There's a really beautiful article someone shared with me called Against Access that puts into words a lot of what Iv felt about the accessibility discussions Iv seen but never been able to properly express.
I definitely recommend reading it but what it ultimately boils down to is; why should blind people be satisfied with a diminished version of what sighted people get when they experience something? Why should they not get something just as good, made for them and engaging with their experience of life?
Take this forum for example; would describing its theme to someone actually do it justice? Can you describe the subtle uncanny yet soft atmosphere of the purple goo between the gold trim title boxes? The stars and rain and flower pellet sky? A blind person would need to experience all of that to truly feel this forum in the way they deserve to feel the world.
As they say in the article, its helpful to have all the little things that empower disabled people (and I think your idea is kind, and it falls into that helpful category so I don't mean to dismiss it at all). However I think what they would really love is a web that they can actually feel and hear and touch in some way; a web experience that's actually built for them, by them, with their world coming first - and if you can empower them to do that, it would mean so much (And I know its not really practical for you to create an entire other web verses a small guide! But you did ask 
)
Its actually the perfect thing for a homepage-like culture to create, because homepages are so much about what we feel; but Id like it to be better than just a tacked on extra to a sighted persons web, and I think it can be better and I hope it happens! It can be a place that sighted people are jealous they cant fully experience! 
EDIT: I suppose one small practical step would be to ask any blind people you know if they actually want access to your homepage, knowing the limitations that come with that; maybe they do, but maybe they don’t!
wanted to put this as a separate post because my last one got long and i feel this one is going to be long too, but i really wanted to respond to this specifically.
i honestly really wish it were possible to record and send data in non-visual, non-auditory formats, and i've wished that since childhood. the idea of some kind of digital "feeling" that goes beyond vibration has always been the greatest sci-fi goal to me, and it seems like no technology has ever been seriously developed with this goal in mind.
i play rhythm games, and when they're well-designed these games combine visual and auditory information into a single cohesive experience. if they're well-designed, it's possible to play rhythm game maps (or charts) without sound. it's a very different experience than with sound, of course, but it becomes an alternative method of experiencing the music. this chart is perfectly timed to the notes and rhythm, that's literally the name of the game, and if you hit the notes on time your body
becomes the notes and the rhythm.
you become the music.
it's an interactive music experience and yes, in my opinion, it is both easier and more fun if you can hear the music. but the transformation into different media is interesting to me, and i haven't seen any attempts to make games more geared towards this kind of experience, where your own body creates patterns by following the game's instructions. maybe it's been tried and no-one liked it. maybe it only works with rhythm games.
i have no idea how to build webspaces that don't display information in a visual format, and i can concieve of audio as an alternative to that, but i can't think of anything real that would supplant those senses. "supplant" to mean not simply replace, as in be a translation of or alternative to, but literally exist as the sole and intended format.
i can think of plenty of sci-fi ideas that would be great, but realistically, i genuinely can't think of anything. except i guess those digital braille readers, but those are just translators and they aren't a whole experience. that doesn't supplant the visual web, it just replaces it with an alternative.
i have read "against access" and i'm probably going to have to read it again because i kept having Thoughts while i was reading it.
i found myself, while not having experienced what the writer was writing about, having experienced something similar enough that i understood them by proxy.
i know makoton, and homesign, and basic bsl (i do not qualify for the excellent bsl lessons offered by various charities as i'm hearing, and getting them privately is fucking impossible). the few deaf people in whatever town i am in, i usually end up in some level of contact with. and the experience is...a strain, for both of us. i'm not fluent enough in bsl to hold or maintain a real conversation with the linguistic skill of someone who is fluent. the regional differences in bsl don't help. i've moved around enough that i've picked up some inconsistent regionalities.
communicating in writing is easier for me, even face-to-face, and a lot of deaf people, initially excited at learning there's someone else in town who signs, discovering that the only way we can effectively communicate is with the same note-scribbling system they have to use with everyone else, are often disappointed. i don't blame them. i feel the same excitement-disappointment when i see someone using welsh online, only to discover that they don't even live in wales and google-translated it.
they don't have the time, energy, or skill to teach me their language. i don't expect them, but unfortunately it seems that hearing people don't know a single sign so when they see someone sign at all they assume they're completely fluent.
the rare occasion i've been around bsl interpereters (always by proxy, usually at some group event) has been...weird. i have to watch the signer, because bsl is very much a visual form of communication that goes beyond sign-to-word translation. the whole vibe of the message hinges on the energy, the force, the shape of the body and the face, in a way that i honestly don't know as i can describe in writing. sometimes people sign in italics. i can't explain how, they just do. it's obvious if you're looking.
the interpereter will not simply translate the bsl into english literally (the word order is completely different), but will
interperet the message into something they can express in a similar way in a sentence that sounds like english. it usually doesn't sound like
natural english though, they tend to be neat, simple, clipped sentences. sometimes it sounds more like they're saying newspaper headlines.
interpereters will emphasise the same parts of the message the signer emphasised, or at least i think so. at least on the times when i know the signs used that was the case. they will not repeat facial expressions or body language, and i don't know why. is it because they don't feel they can repeat it correctly? because they're assuming i saw it the first time? i probably did, so it's fine, but it honestly makes the interpereter feel...robotic, somehow.
when translating what hearing people speak into bsl, interpereters often insert body language or facial expressions that weren't present in the speaker. i imagine the goal is to turn the sound of their voice into visual information, but, to me, this tends to get invented for more monotone speakers. it looks to me like the interpereter is inventing an emotion that wasn't present in the speaker.
i struggle to make sense of auditory information. i have to work hard to understand spoken language, english or otherwise. i benefit from watching the speaker's lips and hands and body as they speak. but especially their lips.
bsl interpereters, at least the ones i've seen, feel very robotic when doing bsl-to-speech. i know they're literally repeating someone else's words, and i think that's always going to feel kind of robotic, but they keep their hands clasped in front of them. this is, i think, for the benefit of the deaf people in the room. i don't know if this is how they prefer it. most people move their hands a lot when they speak, even if they don't think they do. it's natural, and i find it...not informative on its own, but often helpful context. robbed of that, i lose context on some of the sounds, and find them harder to understand.
i wondered if it's a similar experience on the other side. that speech-to-bsl feels as robotic and robbed of context because something natural has been removed in the name of access.
i thought maybe it's just me, because i sit in an unlucky middleground between hearing and deaf, unable to communicate fluently in three languages.
the way this author describes their experience of a world-changing event through a trained sign-language interpereter as being sanitised out of the discussion because it's not the thing they were there for matches, in terms of vibes, with my experiences with an interpereter too. anything "not relevant" isn't worth interpereting. they're human beings, but they're trained to act like robots. ironically, real robots do a worse job.
back when i did have some (paid, absolute beginner) bsl lessons, i got to know one of the students there. a teenager who'd been Deaf all her life and grew up with homesign, like a lot of deaf children do in villages. she was taking the lessons with her mother, who was now also going deaf. this teenager was the only Deaf person in the room besides the tutor (who had a cochlear implant. she said she'd gotten it for the sole purpose of becoming a bsl interpereter, but after seeing how terrible the bsl lessons were for prospective interpereters, decided to become a bsl teacher instead).
there were some older people who were losing their hearing but weren't quite deaf yet, and some other fully-hearing adults who were learning because they knew someone who was deaf, normally a relative. i was the only one there because i couldn't speak.
i already had some bsl knowledge, mixed indiscriminately with makoton and homesign. the tutor found mine and the teenager's sign knowledge typical for those who had never had any formal education in bsl, but needed a non-auditory form of communication.
despite the fact that we had completely different homesigns, and that the teenager did not know makoton, we communicated better with one another than anyone else in the room. we picked up one another's homesign intuitively, and combined with our limited but growing knowledge of bsl could communicate surprisingly well. i'm sure i understood, at most, about a third of anything she said, and she likewise of i, but we got along well enough. we got along on vibes, and concepts, and broad gestures. eloquent and verbose discussion was off the table. we could not talk about more abstract concepts, because we couldn't agree on an intuitive sign for those concepts.
she told me a story about entering a dog obedience show with her rottweiler, who was in all practical senses a hearing dog but was not formally recognised as such because he'd recieved no formal training. he behaved very well, but they did not place. the first place winner bit someone, though, and her dog didn't bite anyone, so what's the point in obedience training.
at least, i think that was the story she told. that was how i interpereted it. i don't know how many details i got wrong.
there was a shape between us, of this barrier we both knew existed and were doing our best to work around, but could never forget about or overcome.
sometimes i see, in movies, two characters who speak different languages but communicate fluently anyway. this is normally, at least in english-language movies, shown as one character speaking a non-english language, and the english-speaker understanding them and responding in english; and the non-english speaker understanding that and responding in their own language.
common discussions around this kind of thing supposes that both characters are fluent in both languages, and are choosing to speak only in their own native. that, in a practical sense, no linguistic barrier exists. that is not how i saw it.
i saw it as two characters who are only fluent in their own language, but can make just enough sense of the other's to, with context clues, comprehend the basic idea. in most cases.
this got even longer than i expected. i have no idea how much of any of that was worth sharing. but i think, and this is what that article kept making me think about, communicating across any barrier is inherently limited. the barrier itself creates a shape in that communication. you can feel it even if you're not acknowledging it, or not fully aware the barrier is creating that shape. i have similar, but different, experiences in welsh-english communication, and honestly a lot of other communication barriers too.
i think interpereting a picture into words, for example, can be beneficial for someone who can't see that picture, but it leaves the shape of the picture behind. there's a picture here, and you can't see it, and everyone else can. you wonder what you're missing.
i am not blind, but my browser is set to always display alt-text below images. i also sometimes browse the web with images disabled because i find them visually overwhelming, or my internet is so slow that i don't want them taking up the bandwith. and alt-text displays instead, at least if supplied.
i've seen a lot of different approaches to alt-text.
i've found some sites actually supply information via alt-text that literally does not exist anywhere in the image, which is always interesting. names of subjects that aren't given anywhere but that alt-text, or invisible details like what brand their shirt is or what town the photo was taken in (indoors, where you couldn't even divine that by the shadows)
wikipedia normally goes for something really simple, like "an elderly white man smiling at the camera" (though there are sometimes lengthy talk-page debates about whether to use "white" or "caucasian" or "fair-skinned" or other arguments about linguistic details that literally do not fucking matter, meanwhile the image has no alt-text for nine months). the thumbnail text, which always displays below the image, will usually be more informative, like "john smith at the awards ceremony in 2017". i've always found alt-text on wikipedia superfluous next to the more helpful thumbnail text, but i trust that someone probably benefits from the alt-text and it's usually short and simple so what's the harm.
some sites....go too far. like that parody in the article about describing someone's shirt in too much detail, i've seen a lot of sites do that and i always wondered who is benefitting from this? was the writer of this alt-text paid by the letter?
i think, based on the author's description, something that's closer to what you'd see in a novel (but still short and to the point) would be more helpful. this has always been my instinct on alt-text. it doesn't have to be lengthy or perfectly detailed. just get the vibe across.
but, there'd still be the shape of the image.
the absolute worst approach to alt-text is to automatically transcribe the filename to the alt-text attribute. i've seen this on two sites that allow users to embed images and unfortunately the filenames (and thus the alt-text) tend to very unhelpfully be kaOdHpg94hGUnf5_fkmOdsb-0
no-one wants their screen-reader to read that out.
my approach, on the rare occasion i've needed to think about this, has been to supply a written alternative to the image in the body of the html itself. that is, not to simply descibe the image, but to pretend it doesn't exist and to convey the information it contains in text, so everyone sees it regardless of whether or not they see the image. the image and the text are both alternatives to one another.
this is useful in situations like a screenshot in a tutorial, but if i were making an art page i would not take this approach.
i'm aware that my experience is not the same as someone who has no choice in seeing the images, but i think i see alt-text a lot more than most sighted people so i get a strangely mixed experience. i honestly think all browsers should display alt-text in full by default. i think it would make people think about it more, about how useful it can be, and how ridiculous some alt-text is.
and on your final point about asking blind people how they feel: i've been thinking about this for years. i play an online image-based game website and a lot of other players of that game make a big thing about accessibility for the blind specifically. and while i've no objections to this (and it has lately spawned some very...interesting...approaches to alt-text on the site's official communication) i have yet to see one single solitary blind user on that site. i don't take this as evidence they don't exist. but what i mean is, in all this vocal advocacy for the blind, i have not ONCE seen anyone say "i am blind".
i hope this was helpful to someone.
Posts & Arts: 54/1k.beats
~ Inconvenience is counterculture ~ 
Author
