simon

@simon@dragonscave.space

Accessibility tester, bookworm, occasional musician and audio producer, coffee addict, selfhoster, tech tinkerer.

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simon, to random

If you use a screen reader and you perform a special button dance in the Fakespot analyzer page, while waiting for results to load, you might notice the following text:

"If you are seeing this, stop messing around with the console".

I do love when someone tries to be a smartass and it fails utterly.

alyssa6595, to random

Southwest just emailed me to ask if I booked my rental car for my Denver trip. They're a little off the mark on that one I'm afraid

simon,

@alyssa6595 This would be especially funny/silly if you specified accommodations while you were booking. I think Expedia has done this to me.

ElementalEcho, to random

All right now I am looking for headset recommendations Needs to be reasonably comfortable so I can lay down with it, sound decently, and have a good microphone. Looking for something wireless, and bonus points if it can also bluetooth to another device.

simon,

@munchkinbear @bryansmart @ElementalEcho I think OpenRun are the PoenComms without the extendable microphone. I have never seen both to compare. I also have the OpenComms.

jscholes, to random
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

Writing this on the Clicks keyboard case for iPhone. Not sure what I think of it yet... its certainly gonna take some getting used to.

simon,

@jscholes I gave this a pass when I found out it was a portrait keyboard. That already sounds too cramped to be of real use. There's a new Rii Mini available, plus I feel pretty efficient using Braille screen input and could probably get back to being good at direct touch typing. I can't imagine holding the phone by one end is comfortable either, unless you get particularly good at thumb typing, which I'm not. And that's leaving aside all the issues you've found with it. no arrow keys is absurd; sighted people use those too.

JamminJerry, to random
@JamminJerry@mastodon.stickbear.me avatar

I actually remember using this greeting on an answering machine way back in I believe 1996, and would you believe I actually had a message with someone pushing buttons, and then hanging up? lol!

simon,

@JamminJerry Mine was this for a while, with a necessary trim to the start and end. https://youtu.be/VjpcLplkMUs?si=cZ9enJtQ_zq2eRhq

nick, to random
@nick@hkc.social avatar

"Always on top" is evil and should never have a keyboard shortcut.

simon,

@nick You haven't lived until you've spent multiple weeks trying to figure out why your web documents keep going blank in NVDA, only to find you've accidentally made notepad2 always on top and it inexplicably causes literally everything to break in unexplainable ways.

simon,

@nick Oh, it kinda sounds like you had that exact problem. My alt+A is "stop after current"; I find this much more useful. Does Foobar have default assignments now? I just had to assign them all.

simon,

@nick Yep. Can't remember how I figured out the problem, it might have been trial and error or might have been @tspivey. Either way I was seriously contemplating reinstalling Windows. The problem would disappear randomly after closing other applications too, so it was really hard to track back to Notepad.

FluidEscence, to random

Because I am lazy. gpt.py. import google.generativeai as genai
Yeah, I never renamed that python file.

simon,

@FluidEscence If only there were a unix utility for that.

simon,

@FluidEscence Being sarcastic. This is an easy sed fix. Not that i'm judging the laziness.

simon, to random

VMware Fusion and Workstation are now free.
I bought them legally for the first time ... on April 6th.
That's what I get for doing the right thing. I won't make that mistake again.

JonathanMosen, to accessibility
@JonathanMosen@tweesecake.social avatar

The summary of the Sonos AMA is worth reading if you have a deep interest in this issue. I am somewhat heartened by it, particularly given that we now know that most of the Sonos iOS app is written in Swift. This means that an excellent experience is possible.
https://en.community.sonos.com/events-at-sonos-229141/new-sonos-app-community-ama-recap-6893728?tid=6893728&utm_source=community-care&utm_medium=systememail&utm_campaign=en-new-topic

simon,

@JonathanMosen > We invested our user experience and engineering energy on supporting VoiceOver throughout this project. Unfortunately near the end, we took our eye off the ball and missed a couple of key bugs.

A couple of key bugs? A. Couple. Of. Key. Bugs? They are either completely ignorant of the reality of the situation or more focused on good PR than honesty, and either one of these is a really great reason not to trust Sonos. This is the first thing I found when searching for the word "blind".

simon,

@blindbat84 @JonathanMosen Thinking back to my experiences at convention with a million canes tapping, I'm going to go with "clatter".

Pawpower, to random
@Pawpower@mastodon.social avatar

Finally decided that I'm going to buy a braille notetaker to replace my rapidly aging and probably failing Mac. It's honestly easier than hauling around laptop+braille display. Literally the only thing I'm going to use it for is keeping notes and writing invoices. So if anyone is selling one I'd like to chat.

simon,

@Pawpower @SerenaTori Consider one of the Braille displays with notetaking functionality. I have the Mantis Q40 (a qwerty display with note taking stuff in it), and it is fantastic. I prefer it to my laptop keyboard, and it makes a good notetaker on its own as well, with basic support for reading books.

simon,

@SerenaTori @Pawpower For a desktop setup I'd want to find some old display that had no keyboard whatsoever. I have a PacMate display sitting behind my keyboard on the keyboard tray, and it's perfect. No complications and reboots and updates. It just works. It's probably old enough to drink in the US now, but so far the dots all work.

simon,

@Pawpower @SerenaTori Converting a bunch of RTF files is very doable. It's something you can probably automate without much trouble. I used to also really like RTF, but I found that outside of Windows applications it's not really readable, so I tried to get away from it. DOCX is a fairly open format even though it seems like it should be more proprietary. I can look into some available options and possibly just write some code to do the convertions.

simon,

@Pawpower @SerenaTori That's interesting, I had the opposite experience which made me move away from it. I don't have much good to say about the touch unfortunately, but I hope it works better for you than it has for others I know. I find that these new notetakers are too bloated and complex, which results in way too many things that can go wrong. That said, you might find it useful to run Android apps and web stuff on it, if it performs well. There are just certain things that are annoying on a phone.

simon,

@Pawpower @lynnskyi @SerenaTori I can understand why people might have tried to discourage going phone-only. Using iOS with a keyboard honestly feels way more clunky than using Windows with a keyboard, and I say that having used a couple of Braille displays with both. But also, if you can make it work, it sure saves a lot of equipment and it's nice to have everything on a single device where possible. I recognize that through practice and command assignments, it's a lot more powerful than it looks.

simon, to random

Recaptcha is very forgiving with its audio captchas. Sometimes I'm given 1.5 words, so I enter just the one word and it works. Today I was given a clip from someone with a pretty strong accent and all I could make out from it is "transfers". So I entered "something something transfers", and it went through.
I'm pretty sure these can probably be defeated by modern transcription models, so I wonder how long we'll have such nice audio challenges.

jpellis2008, to random

So for a google/zoom metting on a pc, can I connect my Iphone SE 2020 and share the entire screen or just an app along with VoiceOver audio? I assume not. Can I do it on the phone itself if the meeting was on the phone?

simon,

@jpellis2008 Not with VoiceOver audio. you might want to record anything you can ahead of time.

hmaealdeza, to random
@hmaealdeza@dragonscave.space avatar

I haven’t realized how inconvenient it is to have a carrier-locked phone until weeks before going out of the country, and wanting to use just one phone for everything. So I went to my carrier’s store, hoping they’d let me pre-terminate my phone plan without having to pay too much. Having just renewed my plan last October, they want me to pay most of the price of the 15 Pro Max before they unlock the phone. Thankfully, the payment didn’t go through, because I’ve found a phone repair shop that unlocked it for approximately $60. That’s a lot less, compared to what my carrier is asking me to pay. So I went through with it, anxious at first that it’s a scam because a lot of them probably are. Thankfully, after 6 days, they called and informed me that my phone is unlocked. I’ve tested it using another provider’s sim, and it worked. What a relief! I don’t have to get a roaming package.

simon,

@hmaealdeza If it makes you feel better, the unlocking rules for at least one US provider are worse than the unlocking rules there.

Meepercat, to random
@Meepercat@mastodon.stickbear.me avatar

Does anyone in the virtual room have both of the following: A 4th generation Echo Dot, and a google Assistant capable device such as a Nest Hub or Nest Audio? If so, could you do a girl a favor and try something for me right quick?

simon,

@Meepercat I have Googles and echo dots, but only the third-gen dot, unfortunately. I assume that matters or you wouldn't have specified.

simon,

@Meepercat I didn't know they had those. Now I kinda want to upgrade my echos.

simon,

@Meepercat There must be smart thermometers that aren't thermostats and will work with Google things.

simon, to random

iOS 17 added an option to import an ESim QR code from photos when adding an ESim, so that if the carrier provides the photo, we can easily add it without having to scan it from another device and line up the camera. This was a huge accessibility aid. Unfortunately, that option was removed at some point. I can no longer find it on iOS 17.4 or 17.5. I don't know why Apple would have silently taken out such a useful option, but I'm going to be e-mailing Apple accessibility because this regression hits blind people particularly hard, and it could also cause problems for someone who has only one device. By forcing us to scan using the camera, Apple is also forcing us to have a second device available to display the QR code.

simon,

@jscholes No photos button for me, just a "learn more" button and an "enter details manually" button. I wonder if it's possible to decode the QR code and get the details that way.

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