[toxic]

One of the more popular DOS-based BBS software platforms of the early 90s was VBBS. It was interoperable with WWIVnet, which is part of why it was popular.

Its author/developer/maintainer was blind. You can imagine how well it worked with screen readers and other accessible technology (which was primitive at the time, and yet somehow better than it is today).

Text on a terminal is much better suited to accessibility technologies, whether readers or braille terminals. BBSes were all about text on terminals, and it was a place where folks who used accessibility tools could choose whether to identify themselves as someone who needed it... and most of the time if they chose not to make it known, none of the other users had any idea.

"You are your own words" is a BBS-ism. For people who are in the deaf community or who used tools because of their sight, being able to be known primarily by their words and not by the way that they used them was absolutely incredible.

(edit: typo)

[beaugunderson]

interesting, I always heard this as "you own your own words": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOYOW

[gausswho]

This is increasingly fascinating.

I want to see a documentary of this in the style of alternating scenes of a) narration over still photos and b) contemporary music alongside silent video of the people behind this community.

[textfiles]

Someone should get right on that.