re-make of a previous poll in hopes of a larger sample size.

ice cold take but if you have to pay for accessibility features it is not in fact accessible

tumblr users will have the most inaccessible, unreadable, low contrast, flashing carrd you can possibly imagine, with a dni full of insider acronyms with no translation and numerous link buttons labelled with cryptic captions, and then go ahead and put “ableists dni and kys!” on that carrd

TLDR; don’t give tumblr money until they start making visible improvements towards accessibility

I’ve seen a few posts around about something people are calling crab day where you’re supposed to gift the crab button to your mutuals to support Tumblr financially. Please don’t participate in this unless Tumblr starts making noticeable improvements towards accessibility between now and then. It’s been 5 months of me trying to get the bare minimum of accessibility for photosensitive users or even just find out who I can talk to to get anywhere, and Tumblr is refusing to make any changes.

@photomatt has doubled down on the suggestion that you should just pay for ad-free or install an ad-blocker instead of listening to any of the suggestions photosensitive users have repeatedly made. Please do not give money to Tumblr until they show a commitment to accessibility because they will continue to ignore our requests if it doesn’t impact them financially.

Some of the requests we’ve made are:

1. Allow us to disable autoplay on browser as well as the app. This is an accessibility feature, not a data-saving feature, and should be treated as such.

2. Include ads in disabling of autoplay, along with other formats that currently get around the autoplay feature. Currently even if you have autoplay disabled you can still end up with flashing lights in your face every few posts from ads.

3. Improve the reporting process for strobing ads. The quick reporting process doesn’t provide good options to ensure the person reviewing the report realizes that it’s being reported for flashing lights so you have to hope they agree it’s either malicious or offensive and don’t just brush you off as abusing the report function. The more complicated reporting process involves getting a screenshot and the link that the ad brings you to, which requires lingering on the ad, which if you’re trying to report the ad for your safety, is dangerous. You can also still get the same ad 10 times a row after reporting it until it’s been reviewed. Which again, presents a danger to users.

4. Add a community label for flashing lights. Flashing lights are commonly untagged or mistagged, even sometimes maliciously. It would be extremely helpful to the photosensitive community to be able to add a warning to a post that doesn’t have one.

I’ve talked a lot about the photosensitive community in this post because that’s what I have personal experience with and what @photomatt has explicitly come out and just said to buy ad-free about, but there are definitely other accessibility issues that need to be addressed as well (like the alt text function needing improvements to make it accessible to users who need it and don’t use screenreaders, or the fact that a lot of tumblr official stuff still doesn’t seem to use the alt text feature themselves). Please feel free to add on accessibility issues I’ve missed in the reblogs.

Photosensitivity, or lightsensitivity, is such a wildly underdiscussed disability in my opinion ngl. Like, maybe just because it's one of the one's that's fucked my life over so repeatedly but there's so little you can do about it. Do you know how many websites and shit don't have dark mode? Do you know how much it sucks when you turn down the brightness and its still way too fucking bright for you? Do you know how hard it is for everything to constantly be too bright, even indoors? Or how shitty it is for so many shows/movies/games/websites to be inaccessible because, again, they're too bright? And its so hard to get doctors to listen to you about it too!

Like. 💀 Do you know how many times I've heard "just where sunglasses" in my life? Too many, motherfuckers. Way. Too. Many.

I still see the lightning bolt disability pride flag (the one with the zigzag-shaped non-bg part) being used occassionally.

Your reminder that it can *kill* people with epilepsy, as well as hurt those with other kinds of photosensitivity (I'm autistic and have chronic migraines, I can't look at it)

The creator was alerted of that and has long since made a photosensitivity-friendly redesign. It is also open to further edits. Her tumblr is capricorn-0mnikorn, she has the flag in her pinned, but just in case, perhaps also will draw attention more, I'll add it here too:

[Image description, copied from the creator's original post:

A “Straight Diagonal” version of the Disability Pride Flag: A charcoal grey flag with a diagonal band from  the top left to bottom right corner, made up of five parallel stripes in  red, gold, pale grey, blue, and green

/End image description]

Heads up folks, tumblr’s got a new flashing ad.

[ID: a screenshot of an ad sponsored by WordAds, with the title “When I learned to sell books…” and the subheading “Young authors are outselling old authors with this sales training course. Watch this free video sample!” End ID.]

Below this is an ad that on tablet covers the whole screen, and is nothing but blurry, grainy flashing colors. It not only flashes in waves of colors, but large pixels of different colors pop in and out. On my tablet, it took me about eight or nine scrolls to get past.

If you are going to utilize accessibility features on this app please use them properly.

If you are going to use content warnings then actually warn about the possible triggering content instead of just a keyboard smash because you think that's quirky (p.s it’s #flash warning not #Epilepsy, when you tag Epilepsy it makes it so people can’t even search the word Epilepsy without a bunch of flashing gifs coming up)

If you are going to add an image description it needs to be an actual description of the image and not just a bunch of random emojis. These image descriptions are there so visually impaired people can still enjoy pictures and content.

One last thing, reconsider using alternative fonts as they can make it difficult for automatic screen readers to interpret text

apparently Tumblr allows you to report ads for having flashing images, so that's nice!

kind of. it's also not nice that it's on Tumblr users to report it instead of Tumblr just. not taking ads that could cause seizures and migraines??? plus like. kinda hard to press the report button when you're having a fucking seizure.

so non-photosensitive tumblrinas! y'all have extra responsibility to report these ads<3

you can report an ad by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner

note: this ad in particular didn't seem problematic so I didn't actually report it, it was just the first ad I got to use as an example.

this may have been a thing forever that I'm just learning about but I didn't see it last time unsafe ads were going around so I thought it at the very least couldn't hurt.

oh well. post.

i just watched all of good omens s2, 4 out of the 6 episodes are a photosensitive danger, so...

tag for flashing lights

DO NOT tag as #epilepsy, TAG as #flashing lights

the epilepsy tag is a community tag for us epileptic folks to seek help, if you tag your flashing lights as epilepsy you're putting us at a greater risk

Please remember that flashing lights can lead to hospitalization and death

last friday I got sick from video class. Today I got sick at the museum.

Art people/institutions: please put seizure warnings on your videos! Not just the ones with flashy lights or many colours. Also the ones with shaky cameras or immersive technology. Find a way to check if they trigger seizures and motion sickness! Test them out in advance! Maybe find some people who can pre-view and give you feedback regarding this issue!

Honestly, seizure screening would be a job I'd sign up for, if it could prevent others from getting triggered. I can't tell you how often I had to walk out of a museum or gallery feeling nauseous, it just ruins the experience :(

I'm gonna say this as a genuine fan of animation and somebody who has been squeeing about ATSV's behind-the-scenes ever since the team started tweeting about how they did it: every single person who said that movie needed a photosensitivity warning was Not Kidding and it's honestly negligent that it didn't have one. I get like one migraine per decade and I had to take a preemptive tylenol as soon as I got back from the theatre because I could already feel one coming on. Thankfully that seemed to take care of it, but if I hadn't known before I went to the movie that it was going to be that much fast, bright, flashing, high-contrast everything for so much of the movie, if I hadn't realised what was going on and been able to medicate for it or I happened to be more sensitive to migraines than I am and hadn't known I'd have to skip this movie, I would've been out of commission for a day or more. And I'm not even epileptic.

My beloved best friend of several years, who bought me Minecraft the winter before COVID after I mentioned I hadn’t played since before there were horses, got severely motion sick when playing minecraft for too long.

We were both aware of this, and took breaks or shortened our play sessions accordingly.

However, a few days ago, at the end of one of those sessions when my friend wasn’t feeling well, we traveled through a Nether portal.

“Have you turned off your motion effects? And the camera bobbing?”

My beloved friend, who has been playing this game more consistently for many more years than me, did not know what those were. We navigate to my friend’s accessibility settings and toggle off portal motion effects and camera bobbing.

Lo and behold minecraft is playable for my friend again. Check accessibility settings for every game you play and see what options you have. Do not suffer if you can help it 👍

Just want to say, we now have confirmation that tumblr staff is looking into improving accessibility, specifically around photosensitivity concerns.

Looking forward to what the future brings.

Thank you and props to everyone who has been engaging with the subject. Be it by liking, reblogging, commenting, making their own posts, writing messages etc.

The new Spiderverse movie is coming out Friday (and I’ve seen that some theaters will be having afternoon showings on Thursday) so please keep in mind that this movie is completely inaccessible to people with photosensitivity issues.

Please hold Sony accountable for this inaccessibility. I’m not saying you’re not allowed to enjoy it but be vocal about how it would be better if it were more accessible. Do not call it perfection or say that everyone should strive to match its animation style, as the stylistic choices are why the movie is dangerous, even if any explicit flashing lights were taken out, the speed and high-contrast colors of the movie would still be an issue.

And please tag properly. Anything gifs or clips that could be dangerous, please tag with “flashing lights” and please tag any posts about the movie in general as “Spiderverse” because while you’re allowed to like it, a lot of us have very strong negative feelings about the first movie and by extension this movie due to a combination of its inaccessibility and the amount of uncritical praise the first movie got, and so would like to be able to avoid the topic.

I wonder what the fuck is with people who request posts get taken down for their own comfort on an accessibility blog or argue about how they like their tags. Are you seriously putting your comfort above the person who has a likely chance of having had a seizure, migraine, or aura, telling you what to add for the safety of others?

Don't fucking blame tumblr's dogshit search. I don't really care about your blog rules that are arbitrary and meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

We are on a platform that wants to paywall accessibility. Tumblr CEO photomatt has literally told photosensitives to just pay for ad-free tumblr before finally making ads reportable for flashing lights due to the excessive complaints about it. Tumblr's only built-in accessibility is not even considered an accessibility feature. That's the media autoplay and in my experience is often stops working at times and I cannot fix it.

That's why we need people to tag things correctly. It's the only fucking thing we have to protect us. If you don't want the cripples being "mean" and making you uncomfortable, you need to start asking tumblr for ways that we can provide accessibility ourselves.