twitter is a feature that allows your friends to send updates about themselves to your cell phone if you have text message. i thought this was mostly used for “i just had the most delicious sandwich ever” type messages (who cares?) but it turns out people have been using this as a form of media (i.e. brownfemipower live-blogged from the Allied Media Conference using twitter) or a way to send out action alerts (i.e. violent raids on the border).
you can search for my twitter by typing in cripchick at the top search bar on twitter.com
is anyone else on?
14 Comments
June 26, 2008 at 9:51 am
Woh, nice blog.
I will subscribe to it.
/Drik
June 26, 2008 at 11:16 am
Ooh, ooh! I am! My name on there is Fibrofog.
June 26, 2008 at 11:55 am
Twitter must be REALLY popular! I tried to join, and it said they were over capacity, and try back later. I’m a little frustrated by that, because if you are marketing a product, and you feel that its going to go big, then, you prepare for that, right? It doesn’t seem like they were very prepared, if they’re going over capacity
It still seems like a really good product. My CIL (Center for Independent Living) is always looking for new ways to do media, so I’ll keep trying to sign up on Twitter until I get on.
June 26, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Ok, I’m having one of those moments where I’m groaning, and thinking, “Must I always have to fight and struggle to do a simple little thing?”
I got into Twiiter to sign up, but couldn’t because it uses a program called Capcha. Capcha is that little dealy at the bottom that asks you to enter letters and/or numbers when you sign up, so that they know that they are dealing with a human, and not a robot spam program. I understand the concept, but Capcha cannot be used by someone who is Blind, or visually impaired, as I am. They have this audio, but it is useless. Plus, screen readers cannot read Capcha. I could get around that by asking a sighted friend to help, but that is not always possible, and what about folks who live alone?
Being an activist, I immediately went to the Help section, and wrote a quick e-mail on their site, and guess what? Once you submit, you have to open an account to post the problem, and guess what? I can’t because of Capcha! So, I am in the position of having a problem, and not being able to post that problem. Argh!
I did find a snail mail address for them, so I will be writing a letter the old fashioned way. I’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, can some of you do me a really big favor and post to the help site about Capcha? I think that more people need to be aware of the problem.
Thanks a bunch!
June 26, 2008 at 1:39 pm
thanks for letting people know, dread, that is SOOOOOO frusterating. i just sent them a letter under the help section so hopefully it will addressed soon.
do you want me to make you an account and then you can change your password? or not yet out of principle?? let me know and i’ll email you.
June 26, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Thanks, that so sweet! I think that I’ll wait and see what happens, and if they respond to your post.
I’m wondering though, if I’ll get a better response via snail mail if I write as an ordinary Jane, or if I should put on my activist hat complete with CIL letterhead, etc?
I think perhaps, the activist hat will work better.
Thanks again, for the post
June 26, 2008 at 2:46 pm
oooh activist hat… with all the adapt pins and buttons you must have on it? kidding of course
June 26, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Dread1myn, I have a question– is there any type of Turing Test that doesn’t make usage impossible for people with low vision?
There are so many Turings to prevent robo-registration– “recaptcha,” which craigslist now uses, where you are supposed to identify two words. There’s also a captcha being made by microsoft that asks the user to identify pictures of cats interspersed with pictures of dogs. And, for a while, there was a disgustingly misognyistic “hot or not” captcha where you were supposed to pick the three “hot” people from a group of ten. Thankfully that one went away.
But I haven’t actually seen one that is both an effective way to block spam AND fully accessible to a person using a screen reader. Have you? Is there a Turing that can be added to websites without discriminating? Can I recommend that to Twitter in an email to them?
June 26, 2008 at 3:39 pm
saydrah, thats a good question. I have not heard of any Turing tests that are both effective at spamblocking, and fully accessible. The image Captcha would probably be ok if there were alt tags embedded, but I think that the problem is the actual Turing test platform, itself. I believe thats why the audio is so horrible.
It would be great if the designers of, say, Jaws, Zoom Text, Window Eyes, and some of the other screen readers got together with the designers of the various captchas to create something effective AND accessible!
Btw, CC, Twitter hasn’t posted your post in the Help section yet. Oh, and I DO have an ADAPT baseball cap covered in pins, buttons, etc, but my dreads got so thick that I can’t wear the hats anymore.
June 26, 2008 at 10:31 pm
I’m on! My username is MissNomered.
June 27, 2008 at 6:19 am
I’m on twitter as thedilettante (which is also my livejournal username) but I use it mostly for the delicious-sandwich sort of writing.
June 27, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Hey CripChick,
This is a bit off topic, but I’ve been doing some research on feminism. Nowhere in feminist lit (Fauldi, Bitch mag, Ms.) do I* find disability in women addressed, although I do see discussions of race, gender, and class — even transgender! I wonder what you think of this, and whether you could point me to any mainstream feminist work that includes PWD.
June 30, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I’m on as Los_Anjalis. And our CureThis.org project is on twitter, as Cure_This.
the comments got me thinking about captcha issues too. good to know letters are being sent to the folks at twitter. hopefully they’ll be responsive.
August 15, 2008 at 3:26 pm
i’ve become one of those “delicious sandwich” people.
loooove twitter and my fellow twitterers
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