48 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Accessibility Updates to Mod Tools: Part 1
I don't understand what the issue is.
Imagine that reddit was providing water. And it had a history of not providing clean water but it said it would improve. But they wouldn’t commit to a definition of clean water. They would claim that they had an external audit but wouldn’t share how it was conducted or the conclusion.
People would rightly ask what pollutants we can find in their water, how many parts per million, and how do we ensure it.
If they only commited to vague improvements, would you drink that water?
Accessibility is not wishy-washy. It’s based on *standards*. Providers like reddit must conform to those standards so that accessibility tools may make sense of them and translate the content to a reprensentation their users may understand.
Comment by therealdanhill at 24/06/2023 at 04:02 UTC
-34 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think the analogy while appreciated is a *bit* loaded in that:
1. We're not really talking about actively harming people - to use a different analogy, as someone with a disability while it may be disappointing if a small business is hard for me to navigate due to the layout, and it could be set up better for accomodations, I may find it disappointing but unless I have reason to believe so I would not put it on the same level as someone potentially obscuring information that could make me ill.
2. It would depend on me individually and if the updates provided addressed what I was particularly sensitive to in the water if it was safe for me to drink or not
3. With reddit being an internet forum there are much different stakes at play here than drinking water that could make you physically ill - meaning I would be more likely to not require or expect the level of detail I would want from a water report
4. There are probably state/federal regulations regarding the amount of acceptable PPM of pollutants, while there are no regulations where reddit users would be entitled to know what is ostensibly part of reddit's business plan/expenditures
But to engage with it, I would of course not drink that water if it was not safe for me to do so, I would get my water from elsewhere assuming I had the same level of ubiquity for water as online forums.
I'm not saying it would be a bad thing for reddit to share more information, or that it wouldn't be preferable for some people to know it. I also recognize though that it is a business, and there may be valid reasons they would not want to share that information that we are not privy to, and without knowing that side of the equation I wouldn't personally be comfortable with affixing a negative motivation to them over it. Especially so for not naming the third party involved - that may have been a term of the contract for all we know, and in the midst of some users acting truly abhorrent to reddit staff I could also see them just not wanting to name-drop.