Web Revival and Accessibility

[DJoftheCoven]

So, this may or may not come as a surprise to the people here (it seems like just about everybody on the internet is neurodivergent, or maybe it's just in the circles I'm in??) but I'm actually on the autism spectrum. It's a genetic thing for my family--we have a long history of autistic engineers and mechanics going back for as long as those things have existed, and in particular, my father (who is also autistic) works a ton with ham radio and electronics like I do. It seems like my entry into computer science was basically inevitable lol. I have a reason for bringing all of this up, though:

Even though some autistic people such as my family members have a natural way with certain kinds of machines, it seems to have totally skipped a generation with me! I love doing nerdy programming stuff but I spend hours putting myself to it just in order to make something simple as hell. I have a seriously hard time trying to figure out how even the most basic of coding stuff works sometimes, and I find that the broader expanse of knowledge available for young or beginning coders on the web is not very accessible to autistic people like myself, being full of complicated terminology and nonspecific instructions. A lot of manuals assume a basic understanding of vocabulary and controls right off the bat, leaving out a ton of details that I have to desperately google in order to get a solid understanding of what the code I'm working with actually does. Frankly, it gets embarrassing having to ask questions of more advanced coders because it always feels like I'm wasting their time with baby stuff.

But it isn't like I can't eventually gain some understanding of how to code. I mean, I did manage to make a website, rudimentary as it is. I just feel like we as a group of web revivalists need to have conversations about making computer literacy more accessible to those who need extra help/explanation in order to get their projects off the ground. It took me ages to figure out how to make a layout, or even what the "float" command did (all basic stuff!!), but I found that the minute I saw it described by a random reddit user as "boxes within boxes within boxes" and "stacking horizontally instead of vertically", it suddenly started to click for me. It'd be really nice if we could find a way to simplify our learning materials, because once I have a visualization for things... it all runs quite smoothly . I want other people to have that experience too!

If any of you have a way to expand on this point, go ahead! Did any of you have problems when learning how to code like I did, or is it unique to my dumb brain? How do you think we can make web material more accessible to people with processing disorders?

[tarocchilla]

Hi!
So i'd like to preface this by saying that i have ADHD and dyscalculia, so i obviously have a hard time learning some stuff. I consider myself decently smart, but since i have trouble focusing and directing my energy i use my smarts in the wrong way, luckily for me i can hyperfocus and hyperfixate on a subject and learn it in a week even if it's written exclusively in cuneiform so for me learning how to code wasn't as hard as it could have been
But i agree that there is a bit of an accessibility problem, not only for ND people but for ...people who aren't into coding at all.

Let me explain: i was born in 1999, and in elementary school we had IT classes where we made a little html webpage. My mom had workshops at her office to learn html, even if we forgot everything we had a small idea on how html and websites worked, but i doubt newer generations have the same knowledge, because they were introduced to technology differentley.

On the internet there are some 15 year olds that admire me (no, i have no idea why either) so when i told them i wanted to move away from social media they of course wanted to follow making me a very proud internet wine aunt/funcle......but they had a super hard time learning, simply because they are not used to browsing the internet this way, they are not used to having long text only guides and they are not used to having so much choice too.

I think that on one hand these things have to be learned, like any skill you can't expect to start understanding everything, but i also think there should be guides that are more accessible to people that didn't even know html exited. I found some around, but for people that are not used at finding things this way, there's another obstacle.

I think Sadgrl.online does a great job explaining things to the non iniciated for example!

[DJoftheCoven]

I've always been happy with Sadness' work in bringing programming to a more relatable level, and Melooon's guides are also plenty understandable to me! Generally, the accessibility problem isn't so much with these big name leaders in the web revival movement and more in just the available materials for beginners who don't find them... for instance, books that I've perused at stores or libraries tend to be older and HEAVILY technical.

Of course it does also take time and practice to get good! As difficult as it was for me to get started, I have a very fun time learning and coding now that I have a foot in the door. I just feel like it's worth mentioning that a lot of people on the internet now, e.g. people 18 and younger, didn't have as much exposure to HTML growing up as the older generation did. I was only born 4 years after you and the most tech stuff that I was taught in school was how to type quickly, even though personal sites were still in vogue until I was about 8 or 9.

I've been thinking a lot about starting a youtube channel to explain basic coding stuff in a thorough, visual manner, both to introduce unfamiliar audiences to the web revival movement and to provide good guides for people who, like me, are more visual learners. The manuals can only take us so far, right?

[Melooon]

So Im gonna play devils advocate here and say that I actually want the web revival to be hard to get into; I want sites to be difficult and complex to make.. its sort of like a gauntlet of fire; if you really believe in making these kinds of sites, you'll find a way. Thats one of the biggest things that protects us from the wider web; people don't spend hours making a personal site just to fill it with jokes or hate speech; also when people make broken things, they tend to be more creative and original.

That said, I DO support the idea of making help resources that are aimed at these kinds of sites; I think there should be places that explain what a webring is, why gifs make good icons, how frames work, what is the etiquette of a website badge etc.

There's this double standard where web stuff cant be too easy to learn, but we also need to express the idea that we are willing to share and help whenever needed.

I think maybe the hardest thing is helping people to be patient and take the time to go through that gauntlet; and then to have the self confidence to make weird broken things and still be happy with it

Rant side, I would like to see more people streaming/youtubing about site making, I think thats an important form of community building on the web today that most of use dont make good use of.

[DJoftheCoven]

You have a point with the barrier to entry, Melooon. I don't want to make it sound like I think people shouldn't be expected to do work and such to get better at what they do! I feel like I didn't think through the topic enough before posting it and ended up phrasing it rather poorly.

Most people who want to code will eventually learn how to push through the barriers to make something great. And that's good! It's a useful skill to have, to persevere in the face of adversity! I just don't want passionate kids who go slower than others to be discouraged from learning because of how little clear, concise material there is for people who have trouble with fluffy/roundabout or just old-fashioned wording. But I don't intend to complain about it forever! I wish to step up to the plate someday and make those materials myself.

[GlitchyZorua]

⚑ Moderators Note ⚑

This thread has been merged with an existing topic

As you probably know, there was a consensus decision where I should remove the Leaky Ring, Which, as you probably expect,
55.56% said yes, while 44.44% said no, and as such, because more people voted for yes, it has been stripped off of my site.

But why did I wanted to remove it? Well... I've received a couple of pings and dms from users, complaining that their finger hurts from trying to remove the flood, and some even said that it was messing with their screen reader!

So I decided to let a poll decide if the flood should go bye-byes or not. This happened before I went off the vacation to disney world. Now, I couldn't look at the poll since, well, My phone got cracked, and the tap screen was tapping by itself!   

Eventually, right before i was done showering in the hotel, My mom's back started hurting a lot  ... Thankfully, she was ok.

Now why is that important? Well lemme tell you! The next day, when we finally arrived to disney world, she was forced to use wheel chair, actually, a go-kart. Then I noticed something, I saw that they have these guide maps for disabled people, which shows more information about the park, mainly about its accessibility. Disney also had a nurses, and even some parking for your go-karts.

That got me thinking about my website. I thought to myself... Maybe... I should care about accessibility on my website.

I realized that, accessibility doesn't ruin the fun. It actually shows that you put into so much love into something, like parks, or website. It shows that, caring about accessibility means that you want everyone, to join into the fun, regardless on what disability they have. That's.. why I am starting to care about so much about it. 

So... yeah. I wanna hear your thoughts and feelings about it. Do you understand?

Tell me what you think.

[ialu]

This reminds me...

A critique I've seen be made of web revival movements and communities is that accessibility is, as touched on in this post, often overlooked for the sake of fun and self expression. To be honest, I think this is a very accurate criticism to make, and it's been one of my own sources of disillusionment with the broader web revival community.

One of the core tenets of this ideology is that the Internet should be for everyone, particularly in the face of capitalist homogenization. While that, of course, entails advocating for self expression, especially forms of harmless expression suppressed or discouraged by modern social media platforms, encouragement of self expression should not come at the cost of those in need of the most support, especially when we are advocating for Internet users to be treated as equal collaborators, not expendable consumers. Don't forget that corporations acting in their own self interests - prioritizing what is most convenient for them as opposed to the greater common good - is much of the source behind many issues with the Internet we commonly take umbrage with. If we want to build a free, equal Internet, we need to work to avoid replicating that behavior - I would absolutely love to see more discussions of web accessibility happen among web revival circles.

[Note: Of course, not everyone in the web revival community is like this, and there are, of course, many users who take accessibility very seriously and perceive it as an issue of importance. I am only touching on a subgroup which I have noticed.]

[splashy]

As you probably know, there was a consensus decision where I should remove the Leaky Ring, Which, as you probably expect,
55.56% said yes, while 44.44% said no, and as such, because more people voted for yes, it has been stripped off of my site.

The leaky page script is generally an accessibility nightmare. Melon definitely could've at least given it a negative z-index by default so the flood is behind the pages content. Some webmasters have done that themselves, or have put the script into a div to keep it restrained to a certain portion of page.

This reminds me...

A critique I've seen be made of web revival movements and communities is that accessibility is, as touched on in this post, often overlooked for the sake of fun and self expression. To be honest, I think this is a very accurate criticism to make, and it's been one of my own sources of disillusionment with the broader web revival community.

One of the core tenets of this ideology is that the Internet should be for everyone, particularly in the face of capitalist homogenization. While that, of course, entails advocating for self expression, especially forms of harmless expression suppressed or discouraged by modern social media platforms, encouragement of self expression should not come at the cost of those in need of the most support, especially when we are advocating for Internet users to be treated as equal collaborators, not expendable consumers. Don't forget that corporations acting in their own self interests - prioritizing what is most convenient for them as opposed to the greater common good - is much of the source behind many issues with the Internet we commonly take umbrage with. If we want to build a free, equal Internet, we need to work to avoid replicating that behavior - I would absolutely love to see more discussions of web accessibility happen among web revival circles.

[Note: Of course, not everyone in the web revival community is like this, and there are, of course, many users who take accessibility very seriously and perceive it as an issue of importance. I am only touching on a subgroup which I have noticed.]

Accessibility even makes sense from a corporate point of view. Most large companies' sites have top-tier accessibility, as it's just good business practice to not exclude potential users; the extra development time (and thus cost) of making these sites legible, and usable for screen readers is lower than the increased profits and boost to reputation an accessible site grants these businesses.
^ This isn't even a bad thing per se. It mutually benefits both the user and the company.

If I'm going to be honest, I believe this fixation on maximizing usability is somewhat contrary to what I thought the personal web was about: Personal expression. The end stage of focusing solely on accessibility is white text on a black background, and vice versa. Where's the fun in that? Now we're back to the same soulless CRAP I have to look at outside the personal web. That's not what this movement is about. We can't have tunnel vision when developing our websites. We need some restraint, to make our sites as accessible as practically possible without sacrificing artistic integrity.
PS: This blog by potentia.moe is a great take on this subject.

Thanks for listening reading to my TED talk. post.

[Twigz0n]

I feel like the least a website could do that wants to have a ton of flashy graphics but doesn’t know how to add a “pause all gifs” option should be to add a warning that appears before you enter the site. I’ve seen this on a few websites before and I think it should be practiced more often, especially if your site has a lot of bright eye straining colours or graphics. You can still stay true to your self expression whilst giving people a heads up about your site. 

[ValyceNegative]

Regarding the Leaky Ring, personally I like it: sometimes I go on flooded websites to drain them as a past time, and to the ones who are hurting their fingers to try to click as much as possible I'd point out that there's an obvious relapse time built into it made specifically so one doesn't have to click at light speed, so they're not accomplishing anything by clicking any quicker.

HOWEVER, it's also something I could never put on my websites. XD It definitely hinders pages that are there to show text or images to viewers: even if you make the water completely transparent people may end up clicking on it instead of the links they're trying to reach.
An alternative compromise I've seen around is to make an entire page dedicated specifically to the flood, which is okay, readers go there only if they want to play; not everyone wants to make a new page just for one webring widget though, so there's that.

In the end I think Melon's web objects are intentionally experimental and they are made with the knowledge that they can't be all for everyone. I mean, Surf Club thrives as an alternative, more classic webring compared to Leaky Ring, so if one doesn't fit the other may be more up your alley.

Regarding the more general accessibility discourse, and especially what @splashy said, I'd argue that today's mainstream sites also do not show good accessibility standards: a lot of them are needlessly bloated making load times  a nightmare on certain machines, social media platforms actively hides options and functionality to its users, modern corporate sites are built on templates that work decently on mobile but completely alienates desktop browsing. Meanwhile I can still open old sites that are perfectly visible both on mobile and on desktop, cue some examples:
https://www.snowstep.com/web/html/home_eng.php
https://www.adventuregamesite.de/
So it's true that the real accessibility relies on pure HTML, but this is not something that's being followed by the CSS and JS- heavy modern mainstream sites, which are no doubt stagnant shallow pools devoid of creativity.

If I may pose forward a critique, I've seen a lot of modern indieweb developers committing to the idea of having a site that "encapsulates the feel of a pre-social site" but then add certain details that were nowhere to be seen on sites of that era; that in itself is not a problem (trends evolve! That's natural!) but many of these added details are what makes an indieweb page inaccessible on some machines. One easy example is the addition of floating(?) stickers(?) that on the preferred resolution are sitting just outside the layout or over one specific box, but change the view and they'll break the page completely. But the point is, if the webmaster wanted those elements to behave that way, it's fine. It's their own web room, they can do what they want... unless they specifically add a sign saying "plase come into my room, I have stuff to show you" but the floor is ridden with traps.

Accessibility shouldn't be a fixed bucketlist of things that your site must or must not have nor an aesthetic that dictates standards of certain web eras; it's more of a flexible set of suggestions that you are welcome to follow depending on who you are catering your site to. If a site is made to be seen only by its webmaster (valid choice) and their strive is to create an experiment on web art, then accessibility has no place there: but if a site is made because a webmaster needs to show something to everyone, then it's in the webmaster's interest that the majority of viewers are able to navigate through it, and this sentence doesn't mean "turn your website into a modern standard".

[star dreams]

Wise words I'm paraphrasing from another forum post on the 32-bit cafe forum: Must you make your site accessible? Up to you. Should you consider it? Definitely! Funny seeing this topic first thing revisiting this forum after a year+, when a reason I don't enjoy using it as much is, well, its layout is hard to read!

Accessibility shouldn't be a fixed bucketlist of things that your site must or must not have nor an aesthetic that dictates standards of certain web eras; it's more of a flexible set of suggestions that you are welcome to follow depending on who you are catering your site to. If a site is made to be seen only by its webmaster (valid choice) and their strive is to create an experiment on web art, then accessibility has no place there: but if a site is made because a webmaster needs to show something to everyone, then it's in the webmaster's interest that the majority of viewers are able to navigate through it, and this sentence doesn't mean "turn your website into a modern standard".

ValyceNegative has summarised what I think, there's no point tearing your hair out trying to make your website up to standards in accessibility if, like mine, your site gets maybe 14 visitors a month, half of them being your own visits. At the same time, accessibility is frankly not that hard to incorporate, and you're already doing more than most of you have an alt description in ur images.
Accessible Net Directory and Responsive Web Directory have not only links to resources and other sites but also their own definitions and guidelines for accessibility.

The sites there are all very much unique aesthetically in their own ways, yet still accommodate for different users in varying degrees. I honestly don't think artistic exploration is compromised by accessibility at all, you just have to get creative!

[nipchip]

Web accessibility doesn't have to come at the cost of creativity! I find it a little baffling that someone would argue that was the case. Keeping some accessibility in mind when making a website (e.g. font size, colour contrast) will get you most of the way there and in practise is really easy.

The Flood script is really neat, but aside from it being breaking accessibility, I'll find myself stuck on the entry page/homepage unable to navigate the site until I click and wait multiple times. Please, let me just click around...

An alternative compromise I've seen around is to make an entire page dedicated specifically to the flood, which is okay, readers go there only if they want to play; not everyone wants to make a new page just for one webring widget though, so there's that.

I like the alternative of limiting it to a dedicated page, at least somewhere that's not the homepage. :)

I want my friends or any person passing by to be able to enjoy the stuff I put out, and I would be sad if someone had a hard time looking at something I made. :( Even if my website was only ever visited by me, future older me who may not have great eyesight and/or relies on a screenreader would appreciate that past me made the website easy to look back on!

[devils]

If I'm going to be honest, I believe this fixation on maximizing usability is somewhat contrary to what I thought the personal web was about: Personal expression. The end stage of focusing solely on accessibility is white text on a black background, and vice versa. Where's the fun in that? Now we're back to the same soulless CRAP I have to look at outside the personal web. That's not what this movement is about. We can't have tunnel vision when developing our websites. We need some restraint, to make our sites as accessible as practically possible without sacrificing artistic integrity.

I find myself thinking about this as well. I try to have my site screen-reader friendly and avoid seizure-inducing GIFs (I'm epileptic, so that's just second nature to me ). I do recognize I could do more, such as implementing a dark mode... but there are also aspects of accessibility that just don't make sense for my website. The biggest example is mobile-compatibility: I hate mobile-first web design and actively seek to go against it (for a couple of reasons, but that would get me to go on a huge tangent...).

Regarding LeakyRing, I wonder if the aria-hidden attribute could be applied to make it easier for screen reader users...

[EdgyRabbit]

I dont have any flashing gifs since I had bad reactions to them.

HOWEVER, I still have a lot of gifs on my main page. So I put a landing page, its just a simple warning that says "This website contains a lot of gifs". I think that's enough for now but I do plan on making a plain webpage for older computers, or have a website map since I do have a lot of resources on my website.

[souvlaki]

I don't know if it's simply because I like the process of coding but I find looking and discovering solutions for accessibility genuinely fun! I love finding ways you can interact with an webpage.
You can mostly change the struct of a page for different screen sizes without losing its essence, too. I have a habit of reading articles on my phone - sometimes is more comfortable! - and it's a bummer when an website can't be viewed properly there, especially when you know exactly what tweaks need to be done.
I don't think the process to make your site accessible is that hard, but a I understand it can be overwhelming for beginners to start. Just do the bare minimum and make it readable and non seizure or headache-inducing.

For me, my website is like a home with open doors. And if I'm having people over in my home, I want them to feel comfortable, with no hassles and meet any of their needs the best I can while still being my own place.

If I'm going to be honest, I believe this fixation on maximizing usability is somewhat contrary to what I thought the personal web was about: Personal expression. The end stage of focusing solely on accessibility is white text on a black background, and vice versa. Where's the fun in that? Now we're back to the same soulless CRAP I have to look at outside the personal web. That's not what this movement is about. We can't have tunnel vision when developing our websites. We need some restraint, to make our sites as accessible as practically possible without sacrificing artistic integrity.

Why "white text on a black background, and vice versa" is "soulless crap"?
One thing that I think is overstated is the importance of visuals and design in the web revival. Not that it is a problem per se, it is refreshing indeed to see the creativity put into the stylization of lots of websites out there. But on the other hand there's some  beautiful websites out there that lacks content - in the sense of substance. So what's the point? (Now, it is not a judgement, people shouldn't prove anything to internet strangers, your site can be for you only. Do whatever you want in it.) But I don't see why a primarily written website would be soulless and unfun, I believe if the writing is genuine sometimes it can have even more soul put into it. Writing still is self-expression! And it can be artistic. Visuals are not everything. Both are cool!