The Braid

Privacy

Last updated 8 September 2026

The Braid holds accessibility content — sign language video, captions, audio description, transcripts — made by the people who need it and attached to the things it belongs to. This page says what we record about the people involved, what we deliberately do not, and how to have your work taken down.

If you are watching, we hold nothing about you

Apps that show you our content — a museum app, a browser extension, a video player — identify themselves to us with a key. They do not identify you, and the interface they use offers no way to. We do not know who watched what.

When such an app asks what content exists for where you are standing, or for a sign your camera read, that question reaches us and is answered. What it contained is never written down. Our request log records which kind of question was asked, which app asked, whether it succeeded and how long it took — there is no field in it for your coordinates, the text you photographed, or your address.

To stop one person exhausting a shared limit, we count requests against a one-way hash of the network address they came from, salted with a value that changes daily. The address itself is never stored, and yesterday’s counts cannot be linked to today’s.

Where you are in a recording stays on your device. Audio recognition, where an app works out what is playing in the room, sends us numeric fingerprints only — never a recording of the room.

If you contribute, we hold what you gave us

Contributing needs an account, because your work is credited to you and because consent has to belong to somebody. We hold:

When you name a recording you do not own as a source, we take an audio fingerprint of it on your own machine and receive only the resulting numbers. The file is not uploaded and we do not keep it.

What is public

Published contributions are public by design — that is the point of the platform. Your display name and organisation appear with your work wherever it is shown, because attribution is required of every app that uses it. Your email address is never shown and never shared.

Withdrawing your work

You can withdraw a recording at any time, from its own page. Withdrawal is not a request we consider; it takes effect immediately. The recording stops being served, and every app that has cached it is required to delete its copy — we publish a list of withdrawn recordings that apps must check each time they start, and the licence they work under obliges them to act on it.

We keep the consent record itself after a withdrawal, including the fact and time of the withdrawal. It is the evidence that the takedown happened, and deleting it would remove the proof.

To have your account and profile removed as well, email us and we will do it.

Who else sees it

We do not sell anything to anybody, and there is no advertising or tracking on this site. Our database and file storage are operated by Supabase, and the site itself is served by Vercel; both hold data on our behalf. Signing in goes through Google, who will know you signed in to The Braid.

Apps that use our content report how much of a recording was played, so that contributors can be credited and eventually paid. Those reports are counted per app and per recording. They carry nothing about the person watching, because the app has nothing about them to carry.

Your rights, and how to reach us

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Under the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act 10173) you may also complain to the National Privacy Commission.

Write to privacy@a11y.media. If writing is not how you would rather ask, say so and we will arrange a signed conversation instead.

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