matt

@matt@toot.cafe

Software developer, formerly at Microsoft, now leader of the AccessKit open-source project (https://accesskit.dev/) and cofounder of Pneuma Solutions (https://pneumasolutions.com/). My current favorite programming language is Rust, but I don't want to make that part of my identity.

Music lover. Karaoke singer. Science fiction fan. Visually impaired (legally blind). Secular humanist

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

yatil, to random
@yatil@yatil.social avatar

Two days ago, a stone was thrown onto the window of a housing unit for people with disabilities in Mönchengladbach, Germany. The stone had “euthanasia is the solution” written on it.

It’s clearly a right-wing neo-Nazi attack, considering that the Nazis used to systematically kill disabled people which they deemed unworthy to live.

There has not been an appropriate outrage. Ableism is still very common in Germany, and the Nazi history is a reason for it.

Nazis raus!

https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/rheinland/angriff-wohnheim-moenchengladbach-100.html

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

I wrote about a common misconception I see people have about LLM tools like ChatGPT

Training is not the same as chatting: ChatGPT and other LLMs don’t remember everything you say

https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/29/training-not-chatting/

scottjehl, to accessibility
@scottjehl@mstdn.social avatar

This looks awesome. I just backed Eventably, a project by @karlgroves to create an accessible event management platform (planning, ticketing, execution, analysis, etc). Just read their testimonials to see reasons why this is sorely needed. The campaign has 17 days left! Help make it happen!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eventably

glyph, to random
@glyph@mastodon.social avatar

New Blog: A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle https://blog.glyph.im/2024/05/grand-unified-ai-hype.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

afewbugs, to random
@afewbugs@social.coop avatar

"Just use Linux" is much like "just ride a bike" or "just shop at a refill store" - accessing the non default option can be time consuming, expensive or unavailable locally. We need to recognise you need a certain degree of privilege to have the capacity to complicate your life voluntarily. We need to be trying to make the better, harder thing more accessible, not blaming people for not using it.

datajake1999, to random

the existence of C-level employees implies the existence of Assembly-level, Python-level, and Java-level employees.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

The deskilling of web dev is harming the product but, more importantly, it's damaging our health – this is why burnout happens: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-deskilling-of-web-dev-is-harming-us-all/

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

A public service announcement with an expiration date: if you've loved my writing and science, I have a book proposal+sample chapter out on submission right now. The pitch is "The Psychology of Software Teams": a general audience, warmly human, accessible book for teams, leaders, and curious minds, filled to the brim with practitioner stories AND the new empirical social science of technology innovation. 🙌❤️

Let me know if you know editors who might be interested in this uniquely cool project.

fedora, to fedora
@fedora@fosstodon.org avatar

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we want to recognize the work being done on accessibility by @matt as part of the @gnome Foundation. He is the lead for @accesskit and is currently working on Newton, a Wayland-oriented solution for assistive technologies that can modernize accessibility on the Linux desktop!

➡️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9psDfEFf9c

bitprophet, (edited ) to random
@bitprophet@social.coop avatar

You know a conference cares about its marginalized attendees when a random short elevator ride includes not one, but two stenographers. Was too shy to say hello, but if y'all see this, you are APPRECIATED.

ETA: the stenographers were /using/ the elevator, they were not /doing stenography/ at the time 🤣

starshine, to random
@starshine@woem.space avatar

honestly both light and dark mode are fucking accessibility options at this point. if your Brand Identity requires you to only offer one, or worse, you lock it behind a fucking premium subscription, go fuck yourself

NVAccess, to accessibility
@NVAccess@fosstodon.org avatar

This Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we have something special to share! @github made a movie about our founders Mick & Jamie & the story of not only NVDA, but also OSARA. Two life-changing open-source projects. Both actively providing access & employment to blind people around the world.

Read the article here: https://github.com/readme/featured/nvda-coding-accessibility-software-blind

Watch the video (with AD) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-y3yomLLSk

#GAAD #NVDA #NVDAsr #Accessibility #Employment #Empowering #ScreenReader #FOSS #OpenSource

nekohayo, to accessibility
@nekohayo@mastodon.social avatar

There's a nice article out there by @jzb summarizing @matt's recent presentation on his work on and "Newton", the new architecture for and the future of & for assistive technologies: https://lwn.net/Articles/971541/

jcsteh, to accessibility

GitHub produced a great mini documentary about my work with @michaeldcurran, Scott Chesworth and others to create both and .
With audio description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-y3yomLLSk
Without audio description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L076ngGbBRc&t=0s

brianhartgen, to random
@brianhartgen@tweesecake.social avatar

I agree with this. Having human narrators has always been, and will continue to be, a good thing. But if this new technology could make the difference between us having access to a book faster, or even older books, with natural sounding speech, that could be worth doing. Quoting Lulu Hartgen: I just read an interesting article about AI voices making audiobooks possible more quickly at lower costs, especially for self-publishing authors. I agree basically with what it says, which is that an AI voice can never replicate human immotions in the way that a real person can. Having said that, I did some experiments with Eleven Labs when I first heard about it with stuff I'd been writing, and while it's far from perfect, it didn't do a bad job, and I gave it passages where a lot of expression is needed because I wanted to test it. A human reader of course could do way better, but the result I got didn't sound like a machine or a speech synthesizer reading a screen, and to be able to have a book in audio at the same time everyone else can read it without having to wait three, six months, maybe even more is a good thing in my book. Also, I've heard readings of audiobooks by real people that I wouldn't have made a dog listen to and deeply resent having had to pay Audible's prices for! So I think there's going to be a place for AI narators in the future for sure, and I'd like to see a lot of the dreadful, awful, hopeless narators in the industry forced to do something different, if I'm honest. @lulu_bear

sonny, to GNOME
@sonny@floss.social avatar

Got very excited by @matt demo of AccessKit integration in #GTK

AccessKit is a cross-platform abstraction for accessibility infrastructure written in Rust.

His work will bring a11y support for GTK on macOS and Windows as well as for the new accessibility architecture on Linux code-named "Newton".

https://github.com/AccessKit/accesskit

https://blogs.gnome.org/a11y/2023/10/27/a-new-accessibility-architecture-for-modern-free-desktops/

#GNOME #rustlang #accessibility #a11y #Linux #Windows #macOS

Lottie, to ai
@Lottie@beige.party avatar

I see a lot of people ‘apologizing’ for using – I am not going to be doing that. Not now and not ever.
We need to have a conversation about how these models have been trained and how they are used going forward, but shaming disabled people for taking any chance they can to mitigate some of the challenges they face in their lives every day, is a ‘privilege’ we don’t all enjoy.
When you post an image and choose not to add alt text, publish an inaccessible PDF, release an inaccessible app - these are all choices! Maybe a tiny part of the righteous outrage that some of these people are spewing could be aimed at that?

alexhall, to random

I tried Be My AI on a restaurant menu. I was initially impressed--it told me the items on each side of the two-page menu, identifying the names and some options. For instance, it said there were baskets, which options I could get, and what all baskets come with. It mentioned a chicken melt, so I asked for more details. Grilled chicken, Swiss cheese, and grilled onions on rye. The only problem? That chicken melt didn't exist. It made up the name, then made up details when I asked for more info.

mekkaokereke, (edited ) to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Reminder for underrepresented folk feeling sad discovering that some of the "founders" of Open Source are also open eugencists. Don't feel so sad! Because a lot of founders of Open Source are openly and vocally disdainful of those eugenicists, racists, and other bigots. ♥️👍🏿

There are a lot of different personalities in Open Source. And given the demographics of what OSS looked like back in the days, the percentage of bigots is higher than the public at large.

1/N

mekkaokereke,
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Hateful people are usually much louder then the rest of us, so it can seem like there are many times more of them than there really are. And they can do a lot of lasting damage. I don't want to understate their harm.

But...

By number, there are a lot more good people than hateful people.

nolan, to random

Nice, been working on this post and project for a bit over a month and a half, with the big move in between of course. Glad it finally went live.

I built an open source image description service which will eventually get its own NVDA addon, and is of course hosted on fly.io. fly.io/blog/llm-image-descript…

talon, to random
@talon@dragonscave.space avatar

Hey if Sonos can just up and screw their UI then I can just up and decide to never use them for future speakers. Time to check the resale value of this garbage in case they can't fix the UI accessibility like yesterday.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@nick has replaced its app not because they truly think the app is better. But because they can replace specialised Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS teams with one generic team who know how to use cross-platform tools.

It goes beyond that, though. Look at the ideas behind the new home screen, which essentially can be described as: "put what you want on it". Is that primarily a user-facing improvement? No.

Rather, it's a reason to not rely on designers who can carefully think through information architecture, viewport sizes, user flows, and the best ways to present information. Make it the user's problem so that they can fire the people whose responsibility it used to be, or move them to another team where they won't be able to do their best work and will eventually quit and not be replaced.

This update goes way beyond . It's a fundamental shift in how they do business, and it will be shit for everyone. That, more than the lack of support, is what will probably cause me to move away from their ecosystem.

@x0 @simon @talon

verge, to random
@verge@mastodon.social avatar

The new Sonos app is missing a lot of features, and people aren’t happy https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/24151704/sonos-new-app-bad-reviews-missing-features

glyph, to random
@glyph@mastodon.social avatar

New Blog: Hope https://blog.glyph.im/2024/05/hope.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

aiju, to random
@aiju@chaos.social avatar

“do you know ascii code 7?”
“yea, that rings a bell.”

acarson, to random
@acarson@babka.social avatar

Everyone keeps talking about bringing back the old web, and honestly maybe I'm missing something, but it never went away. I'm still using it thanks to an RSS reader and a personal website.

Granted, it's way less popular than it was when it was in its hayday, but it's still here. So go use it.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • cisconetworking
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • Durango
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • thenastyranch
  • love
  • kavyap
  • tacticalgear
  • tester
  • provamag3
  • khanakhh
  • ngwrru68w68
  • everett
  • osvaldo12
  • rosin
  • cubers
  • GTA5RPClips
  • normalnudes
  • modclub
  • ethstaker
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • JUstTest
  • All magazines
    •