Hello comrades! I am new to the world of reddit alternatives and have been interested in exploring welcoming anti-capitalist communities. I want to see a post-capitalist world in my lifetime, which means we are going to need to be open to new comrades of diverse backgrounds and abilities. With that in mind, we need to talk about the problematic signup process. In question here is the all important Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart every user must engage with in order to join the community. The current captcha process is very difficult for those with divergent visual abilities. As someone who relies on accessibility tools to interact with the digital world, I call on the techncs community to address the problematic choices in the sign up process. Additionally, consulting people with different abilities for input on technical architecture is a must to promote diversity in the community.
I suggest you either come up with a better solution or host your own instance.
Complaining about it without offering a good alternative won’t get you anywhere
I think you should all chill out a bit in the comments. It is totally fine to hint at problems for disabled persons. Of course Op could have used different wording but I think their noble intent is clear. Now of course it would be nice that Op already presented a set of solutions to the problem they noticed but it is totally fair to not have them. I’m sure there are decent alternatives to visual-only captchas. So instead of telling Op to “fuck off” you could all be either ignore this request or try to actually be a decent human being and offer possible solutions. Now of course the admins have to decide it those other options are technically feasible. You have to keep in mind that many small instances do not have resources to those kind of technical experiments when they don’t work out of the box.
There’s a reason captchas are so prevalent.
They’re easy to implement, cheap to run, and work for the absolute majority of people.
There’s always going to be someone it doesn’t work for, and in the end, it’s just about what’s “worth it” for the developers and admins.
Would you rather focus on optimizing Lemmy for it to scale for milions of users or spend the time developing and alternative captcha solution which would open it up for a couple hundred more people?
I’m not trying to dismiss the issue of accessibility, but it’s also important to keep reality in mind.
Yes the wording of this post is needlessly demanding, but people here blaming the disabled for a world that disables them need to think about their life choices.
You don’t tell a guy in a wheelchair to “just get legs” when he stands before a stair without ramp, you tell the guy who build the stairs to build a ramp.
Equally you don’t tell someone with impaired vision to “just host their own instance” you tell the guy who implemented the captcha to include an audio captcha.
Sure it should be done niceley and understanding from both sites, sure both should work on the solution, sure sometimes it isn’t possible to include everyone. But if someone would be to blame, its the ones excluding, not the ones excluded.
God, people show some solidarity for once.
You’re going about this the wrong way. You’d be better off contacting admins first, they may not be aware that captchas are difficult for the visually impaired (it isn’t common knowledge, since the accessibility methods aren’t something most people have used).
Heck, I didn’t even know the accessibility tools didn’t work with them. I had figured it wouldn’t be any worse than any selection field, and I know visually impaired people that use them. This is the first I’ve heard of it, so a random admin wouldn’t be more likely to know.
You’d likely get a faster response with a direct communication, and be more likely to be able to discuss alternatives.
I think OP has every right to complain about it in public. Since it is not common knowledge (like you said), the community is obviously lacking awareness. Telling people of marginalized communities to make their complaints about discrimination in private is harmful and hinders progress. Lets talk about these problems openly, so we can find solutions together! PS: I think there is enough space in our hearts for admin appreciation and constructive criticism.
Just chose another instance where signup is without captchas?!
Is discriminating against the disabled okay if only some people are doing it?
lemmy devs/tchncs admins might be interested in cloudflare turnstile, captcha replacement which doesen’t involve solving a puzzle. iirc it runs some proof-of-work and sometimes requries you to check a single checkbox.
