@fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

fastfinge

@fastfinge@iceshrimp.social

Completely #blind. Lover of #fanfic, especially #HarryPotter #buffy and #MLP #MyLittlePony. I work in #accessibility at Fable. Disclaimer: this is my personal account. My opinions do not reflect those of my employer, or even, sometimes, myself. A hot take that I dashed off here might not be my forever opinion. Formerly https://equestria.social/@fastfinge.

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

pootriarch, (edited ) to lemmy
@pootriarch@eldritch.cafe avatar

deleted_by_author

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    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @pootriarch @ppatel Even reading the issue you posted, that’s just not true. Images in posts already support it via markdown. Posts that are image urls will get an alt text field at the time of thumbnail generation. But in the meantime it could go in the post body. The lack of alt text was an artifact of Reddit culture moving to Lemmy, and the Lemmy software still being half baked. Even now, Lemmy offers more support for alt text than the absolute zero offered by Reddit. As a mod of r/blind on Reddit, and the admin of rblind.com on Lemmy, I know whereof I speak.

    fastfinge, to random
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    So thanks to Chad, the espeak crackling issue on IOS can be fixed by increasing word gap to over 15. But that adds other exciting issues. But I did learn from him that the rate slider in the app is the way to get word boost. So that's nice. Now I just need to decide: do I want the weird eloquence dictionary issues on IOS, or do I want the weird espeak crackling or chopping issues on IOS? This entire journey started because one of my Windows sound devices doesn't like the eloquence default samplerate, and does really strange things to it. Also, people have worked so hard to make espeak into a fast, free, open, and high speed intelligible synth. But we're all just stuck on eloquence. I feel a duty to try and abandon it every once in a while. So some good things about espeak: it's much easier to hear with music or audio going in the background. It's much easier to understand two espeak voices speaking at once, even if they're the same variant; when eloquence does this they both just mush together for me sometimes.

    fastfinge, to random
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    So just isn't workable for me. Over three quarters of my goodreads import failed with "could not find a match for book". Not useful.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @ramblingreaders Right. But I’m not willing to update several thousand titles one by one, when each title requires me to fill out dozens of fields. It’s just not practical. And some of the fields like original publish date might require intensive research. And as a blind user, I don’t have cover art or know where to get it. I loathe Goodreads, but this just isn’t a workable alternative. If it would just add the books it can’t find that would at least help me migrate my profile.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @ramblingreaders So how is data integrity maintained? Is data pulled from other instances? Manually importing my missing books will take weeks of work. I’m just not convinced it’s worth it at this point.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @ramblingreaders So if your instance isn’t well connected, nobody will benefit from your work, and you can’t leverage the work of others?

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @ramblingreaders Right, but my instance can only find a book on another instance if it knows that instance exists. This feels like the mastodon hashtag problem all over again. But worse because it’ll result in duplicate entries for many books, with different ratings. So eventually everyone will centralize on the instance with the best data. There’s also a massive legality issue. What if I set up an instance that scrapes Amazon, in violation of the TOS, and your instance imports from mine? Building a decent decentralized book database is a massive problem that seems like it requires multiple people with PHDs in library and computer science to solve, and only seems harder the longer I think about it. From my perspective as a random user with a reading library going back 20 years, bookwyrm seems to have solved none of these problems, and thus isn’t a safe place to store my reading. I don’t feel safe on Goodreads either, but at least I export regular backups.

    fastfinge, to random
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    As I download a large file, I can't help but reflect that it's currently downloading over the Internet faster than my first ethernet network (10 mbps) could copy files locally. Sure, I had dialup and other bad things back in the pre-ethernet days. But it just feels amazing that other than a change in shape of the router and modem, if you showed my middle school self my current network, the only apparent physical difference is that the ethernet cables are a bit thicker. It's still ethernet, it's still Cable Internet, everything still hooks up the same way. And yet, it's over a hundred times faster! I can't think of any other computing technology where that's true.

    aardrian, to random
    @aardrian@toot.cafe avatar

    Navigate text fields with virtual cursor in NVDA:
    ⌨️ Press E

    Navigate text fields with virtual cursor in JAWS:
    ⌨️ Press E

    Navigate text fields with virtual cursor in VoiceOver:
    ⌨️ Call a friend over and use their hand to help press Caps Lock + Ctrl + Option + ⌘ + J

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @aardrian Not entirely true. You can turn on first letter quick nav with voiceover q. The problem I have with voiceover is that between first letter quick nav, arrow key quick nav, the rotor, and interaction levels, voiceover requires me to do so much state tracking that I’m never sure exactly what will happen when I press a key. Worse, sometimes voiceover automatically changes these states for me based on what it thinks I need, without notification. Narrator shares this problem, as it wildly toggles scan mode off and on when I switch apps. But at least that always makes a sound.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @aardrian That’s true. And VO defaults are so bad! Why is the touchpad commander so deeply hidden? It could really help new Mac users who already understand the phone. Sigh. I have strong opinions on Mac VO because there’s an excellent screen reader trapped in there screaming to get out.

    evilcookies98, to random
    @evilcookies98@dragonscave.space avatar

    After reading the ballad of songbirds and snakes, I have decided that apparently all you need to do to name your characters is to write random words. Anybody interested in reading a book about a dude named empty box?

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @evilcookies98 No no. As someone who loves fantasy and science fiction, I know that all you need to do to name a character is mash your keyboard randomly. My new book about Poiqkrgjynvmyt Okrlpefmtijg is going to be a best seller! I'm a little worried about the audiobook though, so I've decided that name is actually pronounced Vorvorvov Zargzaxanad. I'm sure that'll be much easier for the narrator.

    Bri, to random

    So for those who use this particular version of Unspoken, my fork has just been updated to support 2024.1, thanks to @fastfinge. https://github.com/Brynify/Unspoken/releases/0.9.7

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @Bri @jackf723 @fastfinge I depend on this for work, but I don’t need any new features. So I just did the absolute minimum required to keep it working, and thought I’d share.

    fastfinge, to mastoblind
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    So born directly out of my IRC client updating, rblind now has an IRC server. The announcement lives here: rblind.com/post/2584249 @mastoblind

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @mastoblind This is entirely @seedy who should be blamed for making me touch adispeak again. LOL JK

    fastfinge, to iOS
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    Any clients on with ? @main @mastoblind

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @main @mastoblind FYI, Igloo seems to be the answer.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @seedy @main @mastoblind Eh, it's the only IRC client on IOS updated in the last three years. Got anything better?

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @seedy @main @mastoblind Do you mean on Igloo? If you hit rearrange on the toolbar at the bottom, the button label should change to "done". Then the add network button will work.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @seedy @main @mastoblind There should be a toolbar at the bottom of the window, with settings, etc. If you press settings, once the rearrange button is pressed, it should give you an add network option.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @seedy @mastoblind HHuh. Odd. What IOS? It seems to be working here.

    fastfinge, to random
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    has come so far since I touched server administration last. You can now log in with an SSL cert. Multiple clients can connect to one account and the messages all get synchronized. You can choose to stay online even when all your clients are disconnected, and the server will just deliver all your messages next time you connect, without requiring znc or other third party software. ChanServ and NickServ are now built-in to the server, rather than being another software package that needs running and configuring. Reactions, replies, in-line images, presence detection, emoticons, roles, and so-on are all here. The only real issue these days is you still have to know your usermodes and chanmodes and servermodes and they're all single letter case-sensitive flags because reasons. But that's entirely the clients fault. These should be checkboxes, not just an edit box for typing letters into. For that matter, clients need to get better at detecting what login types the server offers, and not requiring you to pick one of 11 different available options. We really don't need xmpp and matrix and the dozens of open source federated discord replacements. We just need a good IRC client that's easy to use and fully supports IRCV3.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @simon Ergo. You can play with one at rblind.com.

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @simon Thunder on iOS for Lemmy. No idea about kbin.

    fastfinge, to accessibility
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    For @seedy and anyone else who might want it, here's the latest working build of AdiSpeak. I updated it to the latest beta and made sure the things still seem to work. If you still use , this is the talking client you want.
    cdn.iceshrimp.social/assets/8c33a797-5d6a-4484-b8aa-212571b49abe

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @objectinspace @seedy Eh. It's a thing I wrote for a client I don't use for a protocol I don't interact with. I'm not exactly putting a lot of time in.

    julia, to writing

    I am people to their posts like . It doesn't help , it just harms .

    fastfinge,
    @fastfinge@iceshrimp.social avatar

    @hosford42 @julia @Chozo I usually hear folks saying not to do this because screen readers. As a blind screen reader user myself, inline hashtags aren’t a problem for me, and I always use them. I hadn’t considered ADHD. I wish folks spent just a bit less time worrying about screen readers and a bit more time worrying about other disabilities. As far as I’m concerned, if it has alt text, screen readers will be fine.

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