Re: Let's all write to the developers about the Accessibility of the offic
Honest question here, but...uh, what the hell is Telegram and why does its accessibility matter?
Don't we have many, many other chat clients and programs and options that aren't Telegram? Shouldn't we, y'know, just use those accessible options and ultimately withdraw our support from a client that does not suit us?Don't get me wrong. There are times when it is a good idea to fight for accessibility. And perhaps this is one. But to my admittedly limited perspective, this just seems kind of pointless. It's like getting upset that Microsoft Edge isn't too user-friendly when you've got IE, FF or Chrome. Like sure, you hope Edge gets better, but there are other options.
I completely understand where you're coming from, but I disagree with the sentiment in this case. Telegram seems, at least, to be very attractive. True, another app will likely come along in a year or two or three which will make people switch to that instead, but so far as I know, Telegram does have pretty much anything you could want in a platform for one-on-one interaction or for groups. As others have said, it's very privacy oriented but I'm not going to touch that right now since it's a hot issue already. You can have groups, you can send text and voice messages and do voice/video calls, you can even send files without stupid size limitations. I'm not sure what the size limit is, but it's quite large from what I'm told. Voice quality is pretty good too, almost as good as Discord. And I've heard you can create bots for various automated tasks like Skype and Discord. I don't use those features so I don't know what they really do, but I'm on a few Discord servers with bots and they are useful to have.
I don't really know how many people use Telegram. I myself use it occasionally, but I wouldn't have a hard time believing its popularity is rapidly rising. In fact I know it is, multiple people I used to chat with on Skype are now using Telegram to do it, and some are using Discord too. Telegram has even picked up a number of contacts on my phone... people who I thought would never use these new age modern social media apps lol. So, Telegram is definitely getting up there.
Sure, in many cases it's probably best just to avoid apps you don't like. If you don't have many friends, or or those people whom you wish to keep in your life don't mind using alternatives, you don't need to worry. But not everyone is accommodating, and some of those who are accommodating can't fully understand the issue because they don't live in a blind person's world if you will.
The issue becomes extremely polarizing when dealing with communities. When an entire community uses an app you can't use due to accessibility reasons, and you really want to participate fully in that community but you can't, well that doesn't feel nice. I ran into that a number of times. Every group I'm a part of has a Discord server and that's where much of the social interaction takes place. They have forums, they have a messaging system like this forum, but the real fun takes place on Discord and I wanted to be a part of that. But Discord was ridiculously cryptic for screen reader users back then (aroundd 2016 ish). I of course couldn't make them switch to another app. So, I had no choice but to confront accessibility issues head-on, or be left behind.
At one point I did allow myself to be left behind which sucked. And what also sucked was that almost every person I met on forums soon asked the dreaded question: "What's your Discord?" Just a casual question which I could easily answer; I could provide a username and tag because I had one, but I didn't want to give it out, because then I'd have to open that shit pile again. Fortunately it's far from a shit pile now, it's my main platform in fact. But yeah, having to explain to people that I couldn't use it, making accidental calls when I wasn't sure where I was, and hit an unlabeled button by mistake... ugh. And then watching sighted friends search desperately for solutions but not really knowing what to look for. It got awkward at times, as some took it upon themselves to help me by trying to show me how to send screenshots so they could see where I was in the interface. I commend them for being nice and helping and understanding what they could, but I just wanted to be rid of that crap. I already have an inferiority complex. I'm tired of feeling like I'm excluded from things because I am blind, especially when the barrier between me and the thing I want is an inaccessible interface, which can in many cases be remedied.
The good news is that Telegram isn't so bad if you know which clients to use and which ones not to, but it's still not perfect, and it would be great if the official Telegram devs could do the right thing and care about accessibility. I'm not the type to put up a hard fight for it though, since at best i'd be standing on roof tops shouting, which doesn't get anything done and is completely against my character, but yeah. It would be nice if it happened. Until then, Unigram and Telegram web will have to suffice on Windows, and the official Telegram app for IOS I guess works. I haven't used it enough to comment on all of its issues but I've definitely seen a few.
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