pixelate

pixelate, 3 months ago to random

From the Orca mailing list:

Greetings,

I am a voluntary developer on the Mumble VoIP project. Over the past one and a half years I have been trying to improve the overall accessibility of the software and slowly chipping away on the quirks and problems that the Qt toolkit sadly has in that regard.

Now, I finally have a version that I would consider "decent". I have been using Orca and keyboard navigation to test my changes. However, I am not a screen reader myself and thus I fear that I do not necessarily grasp all the needs and problems users might have.

That is why I hope that some Mumble users are reading this mail and are willing and able to test the changes before they eventually make it in a proper release.

You can find the GitHub pull request and specifically my post where I explain the caveats here: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/pull/5984#issuecomment-1902739372

Please note that I might be slow to respond to mails

Kind Regards

pixelate, 28 days ago to accessibility

Please boost for reach if this kind of stuff interests you. Will post more on this later.

Once upon a time, there was a cool emulator frontend called Retroarch. This emulator wasn't accessible until I and a few other gamers went to them and asked about adding accessibility. An amazing person known as BarryR made it happen. Now, if you turn on accessibility mode in settings, or pass the "--accessibility" (or something like that) flag on the command line, you get spoken menus, including the emulator's pause menu, good for saving states and such. Then, using PIL and other image processing Python utilities, running a server and hooking into Retroarch, the script allowed players to move around the map, battle, talk to NPC's, ETC. The only problem was, no one wanted to test it. The blind gaming community pretty much spoke, saying that we want new games. We want cool new, easy accessibility. So that's what we have no, follow the beacon or get sighted help in the case of diablo and such. It's sad, but meh. It's what we wanted I guess. No Zelda for us. So, this is about as far as he got:

To expand on what devinprater was saying: I am working on an accessibility pack/service for Final Fantasy 1 for the NES (this was what was shown in the latest RetroArch update). The idea is similar to how Pokemon Crystal access works, but it's using the RetroArch AI Service interface to do so.
Right now, the FF1 access service is mostly done, but I need more testers to try it out and give me feedback on how it's working. Right now, you can get up to the point where you get the ship, but there's no code to deal with how the ship moves, so that still needs to be done. Likewise with the airship later on.
The service works the latest version of RetroArch, on linux and mac, but not windows. This is due to how nvda reads out the text and until the next major update to nvda (which will have a feature to fix this), it'll have to wait. If you have those, I (or maybe devinprater) can help you set it up on mac/linux to test out. The package itself is available at: https://ztranslate.net/download/ff1_pac … zip?owner=

#accessibility #finalFantasy #RetroArch #blind #emulator #emulation #Python #ai #ML #MachineLearning

pixelate, 3 months ago to accessibility

So, Envision is doing this survey. It says to choose my country. I can't type U N to search ahead to United States. I can't hit the End key to move any nearer to it. So I closed the tab. I do not have time for AT companies that can't test any outgoing communications, or media, or surveys, or whatever, for accessibility.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSczjnJdRPjfkjUIy-DypeIQMf6aBuLio1U1NuQOQ8gfO_zCPw/viewform

#Envision #accessibility

pixelate, 3 months ago to random

From the Orca mailing list:

Hey all.

The GNOME Foundation, in collaboration with the Sovereign Tech Fund, has
sponsored the contribution of Spiel support to Orca. Spiel is a new
speech synthesis API that works with eSpeak and Piper, with other
synthesizers planned.

Orca still uses speech-dispatcher by default, and I have no plans to
remove Orca's use of speech-dispatcher. But having a second option is
always a nice thing. And now you can give Spiel a try as this feature
just landed in Orca's main branch. Orca's README.md file has
instructions on what you need to do.

Feedback and questions are welcome. But please note that the developer
who contributed this change is (AFAIK) not on this mailing list. Thus
the best place to file bugs is in Orca's gitlab repo, where I can assign
them to that developer.

Happy testing!
--joanie

pixelate, 2 months ago to random

From Applevis, which follows my thoughts on things like this perfectly!

> Some have claimed there will always be bugs. As someone with 30 years experience in the software industry, I would like to clarify this misconception.
If you develop software with clear goals and a solid functional spec, it is easy to produce a bug free product. On the other hand, If software is treated like a blob of malleable butter that you can barnacle new marketing-driven features onto with each release with no clear long-term roadmap, then the underlying integrity of the software, if there ever was any, will oxodize like iron in the rain. Bugs aren't an inherent consequence of software, but they might be an inherent consequence of corporate and engineering process decisions.
Someone asked me where I got the idea that there are no bugs in the UI designed for sighted people. I submit it as given. There are no cases where a sighted user would tap or select a function visually and somehow activate an entirely different item. If this were the case, it would be identified early on and resolved before release. Yet VoiceOver focus is a constant issue in both MacOS and iOS, in which focus is announced for a particular item, users perform an action on that item, then discover the action was performed on some other item. Sighted users never encounter controls that are invisible; but VoiceOver users constantly encounter controls without labels. Sighted users never move there mouse to the left only to see the mouse pointer move to the right. The sighted WIMP UI is basically unchanged for 40 years with trillions of man-hours of testing. I'll repeat what I said before. The sighted UI doesn't have any bugs.

https://applevis.com/forum/accessibility-advocacy/apple-employees-aren-t-using-accessibility-full-time

pixelate, 25 days ago to random

Oh my gosh why can't book stores use freaking headings! One heading per book result! Jesus! Is it that freaking hard?

pixelate, 3 months ago to accessibility

So uh, the Mac has this interactive fiction client, called Spatterlight. And it’s amazingly accessible! Anyone with a Mac should seriously check this out. It even has Voiceover actions!

#accessibility #macOS #apple #InteractiveFiction #Spatterlight

https://github.com/angstsmurf/spatterlight

pixelate, 2 months ago to accessibility

Dear Microsoft, "Sso_account_selected" is not an image description, it's more like a filename. Yes, I did notice the underscores in it, thank you very much for not even giving a damn enough to remove them. Now, what was that about #accessibility being in their DNA? This is in their brand new Copilot app. There's no, absolutely no, excuse of an old code base, or an old project manager that can't spend time on that A eleven y stuff, or even that there wasn't any resources on building accessible chat experiences before the project began. And this is in the sign in screen. This isn't some out of the way corner of the app.

As a community, we have got to not settle for being second, or even third, class cizizens of a medium that, in theory, we should be thriving in. The web, mobile devices, digital interfaces; these corporations have zero excuses.

#Microsoft #accessibility #bl

pixelate, 2 months ago to random

Crap, tried to hit Windows + R, then type NVDA, and then Enter, and ended up replying to someone instead. Wow.

pixelate, 1 month ago to random

Samsung email subject line: Devin, that extra TV won't be available forever.

Me: Extra TV? I don't even have one! Lol, ads just don't work on me.

pixelate, 14 days ago to accessibility

It's June 10, 2024, at 4:00 PM Central US time. Almost every blind person that owns an iPhone has installed the iOS 18 beta. Some are playing retro games with the new, AI driven screen recognition. Others are gladly using DecTalk as their main voice, the Enhanced Siri voices that use ML to speak using emotion and context, as their reading voice, Eloquence as their notification voice (sent to one ear to minimize distractions), and finding it amazing that VoiceOver emphasizes italic text, and emboldens bold text. Others are finding it amazing that they can navigate their whole phone using Braille screen input, searching to find things by typing a few letters, or just swiping down through everything. A few are connecting their multi-line Braille displays, and feeling app icons and images, made much more understandable through touch, using an AI filter.

The next day, when news of all these features filters down to Android users, they quickly begin hammering Google, wanting DecTalk and Eloquence on their Pixel phones, like iOS users have. But Google is silent as always, only just now having given Chromebook users high quality Google TTS voices.

Note: great liberty has been taken to imagine the coolest outcome for the vague feature announcements Apple gave for VoiceOver users. We'll see just how cool, or not, they actually are on June 10.

#accessibility #apple #google #VoiceOver #blind #iOS #android

pixelate, 1 month ago to random

Writers, try having TTS read your work. Can you tell what’s wrong with this line?

Apple also updated the clause on Friday for offering plug-ins to cover HTLM5-based mini-apps — possibly to include services offered by super apps like WeChat.

HTML is not HTLM.

pixelate, 1 month ago to foss

Okay y'all, I can officially say that Fedora 40 Workstation is inaccessible. After you install the OS, the first start window opens, allowing you to choose a network. I cannot move around in this window. I cannot use Orca commands in this window. Alt + Tab only leads me back to that window. Control + Tab, F6, F10, Super + F10, do nothing.

Linux evangelists may say "Well there are different spins, dude! Use the Mate one, dude!" That's not the point. What do people see when they go to download Fedora? Do they see Mate first? KDE first? No. They see the Fedora 40 Workstation, using the Gnome desktop. Their flagship is not accessible. I cannot say that I'm surprised. I might try the KDE spin next. Or I might just go to Mate where at least I know it can't get any worse than that.

#foss #Linux #accessibility #blind #Linux #Fedora

pixelate, 1 month ago to random

Do people really just repeat talking points this much?

Person 1:

What Apple's done is also violating antitrust laws, which has gotten them in trouble with the DOJ recently. And it's about time. They are a business, but an abusive anti-competitive one that has serious lock-in that bars competitors from their platform for no good reason other than to make even more money. They also forbid some apps because Apple releases something similar, and they don't want any competition. If they did allow competition they might not have made so much money, but they also wouldn't be the subject of major lawsuits in the US and in the EU.

Person 2: Um, there’s something called Android. No need to be on the Apple platform at all. You can switch to it if you’d like. When I walk into a Tesla dealership I don’t expect to be able to buy a Chevrolet.

Person 1: Um, whataboutism isn't a valid defense with the DOJ. Go read the many counts the DOJ is suing Apple for. It's extensive and points to a systemic problem at Apple stifling competition in many ways. Microsoft lost their antitrust case and they weren't doing 1/2 the shady stuff Apple is doing.

Person 2: You’re right. They make Android bubbles green. The horror.

I mean, LLM's could definitely fill up comment sections with that, lol. Boring.

pixelate, 1 month ago to accessibility

An Emacspeak speech server for Windows! No, I've not got this working yet, this was released just today.

https://github.com/robertmeta/sharpwin

#accessibility #Emacs #emacspeak #blind #Windows

pixelate, 4 months ago to random

Normalize comics with image descriptions.

pixelate, 1 month ago to random

Apple commentators: iOS 18 is gonna fail super hard cause all that AI is gonna be done by shutters Google! Ooooo scary!

Apple on Global Accessibility Awareness Day: We're proud to announce that iOS 18, using on-device intelligence, will be able to describe images in much greater detail, and additionally show where on the screen items in the image are. We've even optomized a model for describing changes in videos!

Apple Commentators: Boooo, Apple's still using most of its AI through Google! Booooo! Apple stock falls billions of points.

Blind people: buys all of Apple stock.

Blind people: gets rich.

pixelate, 2 months ago to accessibility

Using (x) has been in the company's DNA should be banned forever. We all know how flippantly company's use that.

> Those of us who’ve been assistive technology users for a while will know that Microsoft’s approach to accessibility has evolved over the years. First, it took a supportive interest in the hackery necessary to give screen readers access to Microsoft’s operating systems. Eventually, Microsoft created official ways for third-party developers to obtain the access they needed. And while it continues to do all those things, today, Microsoft offers powerful accessibility tools of its own in Windows and accessibility is in the company’s DNA.

https://www.livingblindfully.com/lb0270transcript/

#accessibility #blind #Microsoft

pixelate, 14 days ago to accessibility

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD). Today, I want you to ask yourself, then act, before you speak. Do you have an app you're maintaining? Look at some #accessibility resources for the framework you use for the user interface. Do you know if it's accessible or not? If it's not accessible, are you doing anything about it? Do you tell disabled visitors to your app/site that it's not accessible, and give them a timeframe, if any, when it will be? Do you have a website? If so, do you know if it's accessible or not? Are you an artist of any kind? Is your media accessible? Are you a writer? If so, are the images in your book described with #AltText?

If you're a part of a company that has anything to do with accessibility, including proudly posting about it, do you have any disabled employees? If so, do you show them that they're appreciated? If not, why don't you have any? If you create art about people with disabilities, do you have disabled people take a look at it before you share it? If you write books that have images in them, have any disabled people checked to make sure the Alt-text makes sense, and that the book is accessible otherwise? If not, why not? And when you get disabled people to check out apps, books, sites for your professional needs, do you pay them for it?

Please do remember us on every other day of the year, but particularly today, please remember: nothing about us without us.

#blind #disabled #disabilities #access

pixelate, 16 days ago to accessibility

A few more notes about video games and VoiceOver Recognition: the story mode of Blazblue reads very well with screen recognition, even better than Windows OCR! In some games, when menus have descriptions, you can tell which menu item you're on by the description of the item at the bottom. With the Provinence app, audio latency is amazingly low with my AirPods Pro 2. So, playing games using those is really, really amazing! No game mode needed! I can't wait for more blind people to get into this! #accessibility #blind #gaming #Provinence #iOS #RetroGames #emulation #emulators

pixelate, 14 days ago to accessibility

Chromebooks already have great screen reading capabilities built in...

Awww Google, how cute of you. Great? Nope. Next time, remember. Nothing about us, without us. ChromeVox has barely been updated in years, just like VoiceOver for Mac, and Narrator. ChromeVox barely has any options for fine-tuning verbosity, keyboard commands, pronunciation, and some keyboard commands, like Search + Control + A for accessibility actions, aren't even well-documented. I should know. I had to use an Acer Spin 713 for a good 3 months as my primary laptop. So kindly stop talking, then ask, then act before you speak further.

"Updated keyboard shortcuts and first-letters navigation in Google Drive"...

First letters navigation? Come on. Any blind person can tell that this wasn't written by anyone who uses these technologies.

And nowhere in this article is anything new for ChromeVox. See? This is the kind of, frankly, bullshit that I hate on GAAD. Just shut your mouth and listen for once.

https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/global-accessibility-awareness-day-2024/

#Accessibility #blind #google #ChromeOS #Chromebook #ChromeVox #GAAD

pixelate, 13 days ago to random

Holy crap y'all 2024 is just about half way over and what have I been doing with my life? Oh my gosh what the crap y'all, how is it almost half over! What the crap! Aaaaa

pixelate, 9 days ago to accessibility

So, I know generative AI is supposed to be just the most incorrect thing ever, but I want you to compare two descriptions. "A rock on a beach under a dark sky." And: The image shows a close-up view of a rocky, cratered surface, likely a planet or moon, with a small, irregularly shaped moon or asteroid in the foreground. The larger surface appears to be Mars, given its reddish-brown color and texture. The smaller object, which is gray and heavily cratered, is likely one of Mars' moons, possibly Phobos or Deimos. The background fades into the darkness of space. The first one is supposed to be the pure best thing that isn't AI. Right? Like, it's what we've been using for the past like 5 years. And yes, it's probably improved over those years. This is Apple's image description. It's, in my opinion, the best, most clear, and sounds like the ALT-text that it's made from, which people made BTW, and the images it was made with, which had to come from somewhere, were of very high quality, unlike Facebook and Google which just plopped anything and everything into theirs. The second was from Be My Eyes. Now, which one was more correct? Obviously, Be My Eyes. Granted, it's not always going to be, but goodness just because some image classification tech is old, doesn't mean it's better. And just because Google and Facebook call their image description bullshit AI, doesn't mean it's a large language model. Because at this point in time, Google TalkBack does not use Gemini, but uses the same thing VoiceOver has. And Facebook uses that too, just a classifier. Now, should sighted people be describing their pictures? Of course. Always. With care. And having their stupid bots use something better than "picture of cats." Because even a dumb image classifier can tell me that, and probably a bit more, lol. Cats sleeping on a blanket. Cats drinking water from a bowl. Stuff like that. But for something quick, easy, and that doesn't rely on other people, shoot yeah I'll put it through Be My Eyes. #accessibility #AI #LLM #BeMyEyes #blind

pixelate, 7 days ago to accessibility

Lol, folks. Listen to your article before you post it. Doesn't matter what voice. You'll catch things like this from macrumors.com. In the app's settings (accessed via ChatPGT ➝ Settings… in the menu bar when the app's main window ...

#accessibility #writing #TTS

pixelate, 5 days ago to accessibility

Okay y'all, Retroarch is now accessible on iOS! You will need a keyboard or gamepad to play and use the user interface. PSP games work great though! Just download all the core updates and needed core files for PPSSPP, if you plan on playing PSP games, and you're good! #accessibility #RetroArch #blind #blindGaming #emulation #emulators #gaming #iOS Link to the App Store page: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6499539433