No surprise here: Elon Musk has once again aggravated Twitter. The CEO’s latest swipe at platform functionality removes free access to its API(Opens in a new window)posing an imminent threat to users with disabilities, accessibility advocates, and helpful bots.
On February 1, Twitter announced it would move all API access to pay-per-use tiers, another source of revenue as the site continues to lose its advertiser-based revenue streams. APIs, or Web Application Programming Interfaces, allow programmers and developers to use existing information from a secondary source to create programs, data visualizations, and more. Free API services are essential for much of the online work done by activists and scholars(Opens in a new window)many of which use free online data sources for research, interactive sites and organizing projects.
More importantly, many users rely on Twitter API(Opens in a new window) for third-party services essential to making the site accessible – and to ensure the online community stays engaged in the conversation about digital accessibility.
Take, for example, the A11y movement (the “11” stands for the eleven letters between “a” and “y” in the word “accessibility”) on Twitter, which draws attention to the need to expand the accessibility of the website. Automated Twitter accounts like @A11yAwareness(Opens in a new window) – one of many “good” types of bots – provides reminders to users about mandates and web accessibility tips, like how to write proper alt text(Opens in a new window) provide non-visual access to the content and function of an image.
The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
(Opens in a new window)
Other robots like @AltAwareness(Opens in a new window) browse free Twitter API data to connect journalists and news sites to web accessibility tips. Both were created by a front-end developer and web accessibility advocate Patrick Garvin(Opens in a new window), and these are just two of many similar automated resources designed to educate other users about best practices for people with disabilities. Garvin was inspired by @GAADBot(Opens in a new window)user created Matt Reason(Opens in a new window) to make the alternative text known to Twitter users. Eason has also created several other automated awareness accounts, such as the UK Government Alt Bot(Opens in a new window)which calls the tweets unreachable from UK government accounts.
The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
(Opens in a new window)
The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
(Opens in a new window)
Garvin told Mashable that the news this week came as a shock, even knowing that Musk negative opinion towards bots.(Opens in a new window) “I had no idea how his stance on bots would translate to policy or action. It’s not an outright ban, but it definitely shuts down a lot of these bots.”
Garvin’s @AltAwareness account is one of them. “This bot tracks 4,000 news and journalism accounts, and it retweets anyone who tweets an image without alt text,” he explained. “It hits the Twitter API so often – with such intensity – that it would probably burn through the monthly allowance [for basic tiers] in less than a day.”
On the other hand, @A11yAwareness, and other bots like this that use scripts, may still survive, if account owners are willing to take on a ton of extra work. Garvin explained that he will now have to sift through the results and manually schedule all of the account’s tweets to make it work. “I feel like I owe it to the subscribers to keep it going for as long as possible,” he said.
Other essential third-party services serve as additional accessibility tools for users with various disabilities, as well as those simply looking for an enhanced user experience, such as scroll and read(Opens in a new window) robots, automatic callback(Opens in a new window) robots, and alt text(Opens in a new window) robots. Without free access to the Twitter API, these services may no longer be feasible for the people behind the accounts to manage.
And a few outside tools like these have hit the chopping block before, in the face of the shifting tides of Musk’s Twitter. In January, Musk announced that the company would block popular third-party clients used by millions of site users, including Tweetbot(Opens in a new window) and Twitterrific(Opens in a new window). At the time, some users reported accessibility clients failing(Opens in a new window) also.
You are hitting people who will not necessarily have the resources, the money to spend on this kind of thing.
Following this week’s announcement, advocates on Twitter expressed resounding disappointment with the CEO’s latest move. It was a blow to years of work to improve the site’s usability for people with disabilities – and there have been successes. In April, for example, the site announced new and improved alt text features allowing users to write and post their own accessible image captions. The site had also explored ongoing improvements for neurodivergent users, such as adjustments to site “chirp” sounds for users with sensory sensitivities(Opens in a new window).
“It’s been pretty cool how people have been able to harness the power of the web, and Twitter in particular, to try to get the word out,” Garvin said. “A big part of accessibility work is trying to get people to notice it, and then trying to win hearts and minds.”
But the last few months haven’t been so good. In November, Musk fired much of the site’s accessibility team(Opens in a new window), known on the site as @Twitter A11y. The A11y official Twitter page(Opens in a new window) hasn’t released an accessibility update since October. Since then, accessibility reductions have continued to snowball, including the removal of live captions from Twitter Spaces(Opens in a new window).
The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
(Opens in a new window)
The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
(Opens in a new window)
The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
(Opens in a new window)
All of these developments have the potential to isolate users with disabilities and strangle the avenues of disability activism. Users looking for accessible social media options do not have the simple option of going to another site, like those who flee Twitter for sites like Mastodonas many still lack robust tools for users with disabilities.
Garvin also noted that this decision will have a disproportionate impact on bot creators themselves. “A good number of accessibility-focused bots are run by people who themselves have a disability, or are caregivers, or are otherwise connected to it,” he explained. “And historically, there is correlations between disability and economic status(Opens in a new window) in this country. So you’re hitting people who won’t necessarily have the resources, the money, to spend on this stuff.”
Without the backing of wealthy supporters or other ways to pay for API use, Twitter’s decision makes the job of advocates much, much harder. “It takes away one of the resources that I can use,” Garvin said. “I’m just going to have to go back to the drawing board.”
