all i'm asking for is that people tag their posts or provide alt text or anything so that their posts are still accessible to me. this isn't hard.
tag your posts as #yingletspeak or #typing quirk, or provide alt text. cohost is not accessible for me when none of my friends bother to do this.
i got blocked by more users than that. for asking people to tag their posts.
is cohost really safe for disabled people if we can't even point out an accessibility issue in peace? i've been told my accessibility issue isn't real, forced to explain my disabilities in detail to justify myself, given a million workarounds ranging from "just use a translator" to "pretend it's a different language" (what.) that don't actually solve the accessibility issue, and i've literally been accused of cyberbullying yinglets as though i am speciesist. all of this just because i asked people to tag their posts. which i don't even think is a great solution! but it works!
i'm canceling my cohost subscription until staff addresses this; i know, it's only just a drop in the bucket, but i don't want to support a platform that is actively causing me harm by dogpiling me over pointing out an accessibility issue. i reported this to the staff, but i was told they aren't going to require these posts to be tagged, they can't help with getting the whole userbase to tag things, and i should just try to solve it on an individual basis. well, as you can see, i've tried! and it just results in everyone being needlessly hostile to me as a disabled person. i'm not paying money for a platform that allosw that to happen to me. i'm not paying money for something that does not work for me. i will most likely continue using cohost as it's still better than any other platforms, but i do not feel welcome here anymore. not until things drastically change.
therianism should not give anyone a free pass to start causing accessibility issues for others. this should not be a hot take. yingletspeak is an accessibility issue. just because it gives species euphoria doesn't make it any less of an issue. i'm literally a therian myself; i'm not bullying anyone, i think yinglets are fine, but i also want this site to be easy to access for me and everyone else! this is not speciesist to say. you guys are just looking for reasons to continue being ableist without having to consider other people's perspectives, and using a separate marginalisation to justify your behavior. that's not right at all.
the fact that the community on this site finds it more acceptable to pretend our disability issues aren't real and we shouldn't complain, block users so they can continue causing accessibility issues without us, suggest using a plugin that isn't supported everywhere, pretend it's an entirely different language even though it's just English on a majority English-speaking site — ALL OF THIS in favor of actually addressing the issue and accomodating for the disabled users on here — that is absolutely disgusting.
i had hopes that cohost was filled with users from other platforms where they'd been mistreated before, and that we all had the same ideals of making sure we didn't allow the same dynamics in our community here. i'm starting to realize it's not the case. twitter may have its main character of the day, but cohost has its main character of the month; it's just more sporadic here. everyone here is still just as greedy when it comes to piling onto other users over disagreements in beliefs; it's just that on twitter it's 14 year old kids, and on cohost it's all adults who are entirely sincere and on the same side as me, making it much more frustrating to deal with. i can block the 14 year olds. but it is heart-wrenching to see people engaging in this behavior towards me who i truly respected before. and that's different. that's not something i have any tolerance for like on twitter.
i'll debunk more people's bad-faith arguments below the read more as i did with the last post; but just realize for a moment that the fact that i have to put effort into doing that ON COHOST OF ALL PLACES is nothing short of a failure. a failure of this platform to accomodate disabled people and not force them to constantly justify their needs instead of just goddamn listening and assuming sincerity.
this is not an accessibility issue. we have been over this on the internet many times before
like, i don't know what to tell you. i am directly stating that it is a disability issue, but i just get told that apparently it's not, apparently some people on the internet some time in the past had a discussion about typing quirks and disabilities, and they decided it's just not a problem? so i don't get to complain? wow, thanks random internet person, you just said it's not an accessibility issue! i didn't see it that way before! damn! i'm totally cured now!
just because i am not dyslexic doesn't mean it's not an accessibility issue for me!! and there ARE dyslexic people for who it is an issue, so why not listen to them? am i not allowed to comment if i don't have any specific disabilities that are canonically affected by this? or if my disabilities aren't as debilitating as theirs? why are you gatekeeping disability?
you were being incredibly rude!
but see, i asked nicely before. i tried asking much more politely if people could take my accessibility into account, and even that was met with hostility here and there, and nothing changed. i am only being rude because i guess that's the only way to really start a discussion on here, which is a VERY bad sign if you'd ask me. this should not take this much effort and i do not respect being tone policed by people who have only seen me being angry without seeing what came before it.
just mute people!
i'd love to mute yingletspeak! if only there was, like, y'know... a tag... that people would add to their posts... so i could mute the tag...... that'd be great............... really great...........................................
why do i have to mute entire users? i don't want to do that... like i said, some of them are friends, some of them post useful things that i would like to view that aren't yingletposts. why do you want me to mute users but you don't want to simply tag your posts? is it really that much effort? is it invalidating your species somehow? tell me, please, why is it so hard to add a single tag to a post... it requires some typing, and then after you've used it once it requires a single mouse click. is that so hard?
you all spent more energy discussing why i should look into different solutions than you would have just tagging your goddang posts...
you can install a typing quirk translator plugin into your browser!
no i can't! that's not available on all browsers. several people already reported this not being a thing for Safari. and then what, do you think accessibility should only be granted to those who are tech-savvy enough to install userscripts or something? really? now that is fucking ableist.
but the problem also lies in the fact that the accessibility issue itself still persists! i'm already conceding a lot by just asking people to tag their posts; i think providing translated alt text should be the go-to solution. why do disabled people have to install a translator? why can't the OP translate their post back and wrap it in a details tag, and not place the burden on the disabled person to do this for them? why do you want disabled people to do all the work? oh, you don't agree with that statement? well consider that that's the only logical outcome before you say it then.
besides, typing quirk posts could absolutely be an issue for screen readers and other machines and programs that require properly typed English in order to provide accessibility features. i'm going to assume that a translator would fix this. i also do not use any of these tools, so i think someone else who does should pop in the comments to share their perspective on it.
i agree that people should at least tag this stuff, but why can't you just ask your yinglet friends only?
because... here's the thing... this does not solve the issue at all. my friends could tag their posts with #yingletspeak. their yinglet friends who they share posts from might not do that. now there's still inaccessible posts on my timeline! problem... not solved at all, actually!
but then what about all the other disabled people who this affects? do they all have to ask their friends, too? why do disabled people have to put in the effort here? are we not allowed to just expect the people causing the issue on purpose to just take us into account?
just pretend yingletspeak is a different language!
this is literally one of the worst arguments i've ever been presented with. yingletspeak is not a different language. comparing it to actual non-English languages sounds like a joke to me.
yingletspeak at best is an accent. it is literally just English. i wanna say that again. it is LITERALLY just English. it's English with letters swapped around. why do you want me, a disabled person, to go through the effort of pretending it's a different language and just skipping these posts (which sometimes are just my friends posting about their lives or sharing informative content that i DON'T want to miss!), but you don't want to put in any effort yourself?
do you think bilingual people should also tag their language so people can filter them out?
yes! yes, actually! this argument is being presented as if asking this of bilingual people is somehow insane or disrespectful of their languages. but like... this is just normal tagging practice! i'm bilingual myself; if i post in Dutch, i tag it as Dutch. mostly so that it gets archived and other people reading the tag can find it easily. but if you wanna filter it out? be my guest! i wouldn't be upset.
do you know why YouTube's video uploader has a setting for your video's language? it's so that it gets recommended to the right audience. cohost does not have an algorithm, so you have to create it yourself by filtering out posts. if i set a video to Dutch, it won't appear on French YouTube. this is a completely normal feature other websites have!!! if i AM supposed to treat yingletspeak as a separate language, which is already insane because it isn't one, then i DO think even more that it should be tagged!!!!!
this argument is so bad that it actually works in my favor.
i'm extremely tired. i am tired of having to explain myself over and over again. i am tired of being told i should just block people, people who i care about, so that those people can freely continue causing issues on this platform. i'm tired of being forced to go in excruciating detail about all of this just in order to be believed that this is actually a real, valid issue. this is not how i expected anyone here to behave. maybe i should have after the whole dark theme discussion. i'm gonna put alt text on all my images now; i never considered it to be that much of an issue, but if disabled people have to go through this much nightmare hell just to address their issues i do not want to contribute to making it harder for them in the future ever again.
cohost has a culture problem. you have to let the dominant culture do what it wants to do, even if what it wants to do is perpetuating ableism against other users. if you get in the way of their behavior, they will treat you like shit. this is far from the first time users have been singled out and tossed aside for addressing deep issues they have with behavior on the platform. i just hope everyone can learn to do fucking better than this.
oh, and once again:
