The past several months have been great for Twitch Accessibility. Tons of things have been added, changed, and updated that have made the experience better for us totally blind folk. You will, I\u2019m sure, recall the blog I posted wherein I feared having to leave Twitch because it was growing more and more inaccessible as time went on. Now, I\u2019m happy to say, the opposite is happening. There are still some issues, but I think it\u2019s time we take a new look at Twitch from a blind user\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n
Firstly, remember all the things I said I couldn\u2019t do anymore? Things like, ya know, logging in? All that is fixed. Now, not only can I log in without help, but I can edit my panels, edit extensions, and perhaps most importantly for me personally, edit the information on my videos and export them to Youtube if I want. It is such a relief to have this functionality back, and to have the new functionality that comes with it. Fun fact, editing our panels was something we simply couldn\u2019t do at all before, and was not in the first wave of accessibility updates. It\u2019s here now though, and it\u2019s almost funny because I\u2019m sort of scared to do it. Now that I can, I just don\u2019t want to mess anything up. That\u2019s a me thing, though, not a Twitch thing.<\/p>\n
Second, let\u2019s talk about the video player. Aside from an unfortunately persistent issue where the video player seems to disappear, at least as far as a screen reader is concerned, the player itself has become much more accessible. Its buttons are labeled, meaning we can press them without fear of somehow breaking it, because we know what each button does. The blind can even create clips now, an act that required a complex Nightbot command before. We can mute and unmute, adjust the volume of an individual Twitch stream, basically everything. Again, this is incredibly refreshing news. It\u2019s hard to explain, but sometimes you don\u2019t know what features you\u2019re missing until you\u2019ve got them.<\/p>\n
Now let\u2019s take a look at the future. Twitch is about to release a new channel look for its users, and this comes with its own set of features, all of which are, so far, totally accessible. If you stream on Twitch, you can open the dashboard configuration menu, click on preferences, then channel. You may have been to this page before, but now there\u2019s a whole bunch more stuff for you to add there. Firstly, you can add your social links directly to your channel page without having to create a panel for them. You can still create panels, and some links you may want to add don\u2019t fall under the social category, but this is an easy option that will ensure everyone will be able to follow you wherever you\u2019d like them to. Secondly though, and the most awesome in my opinion, is the streaming schedule! You can set up a fully accessible streaming schedule, which includes the ability to set up one or multiple days at a time, add your categorized games, title your streams, and everything. Choosing a game category appears to even add a game graphic for you, which is handy for us folks who don\u2019t do too well with the pictures. It\u2019s a huge improvement, and something I\u2019ll look forward to updating as necessary just because I truly can do so now.<\/p>\n
Lastly in the new things department is the ability to add a channel trailer. This isn\u2019t really an accessibility thing unless we count the fact that the \u201cchoose video\u201d link is labeled properly, but I thought I\u2019d mention it since we\u2019re talking about this page. And hey, if you\u2019re a streamer of any kind, let alone a blind or disabled one, I would recommend doing this or finding someone willing to do this. A channel trailer can introduce newcomers who might find your channel while you\u2019re offline to the kinds of things you stream, to your style of content, and so on. It\u2019s a great addition that I hope everyone takes advantage of.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, Twitch has come a long, long way since I wrote that scary blog many months ago. There are still problems, including a new one that recently sprang up wherein screen readers will read the entire chat every time something new comes in, and the aforementioned disappearing video player, but overall the accessibility improvements that have been made here are massive, and ongoing. I am proud to be a Twitch streamer, and look forward to the continued growth of my community there. Thank you to Twitch for taking all this seriously. Your work has not gone unnoticed. Also thanks to you guys for reading this, and as always, continue to be awesome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The past several months have been great for Twitch Accessibility. Tons of things have been added, changed, and updated that have made the experience better for us totally blind folk. You will, I\u2019m sure, recall the blog I posted wherein I feared having to leave Twitch because it was growing more and more inaccessible as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[36,212,211,91],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-accessibility","tag-streaming","tag-twitch","tag-video-games"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}