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Because Internet
3/5. Chatty, fun book about internet linguistics that it seems like everyone was reading. I enjoyed this – locating my internet generation, the origins of various linguistic memes, emoji as gesture. But mostly this book made me think about just how inaccessible so much of internet linguistic culture is to me. And how badly accessibility is implemented when it comes limping in years later. Take emoji – they were ignored by screenreaders for a long time, and oh boy wasn't twitter basically incomprehensible there for a while. Generally they get spoken now, but they are assigned specific, static descriptions that do not lend themselves to the creative reinterpretations that are so common. Or the description is just a bad idea – the alt text for the Vulcan salute is an incredibly wordy explanation of a hand with these two specific fingers, etc. etc. and if you're congenitally low vision, it's a good bet you'd have no freaking clue what that is or what it means. I've patched together a decent degree of internet fluency through guesswork and luck and occasional errors, which I suppose just gives me a preview of being in my 80's on the internet. Still. Not fun to dwell on.
3/5. Chatty, fun book about internet linguistics that it seems like everyone was reading. I enjoyed this – locating my internet generation, the origins of various linguistic memes, emoji as gesture. But mostly this book made me think about just how inaccessible so much of internet linguistic culture is to me. And how badly accessibility is implemented when it comes limping in years later. Take emoji – they were ignored by screenreaders for a long time, and oh boy wasn't twitter basically incomprehensible there for a while. Generally they get spoken now, but they are assigned specific, static descriptions that do not lend themselves to the creative reinterpretations that are so common. Or the description is just a bad idea – the alt text for the Vulcan salute is an incredibly wordy explanation of a hand with these two specific fingers, etc. etc. and if you're congenitally low vision, it's a good bet you'd have no freaking clue what that is or what it means. I've patched together a decent degree of internet fluency through guesswork and luck and occasional errors, which I suppose just gives me a preview of being in my 80's on the internet. Still. Not fun to dwell on.