@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

zersiax

@zersiax@cupoftea.social

I am Florian, florian is Dutch and Florian is he/him. I tend to talk about a myriad of different things, including #accessibility, #linguistics, #infoSec, #music, #programming and #gaming. Also #books, loads of books. Twitch streamer, LGBTQIA+-friendly and, oh right, fully #blind, as well. Anything more would be telling.

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jscholes, to accessibility
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

The current owner of is the Applause group, who offer auditing and testing services to many high-profile clients. When Applause are paid to evaluate the accessibility of a product, they are expected to point out some of the exact issues that have been raised in relation to their work on , such as controls that have no labels or accessible role information, images without alt text, etc.

This hints at a wider problem in the industry, where companies are "cashing in" on the market for accessibility-related services without actually being that invested or incentivised to do good work. Do Applause work with testers? Was anybody there tasked with testing the application with a and other ? If not, it raises questions about whether their accessibility services are a force for good, or are actually causing harm.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@jscholes they do work with people with disabilities, just not that many of them to my knowledge. And that is really just the accessibility-related stuff they do. I have no idea who over there actually works on the app though, could easily be some third-party contractor

weirdwriter, to random

So I quite literally don't understand why sighted people like AI narrated audiobooks. Some of the best audiobooks I've found have been following my favorite narrators and seeing what other books they've narrated and, obviously, with AI audiobooks, well, there's nothing to celebrate.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@weirdwriter different strokes, different folks. AI audible is basically VOiceDream on steroids and people like that well enough, not just "sighted people" as you put it. I personally couldn't care less who reads my books as long as they do it well. If AI does that, great. If not, then I'll read it myself

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@weirdwriter I do, more often than not

jscholes, to accessibility
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

PSA: is pronounced with an "ack" at the beginning. There is no such thing as "ass-ess-ability".

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@jscholes I was talking to a SEO expert today that said both "assessibility" and "alt tag". I made frequent use of my mute button

zersiax, to random
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

Let's grab the new NVDA Update. NVDA: Error checking for update. Me: Oh, let's check the logs for what the actual error is. Logs: sad logs noise no error written to log. Me: of course not ... sigh ... fine, I'll go grab the update manually because the autoUpdater is refusing to autoUpdate and also refusing to tell me why!

superblindman, to random
@superblindman@peoplemaking.games avatar

Am I the only one who has trouble reading Google docs with a screen reader these days? I just cannot seem to do it. I have tried 3 different browsers, and all of them have been showing Google Docs as blank. What am I missing?

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@superblindman turn on the screen reader mode?

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@superblindman press alt+/ to go into the menubar and I believe there's a tools menu that has an accessibility option, where you check the screen reader mode and braille support checkboxes. These are generally stored in your browser's preferences/on your account somewhere and sometimes the switches come unchecked, maybe that's what happened? You also need to be in your screen reader's non-browse mode but I figure that'd be obvious

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@superblindman huh ...are you using Chrome? Isee some oddness with MS Edge, Chrome works fine though

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@superblindman ok well, alt+slash is supposed to open a search in menus thing where you can type accessibility, or, you can use left and right arrow keys to find the tools menu and locate it manually. If that isn't working the only thing I can think of is that there might be a cookie banner in the way...

KaraLG84, to random
@KaraLG84@dragonscave.space avatar

There's a bloke near us in this Indian restaurant that sounds a bit like Techmoan.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@KaraLG84 I like Techmoan ...just sorta like that uncle or even grandfather that everybody has that just loves to tinker about with stuff and knows how to fix your broken electronics for you :)

weirdwriter, to random

Regarding the whole Lyft and Uber pulling out of US states, You always should really look into other paratransit options in your state. For example, in a few states, they will subsidize your cab rides. Some states have UZerve. Some states have on demand options that are not Lyft and Uber. Paratransit isn’t the only offering.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@weirdwriter some states have nothing at all, though. It does happen.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@weirdwriter uhh yeah ...but public transit systems the US over are horrible. What that concretely means is that there might be an on-demand service that will only actually show up if you call days in advance, and you'll get a super cranky driver who'll blame you for having to drive, say, to the other side of the state if you happen to live there. These kinds of laws are great, but companies will find any loophole they can to only just about meet them

ppatel, to random
@ppatel@mstdn.social avatar

So him's big surprise was a new 40-cell Braille Display that's competing with the Humanware BI 40X? Unless I'm mistaken, it's $500 more than the Brailliant.

https://hims-inc.com/product/braille-emotion/

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@ppatel huh ...does the thing run android like their other stuff lately?

sarajw, to random
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

What options are there to properly fight spam in a static website? Are there any?

Or if I get access to a database endpoint, maybe via an ORM rather than PHP - I can put my entries in there, but how can I run spam checks?

I currently use Netlify Forms, they run Akismet and it's awesome. But I'd like to make my email contact form and guestbook form independent from Netlify if I can.

Every site I'm finding in my search for spam filters and contact forms seems to be all about wordpress plugins 🫠

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@sarajw there's services like Formspree that are ...OK at this. Not great by any stretch, but OK. That reminds me, I need to go fix my contact form ...somehow

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@sarajw lol I am pretty sure I use the free version. And it's acttually broken currently, for some reason multiline edits aren't being rendered by write.as so I get the replyTo address but not the actual content. I therefore, have no idea what you just sent me ;P

ppatel, to accessibility
@ppatel@mstdn.social avatar

The more I learn about Glidance, a system that purports to replace the cane, the more it seems to have taken all the criticisms of "smart canes" into account. It might be the first genuine high-tech navigation aid that could be beneficial, replacing the cane in most circumstances. I'm usually highly skeptical about these things because people just havent thought through the implications including ergonomics, weather conditions, etc

https://glidance.io

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@KaraLG84 @ppatel something I am somewhat curious about, depending on if it gets a whole lot better or not, is Biped, I hope they'll have the chance to iterate on what they've got now

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@ppatel @KaraLG84 oh right. the little robot cart thingie! :) I remember this now

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@ppatel @KaraLG84 I kinda hope they will allow using third-party routing providers somehow. e.g., what I like about the WeWalk is that it uses Google Maps and Moovit so even if WeWalk's parent company falls over, as long as the APIs don't change, most features should work in most places because how how common these services are. their language of "proprogramming" a route to me sounds like you need to manually record a route first which I don't love

sarajw, to random
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

I'm proud of myself.

Work is having an event tonight to which I brought husband and kids to the first part. I chose to come home with them to take my part in the bedtime routine, and I've managed to get myself out the door again to rejoin the party!

I don't get out much lately and work has become my local social life. There's another discussion about how healthy that is, but I'm glad I'm not just staying home and stewing. I easily could, I'm perpetuatired as ever, but it's nice to get out.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@sarajw partied too hard? :)

cariefisher, to random
@cariefisher@mstdn.social avatar

Looking forward to presenting two talks at CSUN next week! 🎉

First up, Ed Summers, Jesse Dugas, & I will be presenting "GitHub Copilot: Empowering People with Disabilities" on Friday at 11:20 am PDT in the Elite 1-3 room.

Join us as we explore the future of programming & how Copilot's accessibility features are leveling the playing field for developers of all abilities. Our talk will cover some high-level concepts around using AI responsibly & will include a special guest appearance by Loki 🦮

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

If you squint and perk up your ears you might even catch a glimpse of yours truly in that talk :)

ppatel, to random
@ppatel@mstdn.social avatar

Does this mean that I'll no longer have to rely on the Bluetooth Audio add-on in NVDA?

https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/14386

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@ppatel well ...it seems to have been assigned to 2024.2, so ...you possibly eventually won't when that comes around in like 4-5 months

accessauston, to accessibility
@accessauston@mastodon.world avatar

This journal article explores computer science professors teaching accessibility. Only half of the 175 institutions surveyed had a professor teaching an accessibility course. The researchers also surveyed 1,857 computer science professors and found that over 10% reported not being knowledgeable about accessibility and over 60% reported some knowledge about accessibility. This highlights a need to educate professors about digital accessibility. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3159450.3159484

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@accessauston uhh yeah ...that seems to track. I had to teach the accessibility course at my own institution I was talking comSci at at the time

talon, to random
@talon@dragonscave.space avatar

Sometimes I come across really cool apps on Mac. Like SoundPaste. Press a button, record system audio, mic, or both, press again and it gets saved and copied to clipboard immediately. Then I think about apps like Audio Hijack and like... yeah Apple and Mac have their issues but this is just really cool. As someone who works with audio a lot, there's just so much cool stuff here. And it's accessible too. I dunno.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@talon I usually explain it as ...I really like Mac OS, I just really don't like VoiceOver. With the right apps, third-party tweaks etc. a whole lot is perfectly doable on the mac, it just generally takes more tweaking which amuses me because that's usually something people say about Android on mobile. Honestly my main beef with it is that VoiceOver clearly is not receiving enough attention/staff/man hours, hasn't for years, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. And with that being the only mature screen reader out there for the mac that isn't a great prospect for an often multi-thousand dollar machine

hybridhavoc, to random
@hybridhavoc@darkfriend.social avatar

Last month I bought some Sennheiser momentum 4 headphones. Today one ear up has experienced some sort of defect I think with the ANC. Heard a weird pop while listening to music, followed by static sort of sound. Now that static comes in every now and then and there is a noticeable pressure difference between the two ear ups, most noticeable with ANC at full strength.

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@hybridhavoc was the issue that it started sounding like you were underwater, with one or both earcups hissing and popping?

zersiax,
@zersiax@cupoftea.social avatar

@hybridhavoc I don't want to jinx you but yeah ...thats been my experience with that particular headset as well. I had mine swapped out twice and it always started happening after a couple weeks. Really unfortunate because I really enjoy the headset for the rest but yeah ...I ended up getting an wh1000xm5 to fix the problem in the end

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