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Comment by SavantIdiot | Hacker News Reader

Ironic that his very own medium is insufficient to convey enough information, so he has to post a picture of a document. smh.

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Not every tool is meant for every job.

The medium supports images so I’m not sure this critique is valid.

Pictures of text support the OP and really annoy me.

Yes but a screenshot is clearly not the best way to convey the information of an email. You cant search it, screen readers cant read the text, you cant zoom it properly if you have bad eyesight, etc…

Visually impaired people using a screenreader won't be able to read it.

Not entirely true. My blind friend encourages me to annotate screenshots whenever possible. It's just a pain, because you have to remember to do it as you tweet (you can't do it later), and only you can do it (why not crowdsource it?)

Can screen readers still not read text in images? Years ago I could understand that being a problem, but now? If that's still true then it seems to me those screen readers could really use an upgrade. My phone has been able to copy text out of screenshots flawlessly for years.

I do agree with the overall point though that images are a suboptimal way of conveying text.

Does your phone perform the OCR locally or does it farm it out to a service? There's privacy implications for the latter.

> Can screen readers still not read text in images?

They shouldn't have to do OCR, a description of the image should be provided, there is even an attribute for that on the web, it's called "alt", or use picture/caption. Twitter and its shitty UI has no excuse.

so does my code editor but I wouldn't consider it good design if I have to paste code in the form of jpgs because it caps at 140 characters per file

Given the amount of hacks from twitlonger, to unrolling threads, to audio I feel it is simply annoying at this point

Like it was not abvious what the replyee meant.

You misunderstand the entire premise of the company if you think this.

Share your insight.

Twitter was never meant to be a platform that all information can be shared their 280 characters. It was always meant to be abbreviated and force short handed information. OP comment that Jack had to post an image to pass on the information completely misunderstands what/how and why twitter was built.

OP comment was a throwaway comment trying to say that long form text based comments should be allowed on twitter? Think how terrible twitter would become if that was the reality.

Twitter started out as a way to organize protests via cellphone, TXT2MOB. Jack just used it to post a manifesto as an image of text because the platform cannot support long-form communication. It is not a medium for subtlety, complexity, or depth. Both statements are true. Your complaint has nothing to do with Twitter's failure as a substantial communication mechanism, and my point simply illustrates that failure. We're both right.

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