Last Updated on: 18th February 2023, 11:26 am
Ug. I hate having to write angry posts, but I have to.
Remember back in October when I said that Meetup’s interface had taken yet another accessibility crap? Well, they just took another one.
On Thursday, they rolled out their interface that they consider to be just beautiful. That same day, I went to schedule a Meetup, and slammed screenreader-first into an accessibility brick wall.
So now, I don’t know what they did to all their form fields, ya know, where you enter vital details like when and where you’re meeting, what you’re doing, how you can find me, all that good stuff, but there seems to be no way to enter data into them whatsoever using only a keyboard. I don’t know if you have to roll over them with a mouse, as it appears you have to do to activate nearly every bloody link on the page, but I can type until the cows come home and it still says “80 characters left”. I have tried with multiple screenreaders with the same result.
So, this makes it official. I refuse to pay this company any more of my money. If they don’t want to be accessible, then obviously they don’t want my business. We’re either finding a new organizer, or our group is going to run off another site, a site I can manage.
But you know what makes things even worse? For some unknown reason, our mailing list, ya know, the primary way our group communicates, has gone down. So, I can’t even send out a message explaining the predicament to our group. Just friggin dandy.
I’ve already written support, and endured the first go round of butt useless responses. Yes, Mr. Meetup support dude, I am capable of reading. I just can’t activate anything. Go get someone with a functioning brain and then we’ll talk again.
So, if there’s anyone out there from the Guelph French Speaking / Groupe de langue française à Guelph meetup who’s wondering what’s going on, email me. Please do, because I don’t know when the mailing list will be fixed again. I have a place booked, but nobody’s going to know about it if the mailing list is down and I can’t schedule the meetup.
And thanks to everyone on Twitter who have been tweeting at Meetup with me trying to pound into their heads that accessibility matters. Meetup only tweeted once asking what screenreader I’m using, but they’ve been receiving a lot of mentions. And sorry to the guy on Twitter who I thought didn’t know what a screenreader was. He kinda got pounded with replies as well. It turns out he’s not the biggest fan of Meetup either.
So, I don’t know what the future holds for our group, but it won’t be with Meetup. Well, now the mailing list is back alive. At least I could get the important information out.