Accessibility Updates to Mod Tools: Part 1

[u/joyventure]

TL;DR We’re improving the accessibility of moderator features on iOS and Android by July 1.

Hi mods,

I’m u/joyventure, Director of Product at Reddit focused on accessibility and the performance, stability and quality of our web, iOS and Android platforms. Today, I’m here to talk about improving the accessibility of our mod tools.

We are committed to making it easy for mods using assistive technology to moderate using Reddit’s iOS and Android apps. We’ve been talking with moderators who use assistive tech and/or moderate accessibility communities to hear their feedback and concerns about the tooling needs of mods and users.

Starting July 1, accessibility improvements will be coming to:

• How mods access Moderation tools (by July 1)
• ModQueue (view, action posts and comments, filter and sort content, add removal reasons, and bulk action items) (by July 1)
• ModMail (inbox, read, reply to messages, create new mail, private mod note) (by July 1)
• User Settings (manage mods, approved users, muted users, banned user) (by July 1)
• Community Settings (late July)
• Ban Evasion Settings (late July)
• Additional User Settings (late July)
• Remaining mod surfaces (August)

Thank you to all the mods who have taken the time to talk with us about accessibility and continue to share feedback, we’ll continue these regular discussions. Please let us know in the comments or reach out to r/modsupport modmail if you would like to join these conversations.

We will share more updates on our progress next Friday (and hopefully not at 5pm PT for all of our sakes). We wanted to get this update out to you as soon as possible - I’ll be here a little bit today to answer questions, and will follow up to answer more on Monday.

[u/GrumpyOldDan]

I agree that things are being addressed, and that is a good thing.

But considering how long this has been an issue I am keen for Reddit to commit to something we can actually measure it against rather than a vague statement of "improvements" - it's all too easy to declare even the smallest change to be an improvement yet it can fall far short of being accessible to people who need it.

I'm not saying it has to be immediate, getting an app like Reddit to WCAG 2.1 AA standard may take over a year. But what I'm asking is for Reddit to commit to something measurable with even a rough timeline so we can hold them to account against something.

"improvements" are so vague that it's really not something I can feel confident about - and I'm not someone who has been jumping in majorly on the protests across the site but definitely familiar with vague promises both on Reddit and with other sites.

[u/Karmanacht → u/GrumpyOldDan]

This is what they do every single time. We ask for something and they make promises and that's enough for a lot of people, but too often those promises are extremely vague, get completely mothballed (r/proCSS), or we end up with a feature that looks nothing like we were really actually asking for.

I know that sometimes this is the fault of the ones asking for the change, and it's an extremely common joke in the tech world that customers are idiots and don't know what they're asking for, but time and time again on reddit it's been the same thing. We end up having to develop our own tools and to be completely honest as far as I care, the admins can just swipe them and incorporate them into their site. We're straight up handing them a road map for development.

We're honestly fed up with empty vague promises and failed deliveries. If reddit is committed to only having the one app, that's fine, but we're committed to needing it to be improved with concrete specifics since our tools are being ripped out from under our feet.

In fairness, they have come out with improvements in the past. I personally consider new modmail an improvement. But it seems like it takes a ton of disruption just to get anything. I wasn't a mod when Victoria left, but I remember it well, and this is just the same thing all over again. But because the admins never really managed to restore moderators' faith in them (edit and probably because this time around it had much more wide-reaching impact) the disruption this time around is much louder.