TL;DR

• Starting July 1, Reddit's API policy will only allow blind/visually impaired communities to be moderated by sighted people
• When reddit says they are whitelisting accessibility apps, they are lying, because Apollo, RIF, Boost, Sync, etc. are the apps r/Blind users have overwhelmingly listed as their accessibility apps of choice, and Reddit is not whitelisting them. Reddit has done a good job hiding this fact.
• Forcing disabled people, especially profoundly disabled people, to stop using the app they depend on and have become accustomed to is cruel; for the most profoundly disabled people, June 30 may be the last day they will be able to access reddit communities that are important to them.

If you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks:

Reddit abruptly announced that they would be charging astronomically overpriced API fees to 3rd party apps, cutting off mod tools for NSFW subreddits (not just porn subreddits, but subreddits that deal with frank discussions about NSFW topics).

And worse-- Blind redditors & blind mods (including mods of r/Blind and similar communities) will no longer have access to resources that are desperately needed in the disabled community.

Why does r/TrollXFunny, a subreddit built on pictures, care about blind users?

Please, allow us to rant-- Just for a moment.

Some of us on your mod team are disabled. Not vision-impaired, but a range of other disabilities which made us acutely aware that corporations are all too happy to cut deals (and corners) with the cheapest/most profitable option, slap a "handicap accessible" label on it, and ignore the fact that their so-called "accessible" solution puts the onus on disabled individuals to struggle through poorly designed layouts, misleading marketing, and baffling management choices. To say it's exhausting and humiliating to struggle through a world that able-bodied people take for granted is putting it lightly.

Reddit apparently forgot that blind people exist, and forgot that Reddit's official app (which has had over 9 YEARS of development) does not currently have ANY accessibility for vision-impaired users.

The CEO of Reddit announced that they would be allowing some "accessible" apps free API usage: RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna.

There's just one glaring problem: RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna* apps have very basic functionality for vision-impaired users (text-to-voice, magnification, posting, and commenting) but none of them have full moderator functionality, which effectively means that subreddits built for vision-impaired users won't have vision-impaired moderators.

(If that doesn't sound so bad to you, imagine if your favorite hobby subreddit had a mod team that never engaged with that hobby, did not know the terminology for that hobby, and could not participate in that hobby-- Because if they participated in that hobby, they could no longer be a moderator.)

Then Reddit tried to smooth things over with the moderators of r/blind. The results were... Messy and unsatisfying, to say the least.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14ds81l/rblinds_meetings_with_reddit_and_the_current/

*Special shoutout to Luna, which appears to be hustling to incorporate features that will make modding easier but will likely not have those features up and running by the July 1st deadline, when the very disability-friendly Apollo app will cease operations. We see what Luna is doing and we appreciate you, but a multimillion dollar company should not have have dumped all of their accessibility problems on what appears to be a one-man mobile app developer. RedReader and Dystopia have not made any apparent efforts to engage with the r/Blind community.

Why didn't you just stay closed indefinitely?

Because Reddit is forcing subreddits to open, but they never said we had to open under the same rules we had when we closed.

Thank you for your time & your patience.

YES, you can re-word and re-post this to your own communities. We encourage it, in fact.

My response was as follows:

Greetings,

We've received nothing but support from our community that the subreddit should remain closed indefinitely, until Reddit finds a workaround for blind moderators who will be unable to do their jobs as moderators because the apps RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna do not have mod functions.

It should be simple: If you do not allow disabled moderators to have the tools to moderate, they cannot do pro bono work for you anymore, and the wealth of advertising dollars that they created for you, that captive audience full of dedicated followers, will evaporate.

You have a July 1st deadline before we all walk, taking our advertising dollars with us.

--VoltasPistol

I still moderate other communities, for now, but I am exploring other venues for TrollXFunny. Reddit doesn't get to make money off of my shitposting while locking out some of the most vulnerable members of our community

Chime in with your suggestions for new places to go, your admin horror stories in your own communities, and general commiseration in the comment section.

You can find me on Discord, although I will probably not rebuild TrollXFunny there, as the live chat vibe is a bit too overwhelming for long-term use: https://discord.gg/PbttfmR6

Ok, ok, I got a Tumblr too. https://www.tumblr.com/voltaspistol

If you're not sure what all this blind mod stuff is about, I created an Imgur album of their official statement, in case reddit gets some scab mods who delete it: https://imgur.com/gallery/Fy2DNpa

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23749188/reddit-subreddit-private-protest-api-changes-apollo-charges

If you still need a wholesome place for fresh memes, Imgur is a decent alternative, though obviously it lacks the social/community functionality of reddit: https://imgur.com/