being a disabled webmaster

[Bede]

I have always seen the web as an accessibility tool for me, because I am, as the kids say, "chronically online", but not by choice. My disabilities have left me socially isolated from all of my peers. And the ones that I didn't drive away with my inability to communicate or function, I drove away by being one of a small handful of queer kids in my small, religious town in the South. Both factors led to years of harassment, etc. I won't get into it.

But because I live surrounded by people who hate me, the web has been one of the only ways I've been able to make friends. The internet has less (or at least, different) social rules, no confusing facial expressions, and way more people who share my interests.

But then, of course, as the internet became more and more mainstream (especially after the pandemic), the internet became just like real life; ruled by the pretty people who will tell anyone who does something "wrong" to do horrific things. As such, I tried my hands at making my own site, and found it extremely fulfilling. It's helped me fall back in love with the internet. There are so many things I can do with some HTML and CSS, and has been so fulfilling for my disabled self.

But, of course, even the web revival movement has its issues for disabled folk. So, so, so many websites insist on being inaccessible for the sake of "accuracy to the old web." And so many elitists on Neocities dunk on things like HTML templates, saying things like, "Learning HTML isn't that hard!" Like, okay, for YOU maybe. Not all of us can be abled though. Come back to me when you have brain fog, executive dysfunction, attention issues and chronic fatigue, THEN we'll talk. MAYBE.

And, of course, there's issues of unspoken social rules within these spaces... Glitterpidgeon said it perfectly.

not to mention that any sort of social interaction brings with it new social norms to not understand, and new communities to feel alienated and excluded from. sometimes it feels like you don't belong anywhere, no matter how hard you try.

[serenefork]

I have a plethora of disorders, being a webmaster for me has meant that I've been able to have something to do during the day that isn't as exhausted and painful as many of my other creative interests. I only have a laptop so I sit in bed with it on my lap desk and I'm able to do a lot more than I would offline. It's helping me build a stronger sense of community that being stuck at home has disallowed me to have prior. It also has helped me with my depression in that instead of doom scrolling a social media site and not really engaging, I instead am able to go down rabbit holes of site that people have made and it makes me feel better.

[tertiaryapocalypse]

like a lot of others in this thread, i definitely find webmastery to be really good for me! i'm autistic (amongst other things, i'll bring those up later) and being able to make pages dedicated to aspects of my special interests is like, super good for my brain. it's like infodumping, but new & improved 

on the other hand, i'm pretty sure i have arthritis though im still in the process of attaining a diagnosis for that, which makes it really difficult for me to type for long periods. this also affects being an artist, writing, really all of my hobbies! i have compression gloves i'll use whenever i'm working for long periods, so that helps a bit.

i also have a really bad tendency to get super absorbed in my work, especially with webmastery, which makes it hard for me to remember how to basically function as a person. i forget to eat, drink water, use the restroom, and i end up staying up super late, which definitely does not help my sleep issues 

in the end, though, webmastering gives me a space to be able to engage with my special interests as well as giving me something to do online that isn't just a constant dopamine rush. intellectual stimulation, or whatever! it's easier to focus on for me than reading big blocks of text, and the only exacerbation of pain i get is somewhat mitigated by the aforementioned gloves. that's my two cents 

[pixiez]

i'm gonna concur with a lot of people--when i don't have the spoons for my other creative pursuits (writing + music mainly), i turn to fiddling with my neocities. it's pretty much lists of my interests and creative projects, and with the help of accessible stuff like website templates and straightforward tutorials online, i get a lot out of it. it helps me keep track of books and shows i like (i tend to "tunnel vision" onto whatever i'm currently fixated on and pretty much forget all the other stuff, lol), and also just offers as a nice space for me to just be myself in all my tacky, kitschy glory. when i first developed ptsd i had a pretty shaky sense of self and a lot of other debilitating symptoms, and it's nice being able to look at my page and see how far i've come.

[petrichoran]

honestly, being a webmaster is one of the more accessible things in my life. it's an indoor activity that i can just be at home for and work at my own pace! i also have pots, but my most prominent symptom is heat intolerance. i love doing things outside, but during hot weather months i just can't really handle it. i also have low blood sugar issues, and being at home helps me to get whatever food i want or need whenever i need it.

i do get eyestrain pretty bad, so it's not the best for me to stare at screens for long. but when i'm not online at home, i'm usually reading, writing, or creating art, all of which require eye focus as well, so i'm not sure how much of an impact it has. unless i'm doing things that require me to get a really good look at the colors on the screen, i have my brightness all the way down, which really helps me.

[OneMillionFurries]

Maybe it's because writing is already a spoon-muncher for me, but I find working on my website to be incredibly difficult, especially since I'm currently unmedicated. I feel guilty that I can't be as "active" as I want to be :( I have so many page and project ideas that I just can't seem to pull myself to do! It's so frustrating.

[fin600]

For me being a webmaster is freeing. To carve out my corner of the internet where I'll always belong is a big dream of mine. It was so nice to take out the HTML guides I had from my childhood and put an old hobby back into use, without worrying about more up-to-date skills that have gotten harder for me to get into thanks to brain fog and pain. Updating the site has been falling to the wayside thanks to life getting in the way, but I'm always drafting something in the background, saving more buttons, and dreaming up things I know I can do. Often my projects get close to finishing only to give me roadblocks I can't cross, but to have something I know I can do? It's a priceless treasure. It's also good for having something to do on the bad days. Why doomscroll when I can go hunting for more buttons and blinkies? I recently got introduced to Picmix and it's so much fun.

[halcybutton]

my site gives me something to work on that i am passionate about, which really helps me out mentally when i am feeling particularly down. however, i can't work on my site as much as i'd like due to several factors (brainfog, executive dysfunction, dissociation, my brain hates me lol). i pretty much have to hope for the stars to align to get something big done on my site, like a new page or major adjustments. on top of such, i have pretty bad focus, so i often take days at a time to do something like that. despite all of that, though, my site gives me purpose and a way to reach people. i am very isolated due to my disabilities, so it's nice having something out there that people can interact with. sometimes i feel bad i'm not very active with my site, along with feeling insecure about how it looks in comparison to other people's sites, but i try to remind myself i'm doing the best i can with what i've got. i also worry about not coming across correctly, since sometimes my words do not make sense. during those times i tell myself that my site is MY corner and what matters is that i'm happy with it. an added bonus is that i can make infodumps into a whole site page that people can read if they want, which is a huge win for my special interests overall, i really do like being a webmaster, even if my disabilities get in the way quite often

[boyrotting]

My site is still not published yet but I'm gonna add here anyways  It's really hard for me to work on my site because of my disabilities as well. I'll be hyper focused on it for like thirty minutes then go through a two day burnout and whatnot. I spend a lot of time in hospitals so I have to wait for the perfect moment to be motivated and have enough free time. Which I've been lacking lately ever since school so that's been happening even less. But it still is more accessible than other things for me, pretty much all psychical activities are a no go. And other hobbies like bracelet making require lots of patience which I do not have. I hope to start having a regular update schedule for it that's doable for me. Like twenty minutes everyday.

[JINSBEK]

my nerve issues effect my hands (as well as other things, but I don't use those in making websites) and that's a big thing. i can't do all the things I want to, and I want to do a lot of things, and so it's this sort of weird balance of being careful which activities I do, because I can only do so many without pain and stuff. I am thinking about making some sort of schedule where I do like. 1 of the three most important ones a day, and then chill for the rest of the day. but then things like work and school also contribute to it, so i have to take those into account too.

i guess sometimes it's just. you will be slower and have a harder time than others and that's ok. it's not a race even though my brain really thinks it is one for some reason. but it sucks that it seems like everyone else has there own shiny little websites already and I am struggling to understand how html even works and having a hard time finding a time when using a computer long enough to make progress on things doesn't kill my hands.

I relate a lot to this. Having to schedule things extremely carefully (spoon management) sucks, I can't update my website as frequently or drastically I want to, because I'm too busy exhausting myself at work (I work full-time, 40 hours a week), doing groceries, meal prepping, cleaning, bathing, dealing with other appointments and chores etc., all before I get to do anything fun. I just have to accept being "busy". My current biggest disabilities are neurological post-COVID sequelae from two infections this year (2024): I've been left a stroke victim, the right side of my body doesn't function correctly (problems with left hemisphere of the brain), my enteric and other parts of my autonomic nervous system still don't function normally and I have to do a lot of autonomous things manually (including breathing and peristalsis), wholly blind in the right eye, mostly blind in the left, the fatigue that comes with having to recover from these two massive brain injuries, etc. And I want to iterate, yes, I live alone currently, and yes, I STILL work 40 hours a week in order to pay for my, uh. Everything. Lmao.

It's only within the past two weeks we've& finally been able to resume work on our website. Turns out it's extremely hard to code a website when you're almost completely blind, and also have to relearn the alphabet and English literacy in general (yes I lost my ability to read this year. And had to relearn it. Lmao).  I'm glad that we've& been able to make this much progress, even if slow, and I remind myself it's a lot of work for people who are operating on more than just half a brain--I'm writing a ton even for someone who isn't having to regain the ability to parse language. Recently, I've recovered the cognitive capacity to remind myself that my supervisor at my job constantly exclaims her surprise that I haven't died multiple times over this year, so that's a nice morale boost.

As for what my website means to me in terms of my disabilities; e.g. it's moving to see how these sorts of sustained creative accomplishments are some of the first "big wins" with regards to productive endeavours for our disabled peers here... I've never, really... thought of it like that. To be honest, I've never really felt that kind of insecurity about myself. I'm frankly never kind to myself with regards to what I perceive are my shortcomings and inadequacies, but on the other hand, I'm never despondent or sad when I'm unhappy about those things. I'm just angry instead of depressed lmao.

One thing that I haven't seen discussed here yet, is bringing one's disabilities to one's website. That is, we'd& like to bring information about our experience with COVID-19 into some kind of open publication. We've& extensively physically journalled our problems and recovery efforts post-COVID, and we& believe it may make for an interesting case study. Perhaps it will help others living with similar problems (if they haven't succumbed and died yet) to cope and overcome, perhaps it will elucidate the underlying (dys)function and processes to researchers and others in the medical community. Sharing our hypotheses and experiments in rehabilitation has enabled our fiancee, @VioletHeaven, to regain visual-spatial processing, neuromotor, and other cognitive functions and capacities and that she had lost to her COVID infection years ago. There could be more good done if we can collate this information and bring it into wider public awareness--...

[splashy]

But, of course, even the web revival movement has its issues for disabled folk. So, so, so many websites insist on being inaccessible for the sake of "accuracy to the old web." And so many elitists on Neocities dunk on things like HTML templates, saying things like, "Learning HTML isn't that hard!" Like, okay, for YOU maybe. Not all of us can be abled though. Come back to me when you have brain fog, executive dysfunction, attention issues and chronic fatigue, THEN we'll talk. MAYBE.

it's the webmaster's choice as to how much time they dedicate to accessibility. you can't expect webmasters to always utilize good practices. especially when they're still beginners.
i think it's fine to trade off accessibility for visual flair. it's a matter of comprimise. if accessibility was all we were cared about, pages would be nothin' but unstyled html and some images. who wants that? the style sheets are what breathe life into the personal web. the styling on a page can matter more than the content within it depending on the

html templates are perfectly fine as a starting point to make the layout your own as well as for allowing less experienced webmasters create a presentable page, but i do get why they can be somewhat contentous. overuse of templates can make the landscape of sites feel far more uniform and less creative. it may also discourage people from developing their skills further, as they may look at their original layouts and feel like they won't ever reach the skill levels the creators of those layouts have been able to get to.

[JINSBEK]

Right. I don't actually know any Neocities webmasters who "dunk" on people for using HTML templates. Maybe I've been hanging around the wrong circles (or the right circles?), but I've literally never seen that.

And people are allowed to have opinions that you hate, lmao. Some random dude on the Internet ranting "YOU SHOULD ONLY EVER HANDWRITE EVERY PIECE OF HTML NEVER USE TEMPLATES" isn't actually going to stop people from going to CodePen.io, Stack Overflow, or the hundreds of free code template sites available. Getting mad at some guy stating his opinion on his personal website doesn't do anything, and he's not likely to change his mind about the "purity" of "original" code or whatever. I've seen game developers who insist, "Learning to code is hard, understanding code should BE hard--that's why I never use comments in my code" and I'm like OK bruh I'm not the one maintaining it so I don't care.

As for accessibility, look, I'm low-vision and I don't have the time and energy to make my website accessible to blind users right now. Lmao. My site's totally broken for screen readers, but also, I don't know how many blind people are going to browse a website focused on visual art and expect to read the content concerning said visual art. And yes, I know screen readers are used by other people with different types of disabilities, but look, I'm not going to simplify the "fancy" language or eradicate metaphors to make my writings more palatable to people who are, well, neurologically incapable of grasping the affective, social, historical, and narrative content, anyway.

[Bede]

Right. I don't actually know any Neocities webmasters who "dunk" on people for using HTML templates. Maybe I've been hanging around the wrong circles (or the right circles?), but I've literally never seen that.

I mostly saw it in private servers and such, away from the public eye, but I have thankfully Changed And Grown As A Person and no longer associate with those sorts of mindsets. If shit sucks, hit the bricks.

I do remember, though, some public blog posts on the subject, just masked with language making it seem like it's about protecting the Integrity of the indie web or whatever. Stuff like, "Can you really throw one or two pages up from the Sadgrl template generator and call yourself a webmaster? I don't think so." Also casual roasting, like, "Don't you want to no longer be restricted to sad website generators that have been done to death?"