devinprater

@devinprater@tweesecake.social

I am blind. Because of course I have to mention it in my profile. Accessibility drives me. I use all the major operating systems in some way, and find great things about all of them. I also enjoy reading, eating, relaxing, eating more, and chatting. I want to be a cat when I grow up.

My opinions are my own, and definitely do not reflect those of my employer.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Brynify, to random
@Brynify@dragonscave.space avatar

Meh. I is sad.

devinprater,

@Brynify offers hugs

devinprater, to ai

Well, we've reached AGI y'all.

A country song about kittens drinking water from the sink.
country twangy playful[Verse]
Well, I woke up this mornin' just before the dawn
Headed to the kitchen, needed coffee to be on
But what I saw, darlin', almost made me stop in my tracks
A trio of kittens, drinkin' water from the sink, my heart did crack

[Chorus]
Kittens in the sink, they're so cute it hurts (ooh-yeah)
Tiny paws dippin', splishin', splashing all around (splish-splash)
Kittens in the sink, oh it warms my soul (warm my soul)
Gonna savor this moment and let the love overflow (overflow)

devinprater, to random

A fat man, eating chips, making nom, nom, nom noises as he happily crunches on chips.

News report: Chip shortage looms as NVIDIA tries to keep up with demand!

Fat guy continues to nom nom nom on chips. The bag is half way empty.

News report: Here are ten ways to make your new computer last through the chip shortage!

Nom nom nom nom! The bag is two thirds of the way empty.

News report: And it's very important that we all practice digital hygene, to prolong the use of our devices during the chip crisis.

Nom nom nom nom... The bag is empty. The camera pulls back to show me, with a full tummy. A Wi-fi entenna pokes against the inside of my tummy, making a little round bumpt appear on the outside. People crowd around me, their phones pointed at my belly, soaking up the strange energy. I plunge my hand into the bag once more, but find no more chips.

Kaliah, to random

My family member was leaving the house and talking to me, this happened:

Me: I'll let you leave now, don't want to make you late.
Member: Alright, See you later.
Me: K, bye.
Member: Good night. Have a good day.
Me: You too... Wait... Good night, did you just say good night?
Member: Yeah, Yeah I did. Shows you I'm tired and need sleep.

This interaction took place at 6:00 this morning, for context

devinprater,

@Kaliah Sounds like something I'd say.

MariahL, to random

Looking for another media player that'll allow me to directly cast to a single google device or a group of them like VLC does. For some reason VLC has this bad habit of losing connectionn and in the case of a playlist with a bunch of things in it, reconnecting and jumping around in said list. I've had to constantly restart vlc and its cast session and I'm not sure why.

devinprater,

@MariahL @jamminjerry Oh my, I bet Graphic Audio sounds amazing on some good speakers.

devinprater,

@MariahL @jamminjerry Lol I can just imagine it. That booming voice at the beginning. "Graphic, audio." The windows vibrate. "A movie," the windows crack. "In your mind!" The world jitters and hums with that base note.

devinprater, to accessibility

A little dream of mine.

I sit down at my workstation, and pull out my laptop. I've had this thing for years now, still my HP laptop, AMD processor, upgraded to 64 GB RAM though so I could run a bigger image describer. I open the lid, and a little musical thing plays, letting me know the machine is awake and ready to go. I hear "Lock screen. Enter your password," then a little pen scratching sound, letting me know I'm in an edit field. I type in my password, hearing reassuring clicks to let me know both that I'm typing, and that the text I'm entering is securely hidden behind stars.

I press Enter. A little click sounds to let me know I'd successfully unlocked my Linux computer. I start working on my next thing. A little soundscape plays in the background, according to what I'm doing, to keep me focused and to add a little liveliness to my day. Audio animations play when a menu bar pulls down, or a dialog box opens, or a button is pressed. Of course, it's all configurable.

I open the software center, and navigate to the accessible apps category. I sort it by newly added with a hotkey, and then arrow down the list. A few new apps since a week ago! I arrow right to the tags to make sure they're blind accessible, and they are! I remember now that I'd tested one myself, after the automated checks succeeded. I downloaded them by pressing space on their checkboxes, then Alt + D for Download. Simple. I put my finger on my USB Fingerprint sensor, and the installation happened. A chipper tune played to let me know a success dialog opened, and the screen reader read it out to me. I closed the software center, and hit Super to arrow to the new apps I'd not already reviewed for , ready to explore them. A gentle chime reminded me of something I needed to work on. I quickly opened a new reminder with a system-wide keyboard command, added a reminder to check out those apps, and opened the notification for the thing I was actually supposed to work on.

devinprater,

@quetzatl Not once.

devinprater, to accessibility

You know, I hear some talk of getting rid of techno-utopianism, of getting rid of the corporations, but what else is there? Linux, where no screen reader works with touch screens so no mobile Linux for us, where the best desktop for us blind people is Mate, with no notification center, where if you have Braille enabled, and quit any app that isn't GTK based, Orca gets lost in the middle of nowhere? Maybe that bug has been fixed, but for like a year or more, it wasn't. And yes, I know the Orca maintainer has been doing tons more work on Orca lately, and Gnome now has a blind person working on a new way of doing accessibility on the desktop. But I keep coming back to that Fedora meeting, where the tools were really hard to use so that I could barely participate in being one of the few blind people there that has even a finger on the wheel to steer a thing that should be about us. And I don't feel like a group of sighted, able people can make this new vision of computing, a sort of community-lead thing, any better than Linux. I mean, we have communities. And there's still images without Alt-text. There's still Linux live images that don't even have Orca on it. These distro communities still expect blind people, which have been thrust aside for the past 20 years, to come to them with their... feedback. Such a clinical word that's become.

Look, even if it's a community from the bottom up, who's at the bottom? I assure you, it won't be blind people. And if you splenter up that community and tell us to make our own distros, well, we've tried that. Vinux, Sonar, F123, Blinux. All gone. You know which distros support us the most? Debian/Ubuntu, Mint, and Arch. With Fedora you still have to enable accessibility variables last time I checked around V37 or 38.

When you say "everyone," what do you mean by that? Your group? Your group and adjacent groups? All people? Do you know about all people? Do you know about blind people? Or Deaf people?

devinprater,

@dennou_reijuu19 Linux isn't much better though. They're only now starting to consider listening to us. And they've not even gotten to a point where they're actively looking for feedback. I mean, at least Windows works for a lot of what we need. I mean I know a lot of that is scripts from the screen readers but goodness, we have tools on Windows. Games. Book readers. All kinds of stuff.

devinprater,

@dennou_reijuu19 I agree with that. But what do we replace it with? I mean, "communities" aren't really that much better. Everyone has something way more important to work on than accessibility.

devinprater,

@dennou_reijuu19 That would be nice. But that would mean we'd have to be noticed, not just by individual developers, but by whole communities. And keep being noticed. And that it's not just one blind person doing all the work.

lunarwolf_howls, to random

funny. self care says take a nap, but taking naps is frowned upon by the ex-friends. go figure.

devinprater,

@lunarwolf_howls I say any time is nap time. of course, people at work don't like that, even when I'm on break lol.

devinprater, to workersrights

So, please boost for reach if you can. I have to do something about all the stress from work. Our workplace has what appears to be an Employee assistance program/service. Like, counselling and such. Does anyone have any experience with EAP's, or EAS? Is their confidentiality for real, or have any of you found them leaking info to your bosses and such? I just, can't keep going like this.

devinprater, to random

Auto-Cat

Brynify, to random
@Brynify@dragonscave.space avatar

This human is still awake. Why? Who even knows. :D

devinprater,

@Brynify yay kitten!

devinprater, to random

There should be a social network called Meeper, where a post is a "meep", and "remeeps," and "meepmeeps," are replies, oh, "remeeps" are reposts, and such. I think it'd be funny.

devinprater,

@GroundedWren Mmm, either one. I like roadrunner, but others might like that other thing. :)

devinprater, to books

Does anyone know of some good books where the hero, or main character, is fat? I don't mean like a few curves, I mean a big belly and such. And I don't mean the one I found just now, called "Heavy (The Weight Of It All): A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure" by Thorn, J.J. It's really like, I mean, why even have a fat character if he's gonna lose all the fat within, like, the first chapter? And why does it always have to be a guy?

I'm into Sci-fi, fantasy, LitRPG's, and a bit of horror.

devinprater,

@hendric Hmm, were the hobbits actually fat? Hmm, well I guess so. Huh, I didn't think of that.

simon, to random

For those of you who read ebooks on smartphones, what are you using these days? Applies to both Android and iOS. I mostly still have success with VoiceDream but it is sometimes quite broken in stupid ways. Also, I know there are a few options for Android but haven't tested all of them, and with the purchase of a tiny little media player phone, I'm curious how people are doing this. I have audiobooks covered on both platforms with Book Player and Smart Audiobook Player, (though I'm still always curious what other people use), but ebooks are harder to get right. I especially want to retain the headset control that VoiceDream has—basically, I want ebooks to act like audiobooks, play in the background, respond to headset/media buttons, etc. I know EasyReader can do this, I think Speech Central also can.

devinprater,

@simon Voice Dream, Kindle, and the Apple Books app sometimes. On Android, I used AtVoice TTS, Kindle, and rarely, Play Books.

FreakyFwoof, to harrypotter

I'm restarting my new/favourite #HarryPotter #Fanfic thread here, since #BirdSite is well, that... Let's start with this incredible thing, which is keeping me so engrossed that I cannot put it down, other than to type this. I will add to the thread with subsequent reads, and perhaps some old favourites.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11651617/1/A-Tale-of-a-Tail

devinprater,

@MariahL @FreakyFwoof @BrailleScreen I don't think that's bad. I mean, I've found a few cool ones, like Bassalisk born, and ones that are really dark, where Harry goes all revenge mode after being time traveled and makes himself a horcrux, all that. But yeah I really like it.

devinprater,

@MariahL @FreakyFwoof @BrailleScreen Hmm. Oh yeah. Harem ones. I just can't do it. I don't want a harem. I can barely deal with one girl full of energy and wanting to go places and go go go, let alone like 3 or 4 or 10 or over 9000. So yeah the harem ones. I don't think I'd like DraMione either. Ugh Eloquence doesn't say it right. Draco and Hermione. But I've not read one yet either so I try not to judge those too much. And honestly spelling and grammar errors get to me a little, but I don't worry about those too much. After all, I have trouble keeping tenses correct in anything I write, going from present to past tense and such.

devinprater,

@MariahL @FreakyFwoof @BrailleScreen Oh my goodness, I hope I don't have that one saved. That sounds just... Ugh.

devinprater,

@FreakyFwoof @jdking92 @BrailleScreen @MariahL There are some amazing novelizations of video games too. Like Chrono Trigger, Zelda, Final Fantasy, all that awesome stuff. Oh and Silent Hill 2. Guy jumps into his own grave which acts as a portal. Pretty awesome!

devinprater,

@jdking92 @FreakyFwoof @MariahL @BrailleScreen And if you want an EPUB, or zipped HTML or something, fichub.net.

devinprater,

@SwordArtStreamer @MariahL @FreakyFwoof @BrailleScreen Yeah, Hermione is awesome.

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