tairosonloa
commented
2 months ago Hi! Can I get some eyes in this very small PR (16 lines, translations only), please?
This is impeding some visually impaired friends to properly use the app, effectively prohibiting them the access to a more secure and democratic way to communicate.
cc @marissa-signal @pete-signal @elaine-signal @sashaweiss-signal as I saw you submitted commits updating translations since my PR was opened.
Thank you very much, and I'm sorry if I disturbed you somehow.
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Description
Spanish (ES) translations includes some terms like "amigxs" among others, that following with this example, "amigxs" is a gender-inclusive way to write "amigos" ("friends" in Spanish).
This happens because in Spanish, and in opposition to English, most nouns have gender, so certain words can be written in masculine (usually ending in a letter "o") or feminine (usually ending in a letter "a"). Therefore, some Spanish-spoken people that doesn't identify themselves in the binary (masculine or feminine) gender started to replace those "o" and "a" letters with an "x" on wrote text, in an attempt to make them more inclusive to anyone.
However, although there are good intentions in this practice, it ends being less inclusive. The main problem is that those "x" substitutions of "o" and "a" are impossible to pronounce in Spanish, as they are substituting a vowel by a consonant. Therefore, screen readers are unable to read those texts, and makes visual-impaired people harder to use the app without help.
iOS is an ecosystem that always has focused on accessibility, and Signal is an app that is intended to be easy and accessible to all kind of people, so I think this is a good change for the community. Specially, because we'll allow those visual-impaired people that currently are unable to use the app to start having a more secure and privately way to communicate with peers :)
So my change is as follows: I changed all those "x" ending words to their "o" version, that is the masculine one, but also, the common noun gender to use in Spanish when you don't know / cannot know the gender of the person to who is referring or affecting that noun. Also, it's the only grammatically/semantically accepted (correct) way to write/speak Spanish according to the institution that rules and documents the usage and evolution of the Spanish Language in Spain, which is Real Academia Española (aka. RAE).