Category: Geeks r Us
Hello everyone,
When I discuss Facebook with my friends who use screenreaders, the accessibility issues of the site are nearly always brought up. Indeed, I've found several topics on the Zone about the difficulty of navigating the main, and even the mobile, sites. It appears that these issues are getting worse, to the point that Facebook is becoming nearly impossible to navigate, and we need to call Facebook on it so that they fix the problem for good.
Earlier this week, I did a complete overhaul of my account settings, privacy controls, and a few other settings on Facebook, hoping that this might make the site work a bit better. But it had little to no effect. The settings aren't the problem. My laptop isn't the problem. It's brand new and updated, but you should have seen the air put out by the processor fan as it tried to contend with Facebook. It doesn't do that on any other site, and I have issues with Facebook on every computer I use. It's frozen both my desktop and my laptop on more occasions than I can count, and the constant refreshing of the pages and the continuous updates from News Feed cause JAWS to go to a completely different spot while I'm scrolling. It's difficult to type in form fields, and some of the menus are not readable unless the page is maximized. And don't even get me started on autoselect.
There is no excuse for screenreader users to have to endure this much frustration when trying to use Facebook. I haven't used the mobile site in quite awhile, but I hear that for the most part, it is more accessible than the main site. However, not all of Facebook's features are available on the mobile site. We deserve equal access. I was able to find one petition that asks the Facebook company to make its site more accessible, a link to which I am pasting below. However, there is no information regarding the date the petition was created or whether it was ever submitted. If anyone knows the answers to these questions, I would appreciate the information.
http://www.petitiononline.com/accessFB/petition.html
I would also love to hear your opinions on the content of the petition and your suggestions as to what could be added. I think that we need to creat a new petition and submit it to Facebook. Furthermore, I'd be interested to find out whether they are in violation of the ADA's accessibility legislation, as this is another avenue that we could pursue. Facebook is the leader in social networking on the web, and millions of people count on it for staying in touch with friends and family and for sharing important information with their friends and the world. We who use screenreaders should be able to utilize and enjoy Facebook's features to the fullest extent possible. I hope you all will join me in the effort to see that this comes to pass.
Thanks,
Becky
I've noticed with the mobile site lately they've changed some things around, adding more spaces between certain things which is more cumbersome for screen readers. Let me know how I can help.
Hello,
The problem that I have with Facebook is whenever I go to a link and enter it, I end up some where else.
The second thing is when I try to activate out of my account for good, I find the captcha muffled and cannot continue.
Any answers? Especially deactivating my account!
Thanks Becky for bringing up the issues on Facebook!
I still say, the zone is the best!
My biggest issue with Facebook is varifying one's account when logging in from a different computer, browser or IP. Solving the captcha was annoying, until we got Webvism. But after solving the captcha, I'm always taken to a page where I have to identify photos of friends, which I can't do since I'm totally blind, and the sighted people I know don't recognize enough of my friends on facebook to help me out. If there's a way around this, please do let me know. But in my opinion, this is the worst accessibility issue since as of right now, I can't use my account at all.
If I can say too, from a android user perspective, facebook had a nice app quite accessible but now its broke, content hardly is read so a person now has to use a third party app. This is getting annoying to the point where I just do not bother with my facebook any more. IOS users can add there stuff here to, I am not a IOS user but I wonder how your getting along with facebook.
Same here. People wonder why I don't go on FB much anymore. People are always posting pictures or game results which I could care less about, plus when I write things on there maybe four people respond to it anyway
I guess it's another plus of using an iPhone. Facebook works just fine.
So What!
If I had the means, maybe I would. Not everyone can get a I phone.
And not everyone wants an IPhone...
yes facebook works better with the iPhone, but it is still kind of confusing for me because of the format I guess.
HootSweet for me on the android side has kept me around with FB, outside of that app, I would have just left my FB account dead in the water.
can we please not let this thread devolve into the classic iphone vs droid battle? Regardless of what mobile os you have, facebook is still difficult to use. I'm an iphone user, and trust me wen i say, the facebook ios app does not work well. Usable? Yes. Absolutely. But, that said, it is difficult and time consuming. It's obnoxious enough that i don't want to bother using facebook. I go on when I have too, but it's no fun to have to flick, tab, arrow- or whatever you do to get around- through all the pictures, game pages, instagram, etc.
Focus for iphone works well enough, but that program has limitations that I don't need to get into here, as anybody who uses it already knows about it. Oh, btw, don't even get me started on voicebook. A retarded monkey could've coded a better app.
I'm with roxtar on this one. Whether facebook is accessible on the iPhone or not, this isn't about the iPhone, or the android app. it's about the site. I have been able to use the main site for my basic facebook needs, but it is, as people have mentioned, very cluttered. I know they need the ads to prevent us users from having to pay for it, and it isn't designed with us in mind, but with some necessary features, like the photo identification portion of varifying one's account, I agree there needs to be some sort of alternative. I'm all for using part of friends' profiles to identify them, but can we at least have other options? Statuses? Wall posts? relationship statuses? Email addresses? Location? I could understand if tests like these needed to be more extensive, I.E., you need to identify at least 85% of your friends or something, but right now, I'm locked out of my account because I can't see to varify photos. and I'm not the first person to complain about this. and yes, we can contact FB's support team on a case by case basis, but should we always need to do this?
I was not turning it into android verses Iphone battle, I was saying because of an app on my phone, "Hoot sweet", I use FB. Its simple, not cluttered works for my needs. Which is why I do not use the FB sight atall, its cluttered, my net book gets bogged down because of all that content on FB. If facebook would not allow third patty apps, I would have left my account to rot.
bla party apps I ment
I don't mean to be a Debby downer or anything, but the logical cold hard facts about this are as follows.
To be blunt, facebook has absolutely no reason to care about us from an economic perspective because we're a small small small minority of their userbase, and we're extremely unlikely to click adds. Thus, if there were 500000 blind people using the sight out of over 900 million normal people that have a shot at making them money, its only logical that the 900 million plus revenue generators will be the focus.
this is why things may be somewhat accessible or useable but will never be layed out or marked up in a blind friendly way.
While some required changes are very easy from a code perspective, we're just not important to them at all.
Thus, to me the title of this topic is laughable because there really isn't much we can do to make them see things our way, accept give them enough money to make them consider a blind stylesheet/featureset.
when i've been locked out of my account in the past, i've been able to get back in on the mobile sight and avoid the image quiz. not sure if that's changed.
On another side note, most apps can be blocked from appearing in your feeds. Though the work this can sometimes take drove me away from facebook.
well said, James. I couldn't have said it better myself.
I haven't been locked out of my account, what causes that to happen?
i actually somewhat agree with post 16; from a business perspective, blind people do not generate nearly enough revenue/profit for facebook in comparison to the rest of the world. So, it makes sense for them to concentrate on the users who are helping them survive and earn revenue rather than those who are not. It would just be time consuming and costly for them to try. and, even if they did everyone is not going to be happy; someone somewhere is going to have a problem with the sight or its accessibility. This is the case for almost any company not just facebook. Someone is always going to be dissatisfied for whatever reason, so businesses have to focus on and keep the customers who are satisfied content with there product/service because it is more expensive to obtain new customers than to keep existing customers.
You can get logged out of your account if you log in from a different IP, computer, or sometimes even browser. I understand we'll never be the majority, hence my not complaining about the clutter on the main site. For the most part, it is workable. annoying, yes, but workable.
Even on the mobile site, however, I haven't been able to avoid the images. I can handle the captcha, but it always wants me to do both when varifying my account. I've heard rumors that they were thinking of completely replacing the captcha with the photo identification once and for all; but this is just a rumor, so who knows? And I do have to agree with James that facebook is a convenience; not a necessity, and until it is, there really isn't anything we can do besides asking and hoping someone will care.
as long as hoot sweet exists, I will still use my facebook account and leave the web sight alone. That seems to work for me so far.
just use the mobile site. If you need to do facebook chat, then just connect your facebook to your msn or aim. You cann still post statuses through aim with lifestream. Facebook games are not even accesible anyway.
plus there's chitchat for facebook on the pc side of things.
Facebook is one big mess for me now days. It started going further down hill when they made blocking apps inaccessible for jaws users.
I've been following this thread on here, and similar ones elsewhere.
Users of Facebook, blind and sighted alike, are pretty upset with the whole thing. I are one.
My problem is that I stayed with Facebook after helping a family member set theirs up in 2009, because it was a way to see what family was up to, and connect with old friends. Like most people now, my friends from youth are all over the place. And my family spreads the world, so, it seemed kind of a nice thing to peek in on what everyone was up to.
But lately, all anyone can seem to do is share other people's statuses. You can scroll or swipe through pages and pages of content that isn't content at all: it's just people sharing someone else's status, or political 'fact', or humorous quote.
Even with Voicebook, which is pretty simple to use now, I find I'm getting closer to swearing off Facebook.
There is a full deactivate your account someplace, but if I do that, I will first go through my entire wall and remove all of my posts, then unfriend every single connection on Facebook and be done with it.
Perhaps I won't go that far, maybe just reduce it to family only, and privatize everything to just family.
I don't know yet, but anyway, I think there are a lot of us with serious contemplation about what we're going to do to or about Facebook.
also, you can now view news feeds in skype, as well as with lifestream on AIM. Lifestream has been around for quite some time now and it works fairly well.
Instead of complaining and writing to facebook, looking at alternative methods of accessing news feed is more a viable option and a lot more productive in my opinion.
the facebook app is pretty much accessible. Yes there are a few unlabled buttons after you log in, but the first one brings up a very accessable menu that includes newsfeed, friends, chat, etc. Dubble tapping on one of these will show what you braught up example, newsfeed will read very nicely w voice over. When in this screen, theres a back button that's also unlabled, but I labled the buttons and facebook app seems just fine for i phone. chat also works well.
the part w ware your friends are displayed is nicely read as well.
on the fb ap on your iPhone can you find friends?
I have no issue with Facebook at all. It works perfectly fine.
Yea. you can, from that same menu
The one thing Voicebook does that the Facebook for iPhone doesn't: It's always chronological.
The Facebook app seems to sort posts by most popular or something, things that got the most comments. I'd really like to make it stay chronological. Bet I'm missing something obvious, and one of you can tell me what it is.
You can sort by most recent. In your app on fb under newsfeed look for a picker item, it's set to top stories by default so voice over will say" top stories picker item
Ah OK thanks for the tip. Voicebook is so slow to refresh.
I've been on fb since 07 but i do agree, it's gone downhill ever since. and there's aps but you can't do everything a sighted person can.
and the IOS FB ap, can you remove friends? i don't remember.
I am so incredibly glad that someone brought this up! I am getting sick and tired of the inaccessibility of that site. I've gotten passed the point of being annoyed that the mobile site won't let me do certain basic things that I can do on the main site. It was still usable, and for my everyday activities, it was fine. But now, even the mobile site is becoming more difficult to use. The other day, for example, I discovered that I could no longer get to my notes! No matter what I did, it kept saying "you have no more notes". So I had to go to the main site, spend a few minutes fighting with it to get to my notes and then copy out the links to my notes in a text file. I was doing this anyway, so that I could easily reference them for posts, so only had a few to go. But once they were copied, I had to change their format to the old style so that I could review them on the mobile site! The trick is in keeping just the id number in the new url, then sticking it in between the following, with no spaces. The space is for the note id. You can also replace the www. with m.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id= &refid=21
That took about 45 minutes, and it used to take only ten tops! As for the main site, it's a total nightmare. Thank The Gods, the mobile site doesn't keep refreshing or alerting me every time someone posts. But the main site does and it was driving me crazy! I didn't like the spaces added, which were mentioned here, but that was a minor nucense. Thankfully, I've never had the varrification issue. How incredibly stupid are they, for creating something like that!
I wish there was a way to stop photos from showing up in my feed. I'm sick of "link graphic photo, link graphic photo" for pages and pages! I try setting it to read links, but some of those links are photos! I also don't like how people can invite me into groups or conversations, and tag me in their photos without my permission. I can't see these photos! How do I know whether or not I want to be tagged in them?
The problem with Facebook is that they change too much. They get something right and then they break it. This is not just for us blind users either. I've heard many sighted users complain about it as well! Apparently, they don't care about quality, if they keep breaking things and giving people headaches! But I, and many others I'm sure, have most of my friends on Facebook. Some I know only through there, and some I've met there and we continued talking offline. So it's not a necessity, but for those of us who don't get out much, or who wish to communicate with people in different parts of the world, it really is a lifeline, and unfortunately, I don't know of anything else like it. Yes, we can use The Zone and Klango, but these sites are mostly for the blind, so cut us of from the mainstream. Twitter is okay, with the right client, but it doesn't have notes and the character limit for statuses and even for profiles is very short. Something has to give!
I have no problems with facebook either. I use a windows 7 computer with internet explorer 8 or 9 and, I use the mobile facebook site. it works perfectly. so no complaints here. I am satisfied here as well, same as alex.
My problem with the FB app for IOS is that A. I've completely stopped receiving alerts anytime someone comments on a status I posted or does anything. And I can't seem to change any settings. I did want to stop receiving alerts for certain things (mostly those damn game and app requests), but not to stop receiving them altogether. Unfortunately whenI go to the account settings page and select a checkbox for a notificationI do want to receive, it'll say that the box is checked and that the setting has been saved, but then the very next second the box will be unchecked again. I just reported that to FB from within the app itself, although admittedly I'm not confident that anything will be done about it. So I still use the mobile site, which still works reasonably well for the things I use FB for.
there are two other options for Facebook which i've seen nobody mention. probably cause they are fairly new.
1. pay $50 a year for GW Micro SocialEyes
http://www.gwmicro.com/App_Central/Apps/App_Details/?scriptid=1393
works well.
2. use TheFriendMail: Facebook via Email
http://thefriendmail.com/
also works well.
Except that with SocialEyes you can't actually edit your profile, nor do they plan on implementing this feature for, as they put it, "security reasons." I comend GW for trying but while I am astaunch GW supporter I could see this causing them some problems since we're once again paying for something sighted folks get for free. I mean yes we've done that for screen readers but at least a screen reader doesn't lock you out of certain features of your computer becase they're concerned about security. Admittedly I don't know if it's Facebook's concerns or GW's themselves that bar you from editing your profile with SocialEyes but foft bucks a year I would have hoped to be able to do so. I think GW Skype had a better business model, make a free version but then charge a small fee for non Window-Eyes users to get rid of adds. At least thenthey could have tried out the program to see if they liked it. The way it is though you can't even do that, so you're basically screwed if you pay money and then discover the program wasn't what you wanted.
it is not GW's fault. if you are on the GW apps list (of which i am a member), there's constant talk about this or that that people wanna see in the program. GW can't because they are useing the facebook API. the API has limits put on them by facebook. they are trying to get on a whitelist so that they can get access to a lot more features, but that takes years from what i read.
i've had this program since it came out July 10th and have seen quite a bit of improovements.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. To my mind it's not yet worth fifty bucks, although I'll admit it does have potential if these new features can someday be added.
since i was one of the first in line i only had to pay $25.
i have been using facebook since 2007 after a friend nagging me to gsign up on it.
To be honest, i never have the deficulty that most of posts mention on here. The main home page facebook.com perhaps is not as accessible as it can be, but, that is as much as facebook's fault as screenreader's fault.
you always have the alternative of m.facebook.com, and also lite.facebook.com
Also, if you are smartphone user, regardless of what phone you using, or what platform, there are apps to compromise for things you need to compromise.
Yes, the interface can be easier, the way the homepage manage can be better but, i don't think it is enough reason for people to complain about how inaccessible iFaceook be.
More so, if people like to post photos or games, is their individual's choice. There's no rule, or policy to state one should not post photos or play games just because some poor blind people can't see or participate is there...
Honestly speaking, sometime i s better to see posts about games or photos han who have what for breakfast, how many time they go to toilet in a day, etc.
Beside that, there are ways to disable different invitations or apps on your facebook.
Tips: try using firefox or chrome rather than IE if you seriously need to go on facebook.com as a main sidte