zersiax

zersiax, 4 days 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, 4 days 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, 4 days 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, 5 days 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, 5 days 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, 5 days ago

@FluidEscence home, 1 of 46049

zersiax, 6 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, 5 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, 5 days ago

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

zersiax, 5 days ago

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

zersiax, 5 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

zersiax, 6 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, 6 days ago

@nathanhoad Sounds good. Was #accessibility considered?

zersiax, 6 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, 5 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, 5 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, 8 days ago

@FluidEscence don't bother, in a bit elevenLabs is going to blow them aside on the top spot anyway

zersiax, 10 days ago

I'd actually love to hear from actual #deaf or #hardOfHearing folks about what they think of this. It kinda looks gimmicky in a " who asked for this?" kind of way to me, but I'm a #blind person. I don't know if people have been looking for this but I'd really love to learn more :)

zersiax, 10 days ago

@Thomas_domville here's an interesting thought: If those APIs aren't available yet, how did they make that demo video? ...

zersiax, 11 days ago

@stvfrnzl Even without the screen reader angle you'd add a huge amount of extra tabstops if you add the same link 20 times, which is pretty annoying for keyboard users alone. Screen reader users have more tools to dodge around that but if you are navigating by link, particularly on mobile, I'd feel that got pretty annoying as well. I'd limit to 3 at the very most

zersiax, 12 days ago

@svenja @menelion @KaraLG84 haha that last one I remember, almost like somebody tried to make the chats autoRead when new messages come in, but they did the aria-live wrong. The scrolling issue sounds like quickly hopping into browse mode would fix? Certainly not ideal but that's kinda my point. A lot of stuff is far from ideal. If we like it or not, the days of people writing win32 apps that follow all keyboard conventions are unfortunately mostly gone and it's all kinda meh now. Even Windows 11's own apps aren't great without using things like object navigation and OCR sometimes. That is regrettable, but I think I see a lot of people who yell the loudest about things being inaccessible cling to that kind of UI and outside of the occasional blind community app people just don't use those widgets much anymore. It's all QT, or Electron, or whatever Windows calls their new UI this week now :)

zersiax, 12 days ago

@svenja @menelion @KaraLG84 lol yeah, I will admit that I need to (re)learn JAWS better. I find that JAWS has everything documented, but it can be a bit of a chore finding the right guidance sometimes