zersiax

zersiax, 1 day ago

@talon heh, that's good at least. Great example of what I mean though. I remember posts as early as january 2023 where people were essentially saying Wayland was good-ish for general use. We get a rough demo almost 1.5 years later. I think that's a great exhibit A right there :)

zersiax, 1 day ago

I do want to nuance that a little bit. Of course there's people who are working on it, and working very hard at that. And I am super grateful for that work. I am just seeing that, similar to a lot of larger companies I have worked/consulted for, nobody talks to the accessibility folks and they have to clean up the mess everybody else makes in a " oh ... accessibility ... yeah, so we have this bug in component A, and this bug in component B, and until those are fixed we can't do anything so ... sorry, we tried, but we're stuuck" kind of way. Accessibility and security often clash in Linux for example, e.g. Orca can't read x screen, because Orca doesn't have the permissions to read X screen because sensible security precautions which are technically interesting, but at the end of the day, it means a user can't use the screen and they have literally no recourse to get past the blocker.

zersiax, 1 day ago

@talon Right. At this point, I do think it'd be good for me to get more comfy with mac OS again (case and point, I almost typed OS X :P), and i do know a little bit about the Linux desktop due to my forrays into Kali, but even with really simple things like trying to click a "clickable" that isn't a link, and having to use the review cursor for that in Orca last time I tried ...just ... too many productivity hits at the moment

zersiax, 1 day ago

Except when you need #accessibility features. SOrry, not sorry, but at that point it's just shit in the way a well-meaning person grabs an unsuspecting other person by the arm and drags them across the street when really they were just about to turn into their own front door. Inconsistent, generally doesn't do what you want and suddenly fucks off when you need it most. I wish it was better, I really do, but at the moment it really just isn't, and hasn't been for a very long time. Might this be the push for it to actually not suck? I can have dreams, but I sincerely doubt it after what I've seen so far. Generally tends to be a two steps forward, 3 steps back kind of situation. How's Orca with wayland these days?

zersiax, 17 hours ago

@razze oh absolutely. I'm not saying there's not good reasons for some of it, but it is unfortunately a bit of a known thing that GUI accessibility on Linux can just be a god-awful mess where fixing accessibility is concerned. A great example is the calamares installer framework that, to my knowledge, still doesn't let Orca read the installer screens because they run in a privileged process and if you go hunting for issues on why this hasn't been fixed yet, you see issues that are literally open for years because a is waiting for B, only to hear from C that A's solution was terrible to begin with. ALl the while, users are unable to use ANY OS that uses this as its installer, devs can't fix it because they're using it as a dependency and the whole thing comes to a screeching halt until something, or someone, breaks the cycle. I hear one distro, I forget which one, was able to solve this recently, but this was broken since AT LEAST 2018

zersiax, 15 hours ago

@razze Amusingly you actually kinda do :) Android, iOS, mac OS and Windows all have built-in screen readers that (generally) are kept up to date with changes to the OS and its underlying infrastructure. WIndows has a third-party open-source screen reader called NVDA as well so you sorta kinda do :) That flutter web's accessibility is opt-in is, frankly, a terrible move, we've seen this often enough in previous projects that had a similar mechanic :) Not sure what Newton is, and the EAA will probably help up to a point but then, the US has the ADA , section 508 and all that fun stuff and we still get stuff like Notion.so which is a great example of a project that just flat out did not take accessibility into account when starting out and now has a huge amount of work ahead of them to sort it out after the fact, if they even want to, which they say they do but I doubt

zersiax, 4 hours ago

@razze very true. But screen readers are generally at the forefront of using APIs and systems that other assistive tech needs as well, e.g., if a screen reader doesn't work with something, speech recognition will likely have a hard time as well. If you can't tab through a UI, switch control won't do much either etc

zersiax, 17 hours ago

@chikim is there a change log?

zersiax, 17 hours ago

@chikim meh, nevermind, I am dumb. grabbed it from releases page

zersiax, 1 day ago

@miki lol unpopular opinion perhaps but Idon't think I would, necessarily, hate that, provided obviously it's stored safely/responsibly/far away from any corporate machines

zersiax, 3 days ago

But ... but but ... it's #microsoft. Their commitment to #accessibility is beyond reproach! It's what all the articles say and everything. ...Except no, not really, it's been a mess for years and it saddens me

zersiax, 1 day ago

@weirdwriter yt-dlp is a commandline tool. Scary big bad commandline. Still don't think it should be an NVDA addon but there's your answer

zersiax, 1 day ago

@weirdwriter @menelion I mean ...is there really no GUI that is a bit more mainstream that also works? Accessible_anything_pro tends to become accessible_abandoned_pro with an irritating amount of regularity :)

zersiax, 3 days ago

@nathanhoad excellent :) Do keep in mind that for a lot of these, things like game engine choice, code architecture etc. can really help or hinder you there. We generally recommend to keep these things in mind from as early as hoomanly possible. e.g., interfacing with screen readers is either easy orh ard depending on programming language, text is easier to work with than images of text, etc.
Happy to chat some time if you like. Disclaimer: FUlly blind gamer/streamer with a developer background

zersiax, 2 days ago

@nathanhoad that's been sitting there for a while and nobody I know has any clue what the holdup is :) but yeah once that's in text should be handled. Soundstage can help a lot with combat, and something for navigation would have to be devised but I think thats doable

zersiax, 2 days ago

@nathanhoad tough one. A Few Examples:

• Brok the investigator: directional audio cues you walk towards (center sound in stereo field and go forward), + a system where you can navigate through "hotspots" (mostly interactibles) on the screen to autowalk/teleport to.
• Hades: A mod adds ability to teleport to interactibles in the current room.
• WoW Classic: a mod adds a system of routes made out of audio beacons that, when followed accurately, can guide a player from one location to the next.
• The Last of Us: A system that turns the player in the right direction (right being either the next quest objective or an item nearby) when a button is pressed. Idea is to do this regularly to keep on track. Also an audible ping that "bounces off" items (doors, enemies) in order to "aim" the nav assist.
• Stardew: mod adds ability to retrieve your own x/y coords and get a list of important locations/people and their coords. either walk there yourself or have it autowalk

zersiax, 2 days ago

@FluidEscence home, 1 of 46049

zersiax, 3 days ago

@weirdwriter huh. Yeah, I've been watching that project. I've even met the founder, used to work at Microsoft. I like the idea of it, but then, I've also heard that during CSUN, they were touting a prototype that was actually being controlled by a dude with a remote, their FAQ used to state that the device shouldn't cost " more than a smartPhone package", and now we have this deposit scheme ... it all sounds great, but it is starting to look awfully sketchy

zersiax, 2 days ago

@jackf723 @weirdwriter framework had an established reputation though. Existing products. A name people trust already. All we have on these guys is that they've changed their tune on pricing various times, and that they've tricked people into believing hte product is further ahead than it is by having someone control the product with a remote. Not saying it's necessarily bad, but it does not inspire confidence at all

zersiax, 2 days ago

@jackf723 @weirdwriter what else did he make, was he involved with SUno?

zersiax, 2 days ago

@weirdwriter @jackf723 Hmmm ...I mean that was a free app, made on Microsoft's dime so yes, but also, hmm ...

zersiax, 2 days ago

@jackf723 @weirdwriter Not sure. This gadget doesn't seem to really use sound much, its more of a ...yank on your arm to get you to turn the right way kind of concept that I can see