Hey new people, you don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon 🙂
All links on Mastodon are counted as 23 characters towards your post size limit, regardless of how long they actually are.
More info at https://fedi.tips/you-dont-need-link-shorteners-on-mastodon
[#]FediTips #MastoTips #Mastodon
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@FediTips Caveat: If a screen reader user is going to read your post and you put a link that isn't short in the post, have it be the last thing in the post. If it's just whatever.tld/thing or something you should be fine, but if it's even some articles that use wordpress or otherwise have long links it's too long and we assume there's no more text after the link and will stop speech once the link starts being read out because it just takes too long. That's the consensus I've been able to gather anyway. Of course for posts with multiple links that have those for a reason this is slightly problematic, and in that case put them on separate lines so maybe a screen reader using a web-based client can navigate by line through the post?
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@x0
Thanks for bringing this up!
Do screen reader apps read the entire link every time, regardless of how long the link is?
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@FediTips It depends on the fedi client actually, but it's up to the client not the screen reader itself. If the client truncates the link as displayed visually, E.G> with an elipsis, then the screen reader should probably also see that and truncate. But if the text of the link is displayed in full, then the screen reader will read it in full. The client I'm using actually speaks directly through the screen reader and thus also has it spoken fully, it's a client designed specifically for blind users. In sum, if it's displayed visually in full, that text is given to the screen reader, and thus it's going to read it in full too, as it will act based on what it is given with minimal transformation for just blocks of text. Transformation comes into play for complex elements like those in HTML, E.G. speaking the word link before reading out the name of a link, but text is text and unless the app goes out of its way to expose something different to the screen reader than what is shown, which is platform, screen reader and framework ddependent, what you see is ideally what you get in terms of text.
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@x0
Okay, that's really interesting to hear.
So, if I understand correctly, if the Fedi client shortens it with an elipsis then there isn't a problem?
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@FediTips Yes, that'll be given as is to the screen reader with the elipsis included. If it's displayed in full, though, as most things on desktop at least would do, it will be read out fully. Someone posted an Amazon link once. This entire 700+ character link would be read out... You should use shortened amazon links for that reason I'd suspect, although removing tracking info might also be enough. If you plug an amazon link into bitly you get their custom amzn.to, or the share thing for emailing links might do it.
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Can confirm! All that Extra cruff at the end was a tracking thing on Amazon link. I'd actually suggest removing all tracking things in general so links just automatically become shorter. I wouldn't want to make link shorteners a common practice because I like hearing and feeling where the link goes, especially if it's for blogs and such because the date will be in there sometimes, and a post hint will be in the URL but a link shorter removes all of that for me.
I do agree that having multiple links at the end, on their own lines, is much easier to skim, especially with a Braille display!
But I've figured out that if everybody at least moves all the tracking junk from links, with something like Clear URL, links become far more informative again!
@x0 @FediTips
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@WeirdWriter @FediTips DO you have a simple way of doing that with as many links as possible? Might be something FT can put on their thing like, you don't need link shorteners even more now, half the reason links are long is because of tracking! Strip it like this and now it doesn't take up tons of space either!
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This is the extension I use to get rid of all tracking crap in links https://docs.clearurls.xyz/1.26.1/ @x0 @FediTips
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