Re: This forum doesn't support emojis
The common sentiment here seems to be "hey, we're a blind forum...we don't need emojis," but as @13 and others have pointed out, substituting text equivalents just makes us stand out as "that special forum" (my words in quotes.) Can you imagine what we'd all say if a sighted person came on here and said "I see a lot of blind people dress down...oh yeah, you're blind so you don't really need suits and ties?" I can picture the reactions now. "We can do everything that sighted people can do! Don't count us out just because we're blind! ... etc."
This sounds like a cop-out to me. Because you're blind, you don't need it. Wrong. I use emojis in text and even in Emails nowadays to regularly express emotions that @13 has rightfully mentioned can't really be expressed in other ways:
When an argument starts on the forum, there is almost always someone who points out how hard it is to figure out someone's tone from text alone, especially with people using different screen reader voices with different inflections. The main purpose of emojis is to convey emotion where text can't do it well enough. I think that even for a forum with a primarily blind membership, that's pretty useful.
And as I'm writing this, a third point came in my head.
3. What's the point of requesting feature requests when you know they won't be added? Come on people. Stop acting so surprised when you find out new feature aren't added to the forum. Its pretty annoying to see people be like, "OOOOOOOOO! I wwant feature z to be added asap! add it now! add it! add it! add it!" When they already know the situation with the admins.
Calm down man, no one here said "we must add this immediately!" My OP merely pointed out that it's 2020. I even looked through the rest of the post before yours and nope, no one has demanded emoji support. We're only stating the obvious here. I understand the quarantine and things are getting to you, but let's attempt to remain sensible and find healthier outlets for our frustrations.
Would adding Imogies encourage more one imogy posts? or would it be a way for people to give context in their feelings to the words they write.
That's a great question. My answer to this is that it should be up to the users of the forum; not a bunch of us deciding that it's not needed since we're a blindness-related forum.
Also re: discussion forum versus chat program, I see emojis used on forums all the time and even tend to do so myself. They're really useful because of the amount of _expression_ you can convey. I don't distinguish between blind and sighted on this one; even if I'm writing to a blind person, I employ emojis in many ways (and I see my friends doing the same thing--even those that are blind.)
One of my biggest frustrations with RS Games in particular is that you can't send emojis as part of your chat message, and I daresay they probably use the same argument given here: we're a blind gaming platform...we don't need it.
Emojis have either made me laugh or roll my eyes because the tone is much more clear than straight, dry text as @13 has pointed out already.
For example, how many of us use at least three exclamation marks in iOS text messages because the "natural" voices don't read exclamation marks? I'm raising my hand on this one. And why do we do it? Because we're used to synthesizers like Eloquence actually inflecting on exclamation marks, and when the synthesizers forced on us by Apple don't inflect, it takes away totally from the meaning of the message. I prefer reading messages in Braille versus listening to them for this very reason. Sighted people aren't aware that our voice programs don't indicate exclamation marks, and man am I surprised how much of the tone I miss without a display. "hi." is much more different than "Hi!" Unfortunately, natural voices inflect the same way on both versions. This is how I see emojis. Yes, I resisted them at first but have grown to love them over time.
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