May 2019 (26 Nisan 5779) – Amanda Unvarnished

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| Monday 6 May 2019 (1 Iyyar 5779)

Amazon Help now requires an inaccessible capptcha in order to add gift cards to your account. Multiple calls and chats basically tell us: your screwed get a friend or someone to help you. Are we still going with moderate advocacy? Are we still going with moderation in the pursuit of justice? Asking for a fuckton of friends. Because really, how many times do we have to offer a pass on what has been around for twenty plus years before we’re allowed to say enough? How many times do large organizations with a metric ton of resources with which they can handle accessibility get to fuck this stuff up before the dipplomatic wing of the blind community allows the rest of us to to express anything other than walking on eggshells when it comes to advocating for accessibility? How many times does Amazon or similar get to be called out on accessibility-related matters before the dipplomatic wing of the blind community decides that maybe it’s time to either help by not scolding the rest of us regarding advocacy methods, or get out of the way if it can’t help? Once again, asking for a fuckton of friends.

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Who Do You Sue? State and Platform Hybrid Power Over Online Speech

Amanda CAARSON

| Wednesday 8 May 2019 (3 Iyyar 5779)

This essay from the Hoover Institute is worth a read for anyone discussing either online speech in general or the embarrassingly wrong pieces on Sec. 230 which have appeared in both Vox and the Washington Post in the last few days. Click here to read the full version in as accessible a format as possible without having to download the document yourself and tag it.

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Amanda CAARSON

| Wednesday 8 May 2019 (3 Iyyar 5779)

Everybody is swooning over Google’s upcoming automated captions, except zero of the people who actually need them. I have to wondere how it is that as an industry we manage to convince ourselves that we’ve collaborated with people with disabilities on all this amazing new accessibility tech that helps us avoid the obvious solution: Do it right in the first place. I’m sure there were messages across email lists, or surveys, or whatever, with asks for testers, ETC. But the deaf community has been saying for years that automated captions aren’t an optimal solution, and it seems arrogant to me at worst and well-meaningly naive at best that all that advice about automated captions would be ignored for the sake of Google’s business goals. We know what accessibility advancements look like, because people with disabilities have been telling us what they need, for years. Maybe one day as an industry we’ll actually start listening. I’m not holding my breath for the foreseeable future though.

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Amanda CAARSON

| Wednesday 8 May 2019 (3 Iyyar 5779)

Dear #1u #UberLyftStrike #UberShutDown I am totally on board with gig economy workers receiving just wages and all the benefits of employment, but these campaigns once again ignore the fact that, in a lot of locations, Uber and Lyft are the only sources of reliable transportation for people with disabilities who cannot drive and where public transportation is sorely lacking. People with disabilities cannot just take a day off work or cancel appointments for the sake of a boycott. Activism which mandates the participation of everyone without exception and without considering whether or not it is possible for everyone to participate fully is just as ableist as legislation which specifically targets people with disabilities, and just as in the legislation case, good intentions don’t mitigate the harm. And yes fellow liberals, I’m calling you on this, because theoretically at least, you’re supposed to know better. So, do better.