Hi all, I would like to invite all of you to try out my Discord server that I've just created. Recently I found that Discord has become a lot more accessible (both on desktop and on iOS) so I decided to give Discord another go at creating servers. Here's the link to join the server: https://discord.gg/b9RuAzbjSz Do also let me know how accessible it is, from your experience, as I'm seriously considering between Teamtalk and Discord. Although I've recently just got a Teamtalk server of my own, I'd like to see if Discord would be any better. Note that both the voice chat 1 and voice chat 2 channels are essentially the same in terms of configuration, this also applies to both the LQ 1 and LQ 2, and the video chat 1 and video chat 2 channels. From my experience, namely on the public Teamtalk UK server in the past, there weren't that many public channels for people to join, so I created multiple voice and video chat channels in order to give people more choices in terms of the publically accessible channels.
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2. anonymous ,
according to me, discord is very much accessible and is fun to have.
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3. supanut2000,
I see. Do you think it is better than Teamtalk?
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4. Mrityunjay,
tt is a conferencing application. discord is primarily meant for gaming. so the comparison is not really apt. but yes, I prefer discord over tt.
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5. supanut2000,
I see. Though I think Discord has become somewhat more popular recently; one of the clubs at my university uses it.
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6. Jatayu,
Discord has grown to become much more than just a gaming platform. I myself prefer it over teamtalk as well For the simple reason that it is mainstream, and hence a larger variety of communities one could join and different people one could interact with. That, and it is not limiting in many ways as team talk is, and several other technical factors that I won't get into in this post.
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7. supanut2000,
I can certainly agree. I think I especially like the permissions system, the fact that I can assign someone a special set of permissions for a specific channel, and the fact that I was able to create a global mod role with mod permissions, something that is not possible with Teamtalk.
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8. Naday,
Discord all the way!
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9. Destranis,
I find it a bit funny that as soon as skype became a bit inaccessible, meaning that you are required to press 3 keys instead of 1 to get a task done, everyone started to whine about what a horrible mess it is, let's throw it away, damn it, how can a programme be so a pain in the ass. I had the opportunity to look at discord, hell, I still have it on my computer. Last year we used it for online learning. In the first months, it was smooth, the buttons were correctly placed and I could use NVDA's navigation keys to go through the page. But as time passed by, it became more and more horrible. In the end the layout was so huge that it couldn't even load the whole page at once and as you moved the cursor towards the bottom, it loaded the reamining stuff. So it becamse a huge mess with a browser like layout. Indeed, the sound quality is much better than skype, not by much though. I'm not saying that every single application must support my stereo mycrophone for example, but it should be at least somewhat decent. So while you still can use tab and arrows to navigate through the so said inaccessible shit called skype, you must scroll through everything in discord, even things that you don't need at all. I'm not against discord, because I'm not an entitled one who never tries. Indeed I do, in fact I've tried so many things that I was pretty sure about it would be unusable. I don't become afraid if I need to use OCR for something because it's solvable. Everything can be solved in my honest opinion, and I follow this belief since I was born. But comparing a mostly accessible programme to another one which is full of strugling, is funny.
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10. Jatayu,
Allow me to respectfully disagree and counter all your points, one by one. Let's break it down, shall we?
"I find it a bit funny that as soon as skype became a bit inaccessible, meaning that you are required to press 3 keys instead of 1 to get a task done, everyone started to whine about what a horrible mess it is, let's throw it away, damn it, how can a programme be so a pain in the ass. " - First of all, I don't even think that is the reason for most people leaving skype, me included. That, and I really doubt that people that aggressive. Some may be who knows, but not in my experience. Now allow me to point out the actual errors in the program.
1.1. Lag. - When a user installs a new software onto their computer, they want it running smoothly without any sort of delay or freezing. They want it snappy, so that they can accomplish whatever task the software is meant to perform quickly and move on. Skype, does not provide that kind of freedom any more to a greater extent. There is a lot of delay with screen readers, including but not limited to huge loading times when opening conversations or during start-up, while going through messages, etc. 1.2. Resource intensive. - This is my complaint with all most all the apps that Microsoft have made, that are web based and then wrapped around a native client(which is usually how Microsoft seems to do things). They are resource intensive, and really take a toll on the ram and CPU. This is also not very well managed in cases where the pc isn't particularly strong, and causes lag spikes and freezing. 1.3. Other misc issues such as audio, I will elaborate this later down the line as there are some specific issues you brought up.
"I had the opportunity to look at discord, hell, I still have it on my computer. Last year we used it for online learning. In the first months, it was smooth, the buttons were correctly placed and I could use NVDA's navigation keys to go through the page. But as time passed by, it became more and more horrible. In the end the layout was so huge that it couldn't even load the whole page at once and as you moved the cursor towards the bottom, it loaded the remaining stuff. So it becamse a huge mess with a browser like layout."- Need I remind you that discord has only started its journey towards complete accessibility and inclusiveness with a screen reader quite recently and that bugs were all but inevitable? I admit, there were issues in the early stages of the app, but they slowly resolved themselves. When I say issues, I mostly mean the UI changes, as the lag and delay you are referring to is something I personally have never observed, but it is possible that this was also an issue then, I cannot comment on that.
However, here's the thing. Microsoft has been around, for literal years. They even claim to have their apps accessible and have more than a handful of blind developers working in their company. If they claim to know better, then they should. Such issues should not at all arise, and if they do, then quickly demolished. Heck, this actually has more to do with the app itself being unstable and not even the accessibility with screen readers.
"Indeed, the sound quality is much better than skype, not by much though. I'm not saying that every single application must support my stereo microphone for example, but it should be at least somewhat decent. " -
Um, I highly doubt this is an unpopular opinion that I have, but discord's sound quality is ligues, bold and underlined, better than skype. Skype has weird crackles, clipping on occasion, and overall worse noise cancelling that just ruins the quality of the conversation. I mean, I'm pretty sure apps that transmit the Mick's audio simply as it is may give better quality with a broken ear bud microphone. Where as, discord has AI and machine learning involved with capturing audio, it is so clear that you can make it catch nothing but your voice. At least in my experience, it works like a charm.. Sure it is certainly not perfect, indeed the new noise reduction mechanism is still in its beta stages, but still a lot better than what skype provides. Regarding not supporting stario microphone, I urge you to remember the purpose of discord. It was enicially started out to be, (and still is for the most part) a platform for gamers and streamers. The fact that it has stretched its wings and become much more flexible so as to let people of all kinds to call it a home is a different thing entirely, but for all intents and purposes it is in fact a gamers haven. A gamers chatting zone therefore, do not have fancy stario microphones panning across one's head, as I'd wajor those would disrupt game play really bad. In fact, most voice chatting platforms aren't meant to have stario mic support, because those are usually for podcasters that too when people do it sitting at the same place(that too only if they really want to), that or professional recording. In my humble opinion, stariotipical blindy apps such as team talk should also have put restrictions in place, as many people simply do not bother to conduct research before buying high priced gizmo's in the market when the use case for said device is low to none, such as the all too popular blue yetty promising to provide stario audio. I mean, think of it logically. When you're voice chatting, what if the second person has a damaged left ear bud, and you have panned yourself towards the left. Will it not be very challenging for said person to hear what you're saying? I do understand how blind people prefer this for other reasons such as their obvious preference to good sound, as that is how they imagine the world around them which is completely logical and I have no objections for that but, a mainstream app such as discord is unlikely to cater to needs of specific communities in the sense that they will not go into the nitty-gritty, and expect everybody to take one step forward, a step out of their comfort zone and adjust. Which, I think is a completely logical thing to do. Anyway I have droned on and on enough about the audio, so I digress. To conclude, all I'd like to say is that discord is not at all perfect. There are issues such as the one pertaining to not being able to scroll through chats with tab, but things like that are just a delicacy, and this might be an unpopular opinion of course, which is completely fine by me. This is because even if we all agree that it is an urgent issue that absolutely needs to be resolved, I wouldn't doubt it if it happens in the next update. We have to understand that things like this take time, and at least discord's developers are actively rolling out updates to fix bugs and make changes. (There is one practically every day if you are on the canary build) Where as if you look at skype, there's updates but they don't seem to fix much, and many versions even ruin the existing features(which is why I have seen many deliberately not updating their versions). This clearly wreaks of lack of interest and/or knowledge on the company's part, and gives a vibe similar to "Who cares what's in the bottle? Ya godda throw it, so Throw." That is all I will say, and if you were kind and patient enough to be with me throughout the entirety of my post then I applaud you, I don't think I would be able to :) With that being said, I hope at least part of what was said here made sense and that people learn from it, as learning is important! Thank you and have a wonderful day! :)
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11. Destranis,
Of course, I agree with most of your points. Discord is improving regarding accessibility and blind people are able to learn it for sure. I'm not saying that we should never use it, of course I'm not entitled to being blind and I don't shelter myself from apps which require a bit more patience to master. Oh don't worry, I'm not that typical blindie to have blue jeti and stuff like that, I just wanted a decent sound quality and if we look at that way it's pretty okay, much better than skype. Although discord also uses a lot of my CPU and RAM, but I'm in hopes they would fix it one day. So regarding your points, they are valid, and they will be even more valid after the developers fix a few more things.
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12. Nikola,
I mean, think of it logically. When you're voice chatting, what if the second person has a damaged left ear bud, and you have panned yourself towards the left. Will it not be very challenging for said person to hear what you're saying? I do understand how blind people prefer this for other reasons such as their obvious preference to good sound, as that is how they imagine the world around them which is completely logical and I have no objections for that but, a mainstream app such as discord is unlikely to cater to needs of specific communities in the sense that they will not go into the nitty-gritty, and expect everybody to take one step forward, a step out of their comfort zone and adjust. Which, I think is a completely logical thing to do.
I would only quickly like to point out that this is really not how it works. First of all, stereo is far from anything that is useful only to the blind community. More importantly, if you have a damaged left speaker / earbud, that is exclusively your problem. Every operating system nowadays offers something called Mono audio, which would switch all sounds to be heard equally through both channels. This is useful for other hearing disabilities, but also for the example above you mentioned. Stereo audio isn't excluded because someone has a broken earbud, that's like saying don't add images because blind people can't see them.
Now regarding this conversation, Skype VS Discord is the most useless debate. Use what works for you. Fact is that Skype had all kinds of lags and freezes with screen rreaders, and all hate it was getting was fully justified, since it took a year for Microsoft to address those, and it is fixed only now in the latest 8.71 update. This latest update introduced other accessibility problems, but let's not talk about that for now. We should also be realistic and say that Discord was ignoring accessibility for a year too, even longer, and they only needed to do some basics like labeling buttons and adding menu roles where necessary. However, the topic here talks about a Discord server, I do have to be honest and say that I don't see how a Skype VS Discord VS whatever discussion is even relevant here. Either you join a server if you like that and use Discord, or you don't use Discord and just move on. Discord doesn't have the loading problem mentioned above, at least for me. Maybe it does on a lower configuration, I am not sure, but I haven't seen this. Also, it's main layout definitely hasn't changed in a few months, not even in a year, so if you were using it then, I don't know what additional buttons you speak of. Full of struggling equals waiting 15 seconds for a Skype conversation to load, not having to go through a few buttons, and even if you have to wait a few seconds for the page to scroll, which definitely isn't normal behaviour.
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13. ernie96,
people can't post simple things like join my server anymore cause everyone will jump on the debate of this vs that. Its the comunity now in days
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14. YNWA,
You can make that argument if that was the only words that was used in the first message in the topic but that was not the case as I am sure you will see if you read it again.
Earlier I was reading the message when I was waiting for someone to finish their game. I personally can't comment about both as I only used SKYPE but I do feel that some of the posts were thought-provoking and very well written. What I would say is if people keep on to these companies perhaps more often then maybe something more would be done in terms of accessibility but then again perhaps not.
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15. Jatayu,
I dare say a community wouldn't quite be a community without debates :) Its through the healthy arguments we learn from one another and become better individuals.
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16. Nikola,
To be clear, I don't mean no debates at all, never. But really, my Discord server doesn't mean Discord VS Skype, can you recommend an Android phone doesn't mean IPhone is better, buy that, a problem with Jaws doesn't mean switch to NVDA, those sorts of debates are becoming useless and annoying. If we're having a topic let's discuss chatting apps, that's absolutely fine. Even with how the first post is formulated, there's nothing wrong. The person said that Discord is becoming more accessible, which is a fact. Not more accessible than something, just more accessible than it was before. There were also only comparisons to TeamTalk, not even some other chatting app like what continued above. I'm not trying to prevent anyone from saying their opinion, no rules are broken, I only personally find it very unnecessary. For some reason, the nature of people nowadays seems to be to defend their software at all costs, which is sadly totally useless. The state of software can unfortunately change overnight. I enjoy Discord now, but it could become totally inaccessible tomorrow. This is highly unlikely with their current commitment, but it can happen as a simple bug, just like it's now happening in Skype. To be clear, I am not saying it's now totally inaccessible, but the issues it's facing are nevertheless long standing and inexcusable.
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17. Mrityunjay,
yeah agreed with the last 2 posts. and if only we abstained from uncultured passive agression, how easier it would be, right?
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18. Naday,
I won't make many comments here. I just like Discord, and here was asked about teamtalk and Discord servers. I won't talk about all of the above mentioned topics anymore, but, as a person with a really slow internet, I prefer Discord since if my internet lags, it won't cut my voice as awfully as on teamtalk, and won't kick me right away lol. I like that you can stream music, games, and I like the small community me and my friends have built there. I won't tell what is better than what. I just say what I prefer and I think all of us did so. It's really pointless to always talk of what is better or what not. Everyone will always prefer the worst above better things because there's always going to be a reason that drags them there no matter what. I hope this topic can still be a pacific one.
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19. Ramon-Salazar,
Teamtalk and Discord are good, and regarding Skype I don't use it anymore since it's still slower and somehow became inaccessable.
though according to what I noticed discord which became lately more than just an app for gaming that Every update Discord becomes inaccessible in many things, like before few months ago it was impossible to move between servers and so on though Discord has accessibility team though they don't improve accessibility as soon as possible, or they do but after an update there will be a bug which causes things to be inaccessable again.
Regarding to the sound quality it's perfectly OK, but not like Teamtalk.
Teamtalk which is CONFERENCING app is more better, and it's easier.
Regarding the sound quality you can set a sound quality in each channel, also you can choose between codecs, like Opus speX, and so on, you can choose recording sample rate which is quality and betrate.
For who have bad internet connection they can choose for example 16 KHZ and a betrate of 16000 and so on, depending on the speed.
