Sorry for the bot issues over the past week. It appears to be working again. Please flag any further issues promptly to @holden.bsky.social using the contact info in his bio.

The bot is back up and running. Thank you for your patience. Please contact @holden.bsky.social (using the contact info in his bio) with any bug reports. Reminder: This bot is for screen reader users to use when someone neglected to add alt text to their post. Don’t use it to write your alt text.

This Thursday is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) and I get to join some amazing people at Spotify and Fable for a roundtable discussion on working in accessibility as a person with a disability. May 18th at 2PM EST. Virtual and free to register

Let's do a "Hire Me" thread! If you are underrepresented + looking for a new role in tech, reply with your details! Introduce yourself, tell us the role you are looking for, link to your website/LinkedIn and where people can reach you. I will repost

@ washingtonpost dot com you read that right

Please share this bot with folks you know who use screen readers. The bot is only useful if folks are aware of it. It is pretty cheap for me to maintain, but it would be ideal if the bot is something that is used only by those who need it. And write your own alt text to reduce the need for the bot.

Now that alt text is visible to sighted users, it's a good time to plug @alt-text.bsky.social. Tag the bot in a reply to a post that has one or more images without alt text, and then the bot uses OCR to extract the text and reply with the OCR'd text as alt text. (This only works for images of text.)

hey look @washingtonpost.com got their domain as the handle! can't tell you how many times I gave this exact thing as the hypothetical when we were pitching the idea

Is @washingtonpost.com the first newspaper to use its domain as its Bluesky handle? cc @emily.bsky.team

Twitter popularized the alt text (ALT) badge, and Bluesky will soon have something similar thanks to @renahlee.com. It could be argued that an image without alt text should also have a visible marker: an obnoxious warning icon. When clicked, the warning could expand or link to an alt text tutorial.

On the unofficial dev Discord @holden.bsky.social put something together: https://github.com/hs4man21/bluesky-alt-text-ocr

Testing

Favorite Pokemon?

I see people calling for AI to be used to describe images as well and those calls for the most part are well meaning it is no way viable yet. That when you post a meme, gif, etc that AI will be able to interpret it in the exact meaning and context that you are using it in that post.

Even bigger shoutout to @renahlee.com for doing the actual work to improve accessibility on Bluesky

Content warning: loneliness, general sadness? (don't wanna self- or mis-diagnose myself here out of respect for others) If you're struggling with mental health and self-doubt during this relatively warm and fuzzy phase of introductions and other activity on Bluesky, I want to say you're not alone.

Wisdom teeth removal: They do not mess around with the shots in your gums. Alt text: The ceiling of my oral surgeon’s office, including the light they use on your mouth that hangs from the ceiling (idk what it is called) I wrote alt text above because the field for it on iOS doesn’t seem to work.

This is smart. I'd be happy to do the same for @support.bsky.team or go over the experience live on a call, again, keeping in mind I'm just one user and don't have a disability. I've been testing on my iPhone and MacBook Air with the built-in Apple screen reader VoiceOver, and the issues are shared.

If you decide to add hashtags can you default to Title Case? It’s more accessible.

today is my first day with the @bsky.app team! (new handle 👀) i’ll be focused on developer relations and community 😊 if you build something on atproto or have feedback, tag/email me anytime! [email protected]

On the highkey, @aliafonzy.bsky.social needs to be on Blue sky’s payroll. Because she got this popping. Good features and good community make a social media app successful..and she’s been curating the community so well!

ily paul

I’m really impressed with the responsiveness of the Bluesky team considering they JUST launched Android, consistently fixing bugs on iPhone and Android, AND working on safety and moderation tools.

I should’ve done an intro by now. I’m from St. Louis, Missouri, and I live in Brooklyn, New York. I’m an Accessibility Engineer at The Washington Post, where — aside from coding — I maintain standards and documentation. I love music and sports, especially Golden State Warriors basketball (go Dubs!).

This shouldn't be a hot take. It's an example of why people with disabilities must be included in betas like this. Even as an accessibility specialist, feedback I've been submitting to Bluesky will have gaps because (a) I don't have a disability and (b) there are many different forms of disability.

The lack of diversity on Mastodon is a big part of the reason I don’t use it. Aside from being a place to post my work, the main value for me of Twitter is seeing perspectives from BIPOC and people with disabilities.

Forget The Super Mario Bros. Movie; I wanna see one of these play the lead role in The Super Mario Kart Movie

@pfrazee.com (or other applicable team member) should I submit the Bluesky feedback form multiple times to report multiple issues, or would you prefer that my feedback is lumped together in one submission?

Is there a list of journalists on Bluesky?

how it feels getting my first name as my handle