A few days ago, I covered how the version of DECtalk made for the US National Weather Service has abbreviations that can match on inflected forms. I found another set of voices that also do this. The Windows XP versions of Microsoft Mike, Mary and Sam. In fact, they do it in a way that allows for really hilarious results.
Several abbreviations in those voices are implemented in such a way that they match on inflected forms of the abbreviations. For example, CH, the abbreviation for Chapter, also matches on CHY, which is said as "chaptery," or CHFUL, which is said as "chapterful." In fact, the voices allow word suffixes to be chained together in any order, seemingly forever. Typing something like NEFULERYING will result in them saying "northeastfullerying." This creates endless possibilities for silly sentences. Here's one I made.
This entry was edited (6 months ago)

Dangerous #Accessibility Assumptions That Put Everyone at Risk
buttondown.com/access-ability/…
#a11y #productmgmt #webdev #webdesign

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#AudioMo day 19:

Because the thing I wanted to post today didn't work out, I'll throw this here instead.

In late July of 2016, I was visiting my parents. They were getting ready for a move, and thus, were about to toss a bunch of stuff, including a bunch of old hard drives. The newest of these was probably 10 or 20GB, and the oldest was 80MB. Most of them didn't calibrate.

So, just because I could, I recorded exactly 30 seconds of each hard drive being powered on, regardless if it calibrated or not, then stacked them all. Result is this clicky clacky thing I called "a Bad Day in the Server Room."

I can't find the original multi-track project, so I am not sure how many hard drives are featured in this recording. I'm pretty sure it is at least 15. Have fun trying to count them all.

This was recorded with a Zoom H6 and it's X/Y microphones.

Wir haben Euch in unserem Newsletter und hier im #Fediverse gefragt, wo man überall das #Deutschlandticket ohne App-Zwang / Digitalzwang bekommen kann. Daraus ist eine Tabelle mit ca. 180 Einträgen geworden (die sich auch mobil betrachten lässt.) Weitersagen! ReTrööten, bitte!

digitalcourage.de/blog/2025/ue…

Trump Administration Abandons Deal With Northwest Tribes to Restore Salmon
—

The Trump administration canceled a deal, signed under President Joe Biden, that would have enabled the removal of four hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River that are considered harmful to salmon.
propublica.org/article/trump-s…

#News #Trump #Native #Indigenous #Oregon #Environment #Sustainability #PNW

#FreeBSD provides the Ports Collection, a convenient way to install applications. Some ports allow users to configure options before building and installing. By default, this configuration is done through an interactive menu in the terminal.

To improve readability and #Accessibility especially for users with low vision or color blindness, it's important to offer simple and customizable color options. These features have recently been implemented and documented in the preview version of the FreeBSD Accessibility Handbook:
freebsd-accessibility-9d667f.g…

The next step is to extend these features to all terminal-based graphical components.

I'd love to hear from you:
Do you use any accessibility features in the terminal?
Which color-related assistive technologies make the biggest difference in your daily workflow?

Together, we can make FreeBSD more accessible for everyone. #ThePowerForEveryone #FreeBSD #Accessibility #OpenSource #LowVision #ColorBlindness #AssistiveTechnology #AccessibilityMatters

Steam just added screen reader support in the latest Big Picture Mode beta. On the Deck. On SteamOS. On Linux.
Not hacked in. Not community-patched. Built-in. From Valve.
There's an accessibility tab. There's a screen reader. There's high-contrast mode, UI scaling, color filters, reduced motion, and more.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but: I need a Steam Deck now.
Accessibility isn’t just coming to gaming — it’s here, and it’s official.
Let’s make some noise so they keep going.
šŸ”— theverge.com/games/689922/stea…
#Accessibility #Gaming #SteamDeck #ScreenReader #Linux #valve
This entry was edited (6 months ago)

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Na (re)kole Prahou

Po městě jezdĆ­m na kole běžně. Do prĆ”ce to je pro mě nejlepŔí zpÅÆsob dopravy. S autem často nezaparkuju a MHD trvĆ” dĆ©le. Co když ale nemĆ” člověk kolo zrovna u sebe nebo je v cizĆ­m městě? PoprvĆ© jsem vyzkouÅ”el sdĆ­lenĆ” kola a byl příjemně překvapený.

#bike #Cyclers #cycling #kolo #NextBike #Rekola

blog.eischmann.cz/2025/06/19/n…
(reakce na tento příspěvek se může zobrazit jako komentÔř pod člĆ”nkem)

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🧵 So to recap something that happened yesterday, as I see it:

Yesterday Mastodon gGmbH sent out an email to mastodon.social and .online users announcing a new TOS. The TOS would take effect July 1, and would ship in the next version of the Mastodon server software as a suggested "template" TOS instances could adopt.

This TOS had multiple problems, and several people said so loudly. This morning, Mastodon announced they're backing off and taking additional legal advice:

mastodon.social/@Mastodon/1147…

This entry was edited (6 months ago)

ā€˜Doctor Who’ Showrunner Says ā€˜We Don’t Know What’s Happening Yet’ Amid Uncertain Future, but Insists Series ā€˜Will Never End’
variety.com/2025/tv/global/doc…
#Global #News #BBC #Disney #DoctorWho #RussellTDavies

What’s New in Prudence Screen Reader 3.0.0 accessibleandroid.com/whats-ne…

David Goldfield reshared this.

#Iran’s greatest asset is not oil, it’s its people.

The future is bright for Iranian people, but not for the #Islamic Republic, which as you can see is coming to an end.

says Iranian-American businessman #Najibnaik.

#IranIsraelWar

Learning Blind Tech Episode 26 Book Reading with Braillesense 6 desireerenae.com/learning-blin…

We are ending the era of Russian fossil fuels in Europe for good!

We have proposed a gradual phase-out of Russian gas and oil imports, to be completed by the end of 2027.

This will cut energy and economic risks tied to Russian supply, while ensuring stable and secure energy for all EU countries.

Our proposal protects markets, limits price impacts, and strengthens the EU’s energy independence.

Let's turn off the tap on Russian fossil fuels in Europe for good.

ā„¹ļø europa.eu/!CrrR3m

ARIA! It exists and on a long enough timeline you'll need to use it. Here's how to get into the right headspace to do so! #a11y smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/w…
#a11y

Bluesky are openly welcoming, verifying and hosting accounts of prominent far right politicians. Trump's VP Vance is now on Bluesky:

bsky.app/profile/jd-vance-1.bs…

"We welcome the Vice President to the conversation on Bluesky" (Bluesky in their email to Fox News)

More 🚩: Bluesky is centralised, run by a for-profit corporation, its CEO has blockchain background, it is partly owned by VCs & Blockchain Capital.

Bluesky are going down exactly the same Nazi Bar path as Twitter.

(via @mastodonmigration)

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Indian music

Sensitive content

šŸŽ‰ There's a new beta version of Signal!

Signal for iOS v7.65

Check out the Signal Community thread for more info: community.signalusers.org/t/be…

#signal #signalapp #signalupdates

bitsets are cool.

My favourite addition to curl this year, by far. We use them to track and iterate over thousands of transfers.

They are very cheap (memory and cpu) and great for cache locality. Also, they can be iterated over safely while being modified.

The latest addition is the ā€ždirtyā€œ set: transfers that need to run without external triggers like a socket event or timers.

A bitset for 1000 transfers has a 125 bytes array memory footprint.

github.com/curl/curl/pull/1766…

#NVDA Speech History version 2025.1 has been released, to be compatible with NVDA 2025.1. Additionally:

* There is now a setting to control what happens after copying a speech history item: nothing, beep, speak, or both.
* The post-copy beep frequency and duration are now configurable.
* In NVDA 2025.1 and higher, speech history items can be viewed and copied in a browse mode window. The default keystroke for this function is NVDA+H.

github.com/jscholes/nvda-speec…

#nvda
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