[New-York-News] FW: [ACB-Conversation] FW: Facebook update

[Margo Downey]

From: ACB-Conversation at acblists.org [mailto:ACB-Conversation at acblists.org]
On Behalf Of peter altschul via acblists.org
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2025 12:02 AM
To: acb-conversation at acblists.org; Oregon-L at acblists.org
Subject: [ACB-Conversation] FW: Facebook update

 

 

 

 

 

Making Meta Accessible: Update on Latest Improvements

Friday, January 24, 2025

The National Federation of the Blind recognizes that accessible technology
is crucial for blind individuals to live the lives we want. Accessibility
barriers are preventable and unacceptable, hindering our full participation
in society. Therefore, we actively collaborate with technology companies to
enhance the accessibility of their products. Our contributions have
significantly improved, and will continue to improve, the tools used by
blind people. In October 2024, we initiated discussions with Meta regarding
accessibility regressions on

Facebook. The most critical concern was the deprecation of the MBasic
Facebook site.

Although this version was originally designed for mobile devices with
limited capabilities, its simple, text-based layout made it a viable
alternative

to the increasingly inaccessible Facebook desktop site for blind screen
reader users.

The MBasic site was discontinued for security reasons, and it seems Meta may
not have fully understood the extent to which blind users depended on it.

We are committed to collaborating with Meta to ensure the main Facebook site
becomes fully accessible to screen reader users. We are encouraged by Meta's
willingness to work towards this goal.

However, there is an urgent need to restore Facebook accessibility for those
who access the platform solely through desktop or laptop computers. The
absence of accessible options, particularly during the holiday season, has
been frustrating and isolating for many.

Thanks to the advocacy efforts of the National Federation of the Blind, Meta
has introduced a URL that forces the current mobile Facebook experience to
work on modern desktop/laptop browsers. Effective immediately, you can visit
this URL: https://www.facebook.com/?force_mobile=1

We recommend bookmarking this URL in your browser for a simpler, text-based
Facebook experience. While we appreciate Meta's response to our advocacy and
the introduction of this workaround, we offer the following caveats:

. Unfortunately, there is currently no easy way to navigate from one post to
another. We suggest that each Facebook post be identified by a heading or
landmark to improve navigation.

. The page scrolls infinitely, so there is no set number of posts per page.

. Since this page is designed for mobile browsers, there may be other issues
our testing has not yet uncovered.

If you have any feedback on the functionality of this work-around, please
send it to Jonathan Mosen, the NFB's executive director for Accessibility
Excellence,

 

jmosen at nfb.org.

Members have also provided us with feedback about regressions in Facebook
for iOS. The most impactful bug related to difficulty composing posts
because what users typed in the composer was not being seen by VoiceOver. We
have assisted Meta to identify this issue, and we know Facebook users will
be pleased that a fix is rolling out for this.

Finally in this round of fixes, Facebook has already rolled out an
efficiency improvement to the timeline. Facebook made a change in the last
year which meant that a user's profile picture was seen as its own element
by VoiceOver. This meant that each post required two swipes when navigating.
This has now been restored to the previous, more efficient behavior.

There is more to do, and we would have preferred that the deprecation of the
MBasic site had not resulted in such prolonged inconvenience for many blind
people. Nevertheless, Meta has been receptive to our concerns and worked
with us in good faith. Our partnership with meta is stronger as a result,
and we are continuing to dialog with them on a range of issues, including
improvements to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

If you have concerns you wish to report about any technology you are using,
we encourage you to make your own constructive approaches with the
assistance of our  Self-advocacy Toolkit. You can also alert us to issues
you are having, by completing our  Inaccessibility Tracker form.

We look forward to ongoing dialog with Meta that makes further needed
accessibility improvements.

 

 

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[margo.downey at roadrunner.com]

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