[BlindTlk] facebook

[Mosen, Jonathan]

Hello Justin and all, for those who don't know me, I am the incoming Executive Director of Accessibility Excellence at the National Federation of the Blind. Since mid-August, I have been working on several projects for the Federation including strengthening our relationships with the technology companies that have such an impact on our lives.
The issue of Facebook accessibility has been high on our radar of late because of accessibility concerns on several platforms.
The good news is that Meta has been engaging and I would describe our dialog around improving accessibility as constructive. But at this stage we feel there is much to do.
Meta, who operate Facebook, discontinued the Mbasic site a few weeks ago. They say this was necessary because this site was old and posed some security risks for them. We have pointed out to Meta that this was a site used by many blind people, due to an increasing number of accessibility issues with the main Facebook desktop site.
In the medium term, hopefully Meta will correct the accessibility issues with the primary Facebook site, but we believe it should be possible to restore some degree of accessibility by giving desktop users access to Facebook's new mobile experience. Presently, this is not easily available on desktop computers, because if the site detects that you are visiting from a desktop browser, it believes it is doing the right thing by giving you the full desktop experience. For someone accessing the site visually, that is usually the right decision.
You can force access to the mobile site by emulating another browser, but this is a complex process.
As part of my discussions with Meta, I have emulated a mobile browser in Microsoft Edge, and although at this stage the experience is not as good as the Mbasic site in that it does not yet make good use of headings, it is easier to use and more accessible than the current desktop site. We hope Facebook will find a way to unlock this experience for blind users on desktop browsers as a workaround.
So in short, we are actively working on this, the discussions have been constructive, we are in touch with exactly the right people, but we don't have any specific outcomes yet.
I hope that helps.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindTlk <blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Justin Williams via BlindTlk
Sent: Tuesday, 26 November 2024 8:10 pm
To: 'Blind Talk Mailing List' <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Justin Williams <justin.williams2 at gmail.com>
Subject: [BlindTlk] facebook

Mbasic facebook is gone?

 

Is there a way to get it back?

Did something change?

 

Justin

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