tanking one of communication platforms for the benefit of A Saudi prince who funded the purchase..
This conspiracy just doesn’t make any sense. Why would he have to do it this way? He bought it outright, he could close down the whole damn company tomorrow if he wanted.
Because Twitter dying a slow death generates less outrage than just turning the site off.
I mean granted, Elon is a moron no matter what. I’m just trying to ocams razor here and my admitly tinfoil theroy makes more sense to me than Elon truly thinks that removing features and destroying infrastructure will make the site worth paying a sub for.
I think you may be overestimating him.
Try Hanlon’s razor
Leave crazy conspiracies to maga.
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But that’s not him trying to sink Twitter like people say. That’s him getting to coopt its user base into his own platform. Which he is trying to do, that’s not even a conspiracy, he’s been blatantly open about that.
I havent been on X since 2019 and the vast majority of the blind community moved to mastodon. Those who are still on X are going down with the ship it seems.
Everyone with a brain has left Xitter.
Why not just dump the headline into the
altattribute or usearia-, is he stupid? Maybe someone should xcrete the tutorial to him, I don’t have an acc on that shithole.Before Twitter had those link previews we would just put the title into the Tweet, so people can just go back to that I guess.
But they’re just lying to spread false headlines and misinformation. So that’s still a problem
I think the word you’re looking for is “funny”.
Nothing says funny like young people being radicalized by online misinformation!
Downvote Musk spam.
The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.
Is this really much less usable for screen reader users than anybody else?
The sighted user sees the tweet, “check this out!” And a BBC banner but no other information about the link.
The screen reader user hears the tweet, “check this out!” And hears that there is a link.
I guess the image provides a tiny bit more context that the mystery link goes to the BBC, but that ‘s not a ton more.
X should do away with the images too.
